Mazamas Dine in Style at Angels Rest

Friday, April 28, 2006

There's a legendary mountaineering club here in Portland called the Mazamas. They lead hikes all over the region, and, with the help of my co-worker Carol, I joined a Mazamas outing this evening in the Columbia River Gorge. We hiked to Angels Crest, arriving at sunset with the Columbia River rolling out toward Portland and a deep-red sky. All the men were to bring dinner, all the women, dessert. We had an astonishing display of food, considering we carried every ounce of it up 1,400 feet of elevation gain during more than 2 miles of trail. It was my first Mazamas hike, but Carol has been out with the club nearly every weekend since September 2005. I'm sure I'll join her with the Mazamas on more hikes in the future. There's no better way to get out on the trails with knowledgable guides than going with them.

Rogaine Training Hike -- It's Not About the Hair

Photo by Scott Drumm, Columbia River Orienteering Club
Knee-deep in wildflowers, Mike Bitton (far right) tries to keep up with members of the Columbia River Oreinteering Club during an April 22, 2006, training hike.

Apparently, waaaay before the miracle hair-growth medicine, Rogaine (capital "r"), there was rogaine (lower-case "r"), an orienteering sport that required competitors to travel long distances on foot between orienteering control points with nothing but a map and compass to guide their way. That's the kind of rogaine I'm talking about. It's not about the hair.

Today I went with several members of the Columbia River Orienteering Club (whose unfortunate acronym and more common name is CROC) to do a "training hike" for the upcoming Big Muddy Rogaine 3 orienteering competition May 13 in Central Oregon.

We hiked up, across and down Seven Mile Hill, the wide, barren mountain that sits behind the town of The Dalles, Ore. My altimeter said we started our hike at 600 feet above sea level. When we topped out on Seven Mile Hill, to a breathtaking view of the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Adams, my altimeter said 1,800 feet above sea level. A 1,200 foot jaunt up a mountain is a little more serious a "training hike" than I'm used to! We ate lunch at the top, then made our way back to the car. Subtracting the 30 minutes we took for lunch, the hike took three hours.

When my friend Scott Markham told me about the elevation gain and loss involved in this training hike, it was as if my knees piped up and said, "Hey! Buddy! Did you hear that? Twelve-hundred feet up, and 1,200 feet down. Ibuprofin! Trekking poles! Ibuprofin! Trekking poles!" As you can see in the photo above, I took my trekking poles along for the hike. I also administered Ibuprofin as necessary. Smart set of knees I got! I wasn't even sore after the long drive back to Portland!

Trail Running Comes Naturally During 'Play in the Woods Expo'

Photo by Mike Bitton (with help from the self-timer)
Scott Markahm, Cristina Fillis and Mike Bitton pose for a picture at one of many control points they visited on Saturday, April 22, 2006, during a day of competitive orienteering near Portland, Ore.

Saturday, April 22, 2006


I learned two important lessons while competing last week in my first adventure race. First, I'm gonna have to learn to run. If I don't, I'll never make the cutoff times in the sprint races I intend to enter. Second, I'm gonna have to learn to navigate. If I don't, all that running will be for naught. Today, I practiced both running and navigating, as my friends Scott Markham and Kristina Fillis of Portland introduced me to the world of competitive orienteering.

At the "Play in the Woods Expo" near Portland, Ore., we completed two orienteering courses. The first was a beginner course, the second was an advanced course. The control points were almost too easy to find on the beginner course (we took third place without even meaning to), so after we finished that, we went straight for the most advanced course they had. What a blast! The control points were nearly impossible to find, but we navigated well, and knew we were in the right places, so we ran around through the woods until we found what we were looking for. I had the time of my life! I think we ran a quarter of the time because we were having so much fun.

Scott is going on a training hike tomorrow with the Columbia River Orienteering Club, which put on the Play in the Woods Expo. The hike will help prepare those involved for an orienteering event in May called the Big Muddy Ranch Rogaine 3, which this year also happens to be the U.S. Rogainine Championships. I think I'll go on the hike tomorrow and see what kind of punishment these folks put themselves through on a training hike.

Sailors Pushes, Pulls Bitton to Finish Adventure Race

Photo by Colin Ness
About an hour before the start of the BEAST adventure race, Duncan Sailors (right) and I looked excited to take on the challenge.

On Wednesday, April 12, 2005, I completed my first adventure race! It was the BEAST race in Seattle. It was hard and fun and scary and fast and slow and frustrating and I had the time of my life! My teammate was Duncan Sailors of North Bend, Wash. We completed the course in just under four hours. The race began shortly after 7 p.m., and ended at about 11 p.m., so most of it was in the dark. Our team name, a salute to my current phycial appearance, was Round Man Running.

After a quick orienteering course to thin out the crowd, members of roughly 30 participating teams began a mountain bike section that had everyone cris-crossing what seemed like dozens of narrow hiking trails around one of King County's remotest parks. Duncan and I purposely started the bike leg after all the other teams had left. Because it was my first race, we decided to start slow and taper.

I took a fall almost immediately on an exposed root that crossed the trail. Just as I recognized that the root might be large enough to pose a problem, my wheels were out from under me, and my right shoulder was slamming into a clump of ferns. "Are you OK?" Duncan asked. I was. It was a question I'd hear many more times during the next four hours as I crashed into an endless series of boulders, trees and mud puddles. Duncan was right to make me wear trail running shoes instead of my bike shoes that lock in to my pedals. I would have been miserable at best, and seriously injured at worst.

Many teams struggled to find checkpoint two of the bike leg. As we rolled in to a trail intersection, we saw dozens of bikes lining the trail, and dozens of racers zig-zagging around on foot in the woods around the intersection looking for the marker. Duncan ignored the mayhem and kept his head in the map. After a minute or two, he quietly said, "Mike, get on your bike and ride that way, nice and slow." I did, and I don't think anyone saw us leave. About 20 yards later, out of sight of the confusion at the intersection, we found checkpoint two. Duncan guessed we'd just passed about 10 teams, teaching me that navigation can trump speed in adventure racing.

With my limited mountain biking skills, about a fifth of the super-technical bike section was unridable for me. I'd hop off my bike to slog through 10 yards of 10-inch-deep muddy water, then hop back on. Then there'd be a huge pine tree down across the trail, so I'd hop off to lift my bike over that. I'd hop back on, and soon come to a hair-pin turn I could not negotiate, so off I'd jump again before crashing.

When the trails opened up a bit, I could build up speed. It's a bizarre sensation to zip past trees with nothing but a spot of light 30 feet in front of you to show the way ahead. I alternated between terror and bliss during those "fast" times. Terror because I knew a crash would cause serious pain, but bliss because I felt like a 7-year-old kid on the run from bad guys, and I sensed I was pulling away. At one point, the headlamp Duncan let me use was shorting out, so the light flickered on and off like a strobe light, and often didn't come back on for five or 10 seconds. "I'm doing disco mountain biking!" I shouted to Duncan.

After the bike section came the trek. Usually, this would just entail careful navigation and thoughtful selection of the quickest routes between checkpoints. The BEAST organizers added their predictable twist by requiring teams to answer mind-bending questions at some of the stops. Depending on which multiple-choice answer you chose, you were sent to a different checkpoint. Supposedly, if you ansered the questions correctly, your course would be shorter. The first question was a stumper that teams were wasting 10 and 15 minutes to solve. Duncan and I decided any guess was better than wasting time feeling stupid, so we chose an answer and left. We hit several more checkpoints, only a few of which had similarly rediculous questions. The others simply sent us to other checkpoints and finally, to the finish.

Duncan towed me up a final hill, and made me run the last three or four minutes to the finish. "We're going in hot!" he told me. "You're crossing this finish line as Round Man Running!" And we did. The cheers from the other racers and the race organizers were deafening. We did it! Camera flashes lit up the dark parking lot. Everybody hugged me. Duncan said he was proud of me. It was an awesome moment in my adventure racing life. We beat the 11 p.m. cutoff by just a few minutes. Many other teams had missed checkpoints, so "Did Not Finish " (DNF). We did finish, hitting all our checkpoints in the allotted time. We had a lot to be proud of, and, thanks to Duncan, I had a solid first race to put on my new adventure racing resume.

BEAST Director Roger Michel sent me an e-mail the day after the race to congradulate me. Here is some of what he said:

"Congrats again. This was by far the hardest BEAST race. The added length, tough navigation and technical trails all made it a '2-hour-plus' winning time compared to the usual hour-and-a-half. Looks like you bagged your first one, hopefully not your last!"

I want to wish Duncan and his team, MPGear.com, lots of luck as they continue to train for the Primal Quest expedition race to be held in June and July. As I prepare for my role as writer, photographer and media escort on the Primal Quest media team, I will always look back on my first adventure race to add some personal insight into what the athletes go through in just four hours of their five- to 10-day Primal Quest race.

Bitton Earns Horse Certification

Photo by Jana Bitton (my gorgeous wife)
This week I visited Sister-in-Law Becky's Stables in Sandy, Utah, to earn my horse certification for the BEAST race next week in Seattle. What? No horseback riding in the BEAST? Shucks. Guess I'll just have to use this cert at Primal Quest!

I know, I know, there's no horseback riding section in the BEAST adventure race coming up next week in Seattle. But I had the chance to ride this week, so I took it.

Training kinda goes down the tubes when you're on vacation. Sure, I could be militant about it and go run for an hour, but instead, I took an hour-long walk with my 3-year-old daughter and my gorgeous wife. Yes, I could borrow a bike from my grandpa and ride frontage roads along Interstate 15 for an hour. Instead, I spent an hour with my family taking turns riding a gentle white horse named Sebastian (see above) at my sister-in-law's house. It's spring break. We're road trippin'. And I ain't trippin' 'bout trainin' right now.

Duncan, my teammate for the April 12 BEAST, read with great interest my recent training blog entry about falling off my bike. "Let me save you from yourself right now," Duncan wrote in an e-mail. "You aren't going to wear your bike shoes at the BEAST. You're going to wear your Montrails."

Apparently the trails at the race location are "technical single-track," which to the uninitiated means trails that are narrow, muddy, boulder-strewn, root-crossed nightmares. So my odds of "clipping out" of my pedals in time to avoid EVERY potential disaster are zero.

Thanks, Duncan, for saving me from myself!