The view from the summit of Mount Adams. Click for enlarged view. As far as Colorado ski mountaineering is concerned, I’ve always considered the 3rd week in May to be my favorite stretch of time. The random weather that tends to sweep through the state earlier in the season usually gives way to a dry and sunny summer pattern. That in turn allows for cold clear nights and a reliable...
Christy heads back to Camp 2 from Ruby Creek, Jagged Peak cuts up the skyline behind. Since Internet readers have notoriously short attention spans I find it’s usually best to keep a post to a few hundred words and maybe ten photos. So when I came home with 1300 photos from our recent Weminuche Traverse through the San Juan Mountains, I thought the single brief post I put up on...
Looking north up the Waterpocket Fold in the morning. As you travel east (right) you pass through younger and younger rock strata. The Waterpocket Fold of Capitol Reef might be best described as a bend in the earth’s crust where subsequent erosion has exposed the underlying rock strata. Whereas the layers of desert rock are normally seen in a canyon wall stacked vertically, the layers of the Fold are tilted...
We decided to check out Capitol Reef National Park last weekend. Like many people, we had long known of this National Park in south central Utah but had never spent any actual time there. One of its major attractions is the Waterpocket Fold, a 100 mile long exposed monocline
On May 29, 2003, the inaugural Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon took place. Nepali owned and organized, the race has been run every year on May 29th, the anniversary of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic 1953 Mt. Everest ascent. The mostly downhill course descends the Khumbu Valley along popular trekking routes, from Everest Basecamp at 17,500 ft. to Namche Bazaar at 11,200 ft. In recent years, the race has...
Start with a 100 mile race in the mountains, strip out any crew support or pacers and add a bunch of winter weather– snow up high, mud down low, and temps in the low 20s all through the night– and you have last weekend’s Bear 100. Lucky for us, Christy and I were both able to say we had a great time. I improved on last year’s finish by 45...
On Eureka’s summit, 13,507 ft., looking down to Eureka and Hermit lakes and the Wet Mountain Valley. Continuing with our exploration of the Northern Sangre de Cristos, we backpacked up San Isabel Creek and climbed Eureka Mountain last weekend. Two years ago, Christy and I looked down on San Isabel Lake from the summit of Hermit Peak to the north, and knew we would have to camp there some day...
Christy and I are both registered to run the Bear 100 in a few weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to do a long trail linkup from our Bear training playbook two years ago– Snowmass to Conundrum.
Descending from Capitol Pass towards Capitol Lake and Mount Daly. We went up around the backside of Mount Daly as it’s seen in this photo. We pulled off a fairly large adventure run around Snowmass, Capitol, and Daly last weekend, a linkup of trails we refer to as the Superloop. We frequent a good number of local trailrunning loops in the range of 18-26 miles, and we thought this longer...
Descending Mount Bross. Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross– a.k.a. Decalibron, at least to those who obsess over 14ers here in Colorado. Peakbaggers love the easy Decalibron loop, allowing for four 14,000 foot summits to be tagged from the trailhead at Kite Lake, outside of Alma. (more…)