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They’re right in our backyard yet somehow Christy and I had never skied Taylor Peak or Star Peak. It was time. We caught a really good view of the 13,000 foot summits last week on our flight to CB for the Grand Traverse. Armed with a couple of photos and a good idea of the […]

A week of sun and warm temps crusted up the powder in the backcountry, so we thought a different type of ski tour was in order. We grabbed the light skis and made a loop around nearby Mace Peak.

As a Colorado backcountry skier, the mere prospect of spring brings excitement. But I found myself particularly psyched for the upcoming season after poring over a copy of the new guidebook, Climbing and Skiing Colorado’s Mountains – 50 Select Ski Descents. This book is long overdue. It’s co-authored by Ben Conners and Brian Miller, two […]

I’ve never considered my own ultra training to be a model for others to follow. I excel at avoiding anything that I find unpleasant– intervals, track laps, gym workouts, etc.– and I just go out for trail runs as often as I can, hoping that it will count for something on race day. I should […]

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 loop fell into its own category, hence the nickname.

After our run up Quandary’s East Ridge we decided to climb the mountain a second time (the next day) at a more casual pace. The north side of the mountain has a seldom visited, semi-technical climbing route called the Inwood Arete that we wanted to explore.

In seasons like this, when the steeper backcountry skiing isn’t all that safe, we keep ourselves busy with races. And part of the fun in that is in the training days. Many of the seasons races are already behind us. The Power of Four, the Vail COSMIC (for Christy), and the Highlands Skimo Series are […]

We ran the Zion Traverse last week– a linkup of existing trails across Zion National Park that measures about 48 miles and reportedly gains around 10,000 vertical feet. Christy and I are big fans of established courses such as the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim (or roundtrip) and the Four Pass Loop, so it was time to […]

Like a couple of elk forced down to lower elevations by snowfall, Christy and I headed to Fruita to go for a run. Most people associate Fruita with mountain biking. While the biking is nothing short of awesome there, many of the trails work equally well for a run. The rolling, semi-technical Kokopelli trails are […]

Neal jokingly referred to it as the “Outward Bound Course in a Day” loop. I’m not exactly sure how long it is, but our estimates put it in the 40-mile range. It had 11,000+ vertical feet climbed over five passes and it took all day (about 12 hours with stops).