Wholistic Fitness

SACRED WORKOUTS: Humphrey’s Peak TrailTrail to the Summit of Arizona’s Highest and Most Sacred Peak

a WF workout report from Coach Ilg

****Technical Observations:

Date Climbed: 6*27*05

Distance: ’bout 10 miles, but who’s counting?

Vertical Gain: start at 9,600′ and top out at 12,633′ (yes, those are ‘thousands’ of feet)!

Effort: Darn Hard

Time Required:
Guidebook says: “6 hours”
Coach Ilg’s Statistics: Ascent: 87 minutes. Descent: 63 minutes

Season: Late May – October if the Kachina Spirits Bless you. (There was still significant snow on the trail on my ascent)

Gear Used: cycling jersey, cycling shorts, Salomon Trail Running shoes, Injinji socks beneath cycling socks (secret mountain yogi technique), WF Chi Cap, Smith performance eyewear, and of course,my ancient garment of all outdoor performance garments; my 13 oz. Marmot Windshirt. when i navigate the Bardo Realms and meet Brahman, i know the Divine Robe which will adorn God…a Marmot Windshirt, baby!

Food Used: Early Morning Pranayam (yogic breathing practices), 1 water bottle of Fortune Delight with a lot of VitaFruit syrup in it, 5 Sport Caps about 30 minutes before beginning ascent, 1 chocolate PowerBar (1/2 at Agassiz Saddle, 1/2 at summit).

View from Top: Absolutely Unforgettable…you can actually see the curvature of Mother Earth!

Salient Features; climb through a few different climate zones and be a part of the fraction of humanity that has seen the endangered and drop dead beautiful alpine flora; San Francisco Groundsel which, like a Kachina Spirit, cannot live below 11,300′.

Pale Swallowtail/Mountain Columbine; a beautiful yoga of symbiotic relationships…blossom feeds butterfly, butterfly pollinates the species of Columbine. Why cannot man and Mother Earth dance as harmoniously?

Spiritual Observations:

Weary of the lower land, i could no longer lift my eyes to the Sacred Peak each day without being seduced by Her rarified airs. A true man must know his immediate terra firma by direct experience, regardless of scale or presence. It is inappropriate that a Warrior pretend to know a land by looking at it on a map or worse, from a car or a computer picture. He must breathe with the land to know it. If not bleed with it. The Adventurer knows and endlessly seeks a Truth; “The map is not the territory.”

Tibetan Masters have pioneered a Way through the Death Realms. They call this Way, the ‘Bardo.’ Yet learning about Their Bardo Maps is one thing. Dying is another. Climbing mountains, i feel, prepares me for the Bardo for in climbing i sense a microcosm of the Bardo. One can look at a mountain from a car, upon a map, or hire a fucking helicopter to drop your fat arse on the summit and ski down it. Such are the antics of the common and stupid man, the mundane man who knows neither regular sweat nor inner spirit. Such an animal remains pressed into spiritual oblivion by the undisciplined ego’s cherished state of comfort over difficulty, security over spontaneity. The Warrior, on the other hand, knows and Practices the High Art of the Wisdom of Insecurity. For his eyes, having once merged and melted with things so simple as a snowpatch melting or the stoic endurance of Glacier Lily or exfoliating granite within a winter’s wind, will forever be both Blessed and Cursed with a Divine Itch to merge again and again in the high country.

Along a street in downtown Flag, i walk hand in hand with my Beloved Partner. The softness of her palm, sways without force in mine. Historic buildings create swirling breezes impeccably laced with scents of ponderosa, mexican food, tourist perfumes, and desert dust. i feel twinges of guilt, Sacred though they be, as i cannot but help lift, again and again, my eyes to the Sacred Peak. Her monolithic Presence winks at my ego and scratches at my Soul.

i know that come tomorrow, come what may, i must Dance my own dance upon Her ancient, volcanic skin…

***

A queer dissatisfaction rose within me as i heard my feet smack upon the lower reaches of the Humphrey’s Peak Trail. “Too heavy,” i thought, as i lifted my elbows higher in the way i have seen Ethiopian runners run. “The Arms drive the Legs.” i wrote those words in one of my first books. Funny how the Essential Teachings remain just that, i smiled as my feet now carried themselves with monklike silence across the dew damp forest trail.

Seeds of renewal grew within me as i began passing through the aspens. WF is such a strangely perfect training ground for the spirit; cross training among the fitness disciplines keeps the WF Student an endless beginner. Yesterday i was a yogi doing asana in the sun, still unable to do advanced poses. The day before i was a bike racer getting dropped once again from a stampeding peleton. Today, i begin again as a mountain runner. Humbling stuff, this WF Path, especially after following it since age 16. True spiritual training forever reduces the Master to a Beginner. I think of Rilke in Letters To A Young Poet, “Resolve to be always beginning -to be a beginner!” Rilke is from the WF Lineage, i thought as my breath rate began to jump as i clamored rather ungracefully up and over the first of many snowdrifts.

A mile before timberline. Rock faces open, then close in seeming contradiction. Piles of snow, now well dirtied and gouged by hikers and summer sun, lie melting in their soiled beauty. I tread across them and feel compassion for their public entry into their own Bardo. Behind the tenderness of spring is a massive, lingering death of a winter once majestic.

11,400′. i feel the pull of the Summit sphere at my Heart Chakra. Over the past mile i have shouldered by a dozen hikers. My heavy breathing and galloping pace up the wispy trail startles most of them. They turn around and attempt to get out of my charging way. They do so kindly, yet slowly, for they all burdened like yaks. It is with a charge of dismay that i survey some of these faces. They seem so cluttered by their baggage; clumpy hiking boots, walking staffs, backpacks upon backpacks with tubes and bananas sticking out from them like moving vans of external needs. by comparison, i am naked. Minimalism among Mountain Gods is what i prefer. My Breath and my Confidence born from consistent WF training has Served me that most valuable of outdoor equipment. Let the yaks be content as yaks…my Medicine is Deer and my Clan is of the Butterfly. And i ‘better fly’ if i am to get up and down this mountain in such nudity of human spirit!

Minute 68; Agassiz Saddle, 11,800′. i pull on my Windshirt and ask one from four ‘kids’ huddled at the Saddle to snap a photo of me for DL. They are wearing full on Tundra gear yet are unsure of moving Higher. i do not know what they thought about this naked, running yogi beside them. i do my best to in-Courage them but the High winds already whip at me and i cannot long linger. Hypothermia happens fast up here. i turn my WF Chi Cap around, less the monster wind flings it to Kansas, and again start trotting among the steeping pitch of tossed rocks. I leave the bystanders standing bye. About 400 feet higher than this group, i startle (again) a couple, hunkered low against some boulders, eating. They look cold and frail, yet smile at me. The girl yells to me above the wind, “You are crazy!” Peculiar way to greet another human, i thought. So be it, as i returned her smile and continued to court the pull of the Sacred Summit.

Ahhhh, the sweet sting of high pressured winds. The space where jets might be able to fly yet Eagles soar! As i breathe rapidly into my chant of “Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hung” i am in surrender into the in-tasy of a dangerous undertaking. I leave even the noble and seeming permanence of the bristlecones below me. Those trees were saplings when the Egyptians were erecting the pyramids…and today i am allowed to bow to them from above. I dance upon the only tundra found in Arizona as the treeline slowly begins to disappear altogether. This alpine tundra is my most Sacred Yoga Mat; i Practice upon her with a linked chain of excited breaths like photons of Pranic Light. I no longer feel my feet among the ground-hugging shrubs and numerous tiny wildflowers, for i am floating like a SkinWalker in my own Temple of Self. I am provoked to joyous tears by my first encounter of the rare San Francisco Groundsel…the sole survivor in this extremely harsh and punishing environment above 12,000 feet.� The views which fall beneath me are literally breathtaking, with the immense Inner Basin, still pregnant with last winter’s heavy snowfall, and the vast Coconino Plateau and San Francisco Volcanic Field stretching endlessly toward the western horizon. I am Blessed. Dear Lord, I pray unto Thee with only my Breath in this Most Divine of Moments!

I ride a Raven’s auspicious escort up the final summit headwall and find myself perched upon the highest spot in Arizona. A man as feeble as i can find no greater instance, nor any more passionate rapture, then to stand on top of throne of the Mountain Gods and cry in the Light of its own Radiance. This to me, is what Heals. This to me, is what Empowers. This to me, is…Being a-live! As i bow in each Direction upon this Sacred Peak, tears run with aboriginal courtesy and become blended with the unnerved Sun. A mountain lake, far lower than i, welcomes my tears with a purest of blue.

As i turn and start the long descent, a warm energetic wave pulsed throughout what used to be ‘me.’ This Pulse is the pulse of our own Mother and our own Father. Sun and Moon united. HaTha Yoga. Mountain yoga. My parting from this Summit leaves an open wound…open enough for all Healing to take hold. I begin my descent by tip toeing among the talus, light headed i am. Somewhere further down, i gain my agility again. Deer Medicine. Leaping and jumping, striding and running. Laughing and crying. Still on their way up, i meet again the shivering couple. The girl again yells out to me,
“Who ARE you? What are you training for?”
My answer easily penetrated the God intoxicated mists of my mind,
“i am just a yogi…training for life.”

“i get It!”
was all i could hear her reply, fractured by the wind.

i truly trust she will.

we all will, one day…i thought, as i continued my downward rush into the world at the feet of the Sacred Peak.

May this humble workout report inspire your Practice and may all Beings benefit from your consistency of Practice,
namaste,
coach ilg

POST SCRIPT;

The Coconino Ranger Service reported that some of the hikers that Coach Ilg encountered that day reported having to crawl the last 200 yards to the summit because of the winds blowing at 100 mph.

The Navajos often refer to the San Francisco Peaks as “the mountains through which the wind blows,” as gale force winds of 40-50 MPH constantly sweep the summits.

One hiker wrote in the logbook that day, “Overcoming the final three false summits was like a walk in hell, hill over agony hill.”�

The mighty stratovolcano now called Mt. Humphreys, blasted away its upper 1,300 feet in a cataclysmic explosion only 200,000 years ago that rocked the surrounding area for hundreds of square miles, rocketing millions of tons of rock, hot ash, and lava high into the atmosphere. Going back in time, the entire Coconino Plateau was a great cauldron of volcanic activity that lasted for almost fifteen million years. Nearby Sunset Crater resulted from an eruption of less than one thousand years ago. The next eruption… has not yet been forecasted.

At the summit, you stand 2.4 miles above sea level, and can see for hundreds of square miles around us in a 360-degree panoramic view. The dark gash in the earth to the north is the Grand Canyon. To the northeast is Navajo Mountain in Utah. To the southwest lies Kendrick Peak, Sitgreaves Mountain, and Bill Williams Mountain. Out to the east, near the New Mexico border, lie the White Mountains and Mt. Baldy. The Mogollon Rim above Sedona is to the south as well as Oak Creek Canyon.