As I walked on to the 12,887 ft summit of Mount Rixford, the view was spectacular. It was 1:00 pm and there was no wind. There was not one person at the trailhead, on the trail, or on the mountain. I was completely alone on this big mountain and I felt this sense of euphoria.
We reached the summit by 1:30 pm, a much longer trip than Wes or I had planned on. But we made it! The views along the ridge, and especially at the summit of Boundary Peak were incredible. This was the clearest day I had seen all year. We could see for over a hundred miles across Nevada and I would even make out the distinct shape of Mount Humphreys along the Sierra Crest to the West.
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I convinced Manny to come along with me to Coyote Gulch. And with a little bit of planning, we decided to leave on a Friday morning and drive all day. With the time change, it took us a full 12 hours to get past Bryce Canyon and to the end of the dirt road that lasted an hour and a half.
I have been doing CrossFit for three years now, and I thought it would be a good time for another recap. Without a doubt, the thing that went well this year in CrossFit was my lifting. I made pretty solid gains in most of my lifts as you can see in the chart below. I’m not too proud of my gains in the strict press, but I am still working hard at it. I am learning that shoulder strength really takes time.
I heard there was a Slot Canyon in Southern California, so I did some investigating. To my surprise, I found one on Alltrails.com. It’s called “The Slot” and it’s in Anza Borrego State Park. Bec and I had a free Saturday for a small adventure, so we headed out to the desert.
I reached Baxter Pass by 1pm. It was like being on the surface of Mars, with its vast, desolate red landscape. It was quite beautiful. The vastness of it all gave me that strangely comforting feeling of being insignificant. I lingered at the summit a little longer than I typically do, just to take in the stark beauty before heading down toward Baxter Lake.
By 11:40am the sky had turned dark and I felt the first drop of rain on my head. Contrary to the weather report, my instincts told me to turn around and get lower, so I headed back to the lake where I thought I’d wait it out for a while. When the first thunder came, it was close and powerful, followed by more of the same. Now my instincts told me to run, so I did. As I did, nickel-size hail rained down in almost biblical fashion.
We started out at midnight just to make sure we had enough time since I had not hiked with most of the folks on our team. In hindsight, I’m really glad I did. We ended up needing the extra time. More on that later. On the day of the hike, I drove up in the late afternoon and slept in the back of my Subaru Outback until 11:30pm. After breakfast and coffee, I met the rest of the guys at the trailhead.
I started CrossFit about three years ago and I set up this gym in a spare bedroom we have because I always seemed to miss a CrossFit session. I wanted to be able to do at least 95% of what I did at the gym at home. Six months into this, it’s proven to be a great setup, and I think it would really benefit anyone who is just trying to stay fit at home. I attend Centric Athletics, and at the moment, because of the Coronavirus, we are closed. Like all of us, I needed a solid way of staying fit at home right now.
