For the past several years Steve and I have kept up the tradition of heading down to the San Juans in October and picking off a couple peaks before the snow files. This year we were short on time but managed to get down to Lake City for two days of hiking, hitting “Sundog” Sunday afternoon and then a fun string Monday on 12ers Dragon’s Back and Dolly Varden Mountain before finishing off with a pair of 13ers to the east. It was a short, sweet trip, made worth it by the prime fall colors in the area and the exciting scrambling offered up by Dragon’s Back.
Dragon’s Back is a striking rock pinnacle that sits south of Blackwall Mountain, just east of a small tarn feeding into Cow Creek. It’s notable as one of the more interesting Colorado 12ers, being a stiff class 4 scramble via its easiest route with many more difficult options on other flanks of the peak. Steve had already climbed Dragon’s Back several years prior but enjoyed it enough for a repeat. I was just happy to have a fun scrambling challenge to look forward to on what was otherwise a fairly pedestrian day of hiking. Keep Reading….
At the end of August Steve Cummins and I motored down south to participate in the ninth running of the Telluride Mountain Run. It’s a race that offers three different distances (13, 24 and 40 miles) which traverse the ridgelines and peaks above town. All three courses are pretty tough relative to most other races of the same lengths due to the elevation gain associated with each (5,000, 9,000 and 14,000 feet respectively). In fact it’s tough to find a race as steep as this one anywhere in the country in terms of vert-to-mileage ratio in addition to average elevation above sea level.
Saturday morning at 5:30am rolled around and those of us running the 24-miler were off from the Telluride Town Park (with Steve running the 13-miler, I wouldn’t see him until the end of the day as his race started at 8am). I didn’t get to the start line until 5:32 and thus set off a few minutes late behind the pack of runners, following the headlamps south from town into the mouth of the Bear Creek drainage. Keep Reading….
Glacier Gorge is about as iconic as it gets in Colorado. This sweeping cirque contains enough high peaks, lakes, trails, and precipices to serve as a front range ‘home base’ for a lifetime. It’s little wonder that this was the spot chosen long ago to serve as the beating heart of Rocky Mountain National Park. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been here. Encompassing anything from thrilling rock climbs up The Sharkstooth to family walks around Bear Lake, there’s enough variety to easily justify coming back time and time again. But in spite of all those trips, I still had a bit of unfinished business along the divide. Keep Reading…
A couple weeks ago I took a day off work looking for a big hike/run that would get me a good amount of mileage and vert ahead of the Telluride Mountain Run coming up at the end of August. After looking at a few different ideas I took a step back and realized there was no need to look any further than my own backyard…
For a long time I’d had an inclination to revisit Mt. Jackson (first and only other time I’d hiked it was 7 years ago), but instead of via the standard route from Beaver Creek, I figured why not do it as the ultimate backyard jaunt straight from my house in Eagle-Vail. Well, no time like the present I suppose as I’m not getting any younger. One of the cool things about the valley is that many of its trails intersect and can be linked together from virtually any starting point. You can more or less get anywhere in the valley via some combination of trails, the question just becomes how big of a day are you up for? Keep Reading….
