With the Telluride Mountain Run at the end of August rapidly approaching it’s time to get out there for a few alpine training runs. This past Saturday I decided to check out a route I had earmarked awhile back while looking at a map of the Sawatch in search of long loops incorporating 14ers. I’d never seen any reports or Strava logs of anyone running this particular linkup before, although I’m sure it gets some traffic as the loop makes a lot of sense. Read more…
The Barr Trail on Pikes Peak is one of those routes that has been on my list for years and years, but for one reason or another, I just hadn’t done it yet. But not for lack of trying. I had a few cancelled dates along the way. I even drove all the way down to Manitou Springs a few years back, only to realize I had chosen the day of the annual Pikes Peak marathon to try to do my climb. Whoops. A slog through some open space in Monument was a pretty sad consolation prize that day. Keep reading…
It’s been a long ski season. A decent one though all things considered, featuring a bit of a roller coaster in terms of snowpack totals and capped off by a temperamental, dusty spring. Some good days were had, but these days I seem to find myself looking forward to the green valleys, raging creeks and dry trails of summer earlier and earlier. I’ve also always been a fan of defined endings to seasons and activities, as there’s simply too much to do in the Colorado outdoors to risk getting burned out on any one thing. So with all that being said, for me at least, it felt like the right time to take the planks out for one final ski and call it a season. Keep reading…
With the Dirty 30 in the rearview and the San Juan Solstice only a week away, I was looking for a good training option to bridge the fourteen day gap between the two races. My eye landed on Mt. Elbert and the natural loop that can be made out of its two primary hiking routes. It wound up being a near-perfect run in the sun with Jax and a fine way to revisit the roof of Colorado on foot for the first time since 2003. Read more…