Cosmic Wall-Bizz Johnson marathon Link-up
I had always read great reviews about the Bizz Johnson Marathon and ended up signed up to run this year on a whim. I mentioned this to my friend Shannon and to my surprise she signed up for the half and volunteered to join me for the adventure. After some conversation, we decided to make it a true adventure by linking it up with a climbing outing. The race was in Susanville in the Lassen National Park area so we turned our attention to Castle Crags, a climbing area we had both heard about but had never checked out. We left on the early side, at about 2pm on Friday and made good time, arriving by 7:30 which included a lay-over at the Trader Joe's in Fairfield. Castle Crags is a state park so it was unaffected by the disappointing government shutdown that was keeping us out of Yosemite. That also meant that the campground was clean, had bathrooms with soap and paper towels and best of all a choice of great campsites to pick from. We set up the tent, got a fire going, racked up gear and planned out the climb for the next day.
The plan was to climb Cosmic Wall, a 5.6R multi-pitch on Mt. Hubris. This is perhaps the most famous climb in the area and often referred to as the Cathedral Peak of Castle Crags. We woke up leisurely on Saturday morning, and after coffee and oatmeal, we made our way to the ranger station. Luckily the ranger let us thumb through the recently released guidebook that neither of us knew even existed. After that we drove up to the Vista Point, parked and headed down Crags Trail.
The plan was to climb Cosmic Wall, a 5.6R multi-pitch on Mt. Hubris. This is perhaps the most famous climb in the area and often referred to as the Cathedral Peak of Castle Crags. We woke up leisurely on Saturday morning, and after coffee and oatmeal, we made our way to the ranger station. Luckily the ranger let us thumb through the recently released guidebook that neither of us knew even existed. After that we drove up to the Vista Point, parked and headed down Crags Trail.
Crags Trail leads you up for about 1.5 hours till you get to the base of Castle Dome. From here you turn left on a climbers trail through the Manzanita and skirt the rock feature on it's left (East) side. From here you can easily see the serrated top of Mt. Hubris. Continue up through the Manzanita climbers trails (path of least resistance really) till you get to the base. Work down the left side of the base of Mt. Hubris until you get to a very obvious pine tree below a right-facing corner. The first pitch is about 190' of glorified scrambling. I put in one blue alien and called it good. The pitch ends at a 4 or 5" pine tree on a comfy ledge.
Shannon and I swapped leads so she started up the second pitch all smiles. She went up and right and ended with an "airy step" to a huge ledge with two bolts. This pitch was shorter, about 100', but had many more fun moves as compared to the first pitch. I took the third pitch and once again started with an "airy step" off the ledge and headed up from there. For this pitch, just keep climbing until you get to another ledge with another pine tree.
It's about a 200' pitch so you end up with less than 5 feet of rope left using a 60m. This would be the run-out pitch if the route in fact deserves the R but once again I found a spot for the blue alien down low to protect the belay and the rest just felt great. After my first piece it was about 30 or 40 feet until the next placement but again the climbing felt so secure I never even thought about it.
Shannon took the lead on P4 and started up a right ramp until she headed "up up" to another very nice pine tree in a cozy notch. The ramp had all of these beautiful flakes on the left wall which made the climbing very interesting. From here traverse right towards the ridge. Heading up the chossy gully will only lead to a false summit. Doh! After you traverse right on a few very fun moves, the climbing gets extremely interesting.
It's almost like a high sierra knife-edge ridge-line traverse except you're only at about 5000 ft elevation. Although with the amazing view of Mt. Shasta and the rest of the park, it could easily convince you that you're much higher.
The rappel is very straight forward and is easily accomplished with one 60m rope. Rap down the Northeast face at the chains till you get to a large cedar tree where you'll find two Metolius bolts with rap-rings. One more rap gets you to the notch where you can scramble back around to the base of the climb and get any gear you may have left. Shannon and I also had our eyes on Six Toe Crack 5.8 but with a three hour drive ahead of us we reluctantly kept hiking back to the car after a wonderful day of beautiful climbing. Next time.
After a victory beer at the car, we jumped back on I-5 heading north and then east on 89 past the south side of Mt. Shasta. The country was beautiful and even more so once we turned on to SR 44 towards Susanville. The weather picked up however and before we knew it we were driving a country road in the middle of a freak blizzard. I normally wouldn't mind running in the snow but having to set up camp in the dark and in the snow just seemed crazy. By the time we made it to Susanville the snow had stopped, but unfortunately the rain had not. We opted to not cook at camp and instead found a cute brew pub in town. Luckily we sat right next to Stan, the race director and the Bizz Johnson Trail Stuart. He advised us to go set up camp at the Roxie-Pecenom camp in Lassen Nat'l Forest. With more than a hint of scorn (directed at the gov't of course) he said that it was officially closed with the shutdown but that we should just stay there anyways. He also said that the Eagle Lake Camp, where we had originally aimed to camp, was truly closed. A very fortunate encounter for us.
We headed out of town with full bellies and hopes that the rain which had stopped would hold the night. Unfortunately, it didn't even hold the hour and we had to set up the tent during a bit of a deluge. Once the tent was up and sleeping bags and pads where inside, we raced back to the car, shut the doors and laughed our asses off because we were totally drenched! Not the best way to prepare the night before a marathon but what the hell, Yosemite Hard Men would not have complained about a little rain right?
We changed into dry long johns in the car and race back to the tent trying to stay as dry as possible along the way. Luckily we both slept like babies and woke up at 5:45 ready to race. The plan was to quickly break camp in the morning and head over to the race registration, make coffee and clean up there. We parked in the parking lot of the historic railroad depot which was the end of the line for the Bizz Johnson Trail. A beautiful old building that was only further adorned by the two dirtbags with the JetBoil sitting in the parking lot with the hatch-back open and gear spilling out. We got a lot of funny looks but Stan of course came over and greeted us with a warm morning smile.
As the coffee worked it's magic and the time neared to board the bus for the starting line, Shannon turned to me and with a big grin on her face, and asked if she should run the marathon. "Heck Yeah" I believe was my reply or something of that nature, and within ten minutes we were aboard the bus headed uphill to the starting line.
The race started (coincidently) 26 miles down the road at the town of Westwood. Most racers kept their sweats on until 5 minutes before the race since it was probably 40 degrees but since there were only about 200 runners, there wasn't a mad rush to the starting line. The race started as unclimactically as you would expect from a bunch of crazies freezing their asses of in the middle of the woods at 9 on a Sunday morning before running 26 miles.
We changed into dry long johns in the car and race back to the tent trying to stay as dry as possible along the way. Luckily we both slept like babies and woke up at 5:45 ready to race. The plan was to quickly break camp in the morning and head over to the race registration, make coffee and clean up there. We parked in the parking lot of the historic railroad depot which was the end of the line for the Bizz Johnson Trail. A beautiful old building that was only further adorned by the two dirtbags with the JetBoil sitting in the parking lot with the hatch-back open and gear spilling out. We got a lot of funny looks but Stan of course came over and greeted us with a warm morning smile.
As the coffee worked it's magic and the time neared to board the bus for the starting line, Shannon turned to me and with a big grin on her face, and asked if she should run the marathon. "Heck Yeah" I believe was my reply or something of that nature, and within ten minutes we were aboard the bus headed uphill to the starting line.
The race started (coincidently) 26 miles down the road at the town of Westwood. Most racers kept their sweats on until 5 minutes before the race since it was probably 40 degrees but since there were only about 200 runners, there wasn't a mad rush to the starting line. The race started as unclimactically as you would expect from a bunch of crazies freezing their asses of in the middle of the woods at 9 on a Sunday morning before running 26 miles.
Since I had no ambitions in the race and Shannon had literally signed up 5 minutes before, we decided that we would run together and just "take it easy" (an Eagles song stuck in my head the entire weekend). She ended up pulling my pace for the first three miles before leaving me in her dust as she sped off up the trail. I motored thru as best I could taking in the beautiful scenery of this amazing place and admiring the magnificence of the color changes of the season banking around the mountain streams. After four hours of getting completely worked, I finally rolled across the finish line to a few cheers, the smell of grilled meat and the anticipation of cold beer. Shannon greeted me with a big cheer and a some water as I hobbled over to say hello. I assumed she did well in the race, but this being her first marathon, you never know what your body will do after running over 20 miles. Her body apparently didn't seem to mind. In fact, a leisurely pace put her in 2nd place for the women, 8th overall and blew away her age group Boston qualifying time by 16 minutes. A blistering 3:14! I would hate to see what this girl could do if she: 1) trained for the race 2) decided to run more than 5 minutes before the start 3) didn't sleep in the pouring rain in a tent the night before 4) didn't go on a big mulit-pitch climb with a big approach the day before and 5) ran at more than a leisure pace. She'd kill it.
After the race we had our victory beers and started on our 6 hour journey home. The car ride however never seems dull as Shannon entertained me with stories of Stan (the race director). Apparently they had a riveting conversation as he was riding his bike on the trail as she ran along side. We stopped in Chico for coffee and then made the final push on home. A great weekend overall filled with epic climbing, mountains, blizzards, soggy rain camping, marathon excitement and two new areas of California that I had never visited that both blew my socks off. I would recommend both to any readers and combine the two if you truly want an exciting weekend.