A Beautiful Bad Idea Story by Jacob Hartsoch Photos by Matt Seeley
I
was sprawled out yard-sale style on the Coleman Glacier, high on the slopes of Mt. Baker. One ski was broken. Blood was splattered across the snow. A quick check revealed a perfect circular puncture wound in my thigh from where I’d impaled myself with a broken pole. I was shocked and embarrassed. But mostly, I was crushed. Could I finish what I had started? The mountains. They always have lessons. We left the downtown Bellingham waterfront that morning before dawn on our bikes with skis, boots and climbing gear attached. Our goal was this: to travel—unsupported—via human-power from Bellingham Bay to the summit of Mt. Baker and back. It was a project inspired in part by the original Mount Baker Marathon. In 1911, 19-year old logger Joe Galbraith was whisked out past Deming in a Model T where he hopped out into the darkness and ran to the summit. He returned to Bellingham 12 hours and 28 minutes later. I’d always been unable to wrap my
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The heartbeat of Cascadia
On the summit head around the audacity and beauty of that first race. For years I had looked up at the mountain from town and wondered: how fast could you do the whole thing human-powered? The adventure had all the ingredients I was looking for: close to home and low impact, yet it still felt bold and uncertain. Best of all, it involved moving through the mountains I loved with friends. Now here we were in the thick of it. 50 miles and almost 11,000 feet of elevation gain were behind us. Then, in the
joyous excitement of finally skiing downhill I had gotten reckless and jeopardized it all. •••• I grew up in a small Montana town at the base of the Mission mountains, a beautiful untouched place. But the idyllic setting was eclipsed by childhood trauma—physical and sexual abuse —and one of my strongest early memories is of the town prosecutor pulling me into an empty courtroom to practice testifying against the abuser. It was overwhelming. My mom, seeing how I was suffering, marched us out of there with her head held high. There would be no trial. We didn’t really talk about it much after that. Later that winter things started to turn around for me. We didn’t have a lot, but my mom wrangled a few friends to teach me how to ski. I followed them everywhere that season, often out of control. I loved it. The next winter I shoveled sidewalks after school to fund a season pass. One day, when conditions were right, my mentor took me under the rope and we skied an out-of-bounds line that I had eyed on nearly every ride up the
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