olympic valley

olympic valley. we arrived friday, the day before the race, but everyone had already been there a week because of this thing called

"trailcon", anyways, its a really nice boujee ski resort. we even found a heated restroom. we met shannon weil (co-founder of western states) and gordy ainsleigh (the dude who first ran states). he talked to me about his plants back home. real down to earth. we ran up the escarpment (the first 4. miles of the course). well, i ran up what i thought was the escarpment but got kinda lost (too many turns, didn't have a route). abe ran up the escarpment tho. really epic place to run. and pretty damn steep. the original plan was to hike up at night and camp along the pot and already be up there for the start of the race in the morning, but it was very cold, and extremely windy, so we camped down below in the parking lot with some other folks. they were in camper vans, we were not. it was still really windy down there, but we managed to fall asleep under the stars and the giant hoka projection on the mountain with alarms set for 3 am to begin the hike back up the escarpment with everyone else.