As we make the rapid transition to summer hiking season here in Colorado I thought I’d kick it off with a review of my favorite piece of footwear – the Camp Four trail shoe from Five Ten. This shoe has been just about everywhere with me since I bought my first pair in the spring of 2007, from long distance trail running endeavors to peak bagging missions, hanging around at the local crag to alpine trad climbs on Crestone Needle and the First Flatiron. It’s nice to have a few time-tested items in your arsenal that you can simply order brand new every few years with full confidence in what you’re going to receive. No shopping around, no sizing up or deliberating over various products, you just know. Well, this shoe is that piece of gear for me, and my fourth pair just arrived in the mail yesterday. To start things off, the Camp Four might be best described as a multi-use approach shoe. A hybrid between a trail runner, an approach shoe, and a climbing shoe, the Camp Four seems to hit the nail on the head in all the right areas. Read more…
On Memorial Day I was able to escape the city and check out another Front Range ski route that had long been on my wish list – the Northeast Face of Bald Mountain A (13,684 feet) outside of Breckenridge. Partners for this superb day of spring hiking and skiing wound up being David Yarian and our resident member of the “I Snowshoe with Skiers” club, Dillon Sarnelli. We met at the Trex lot and motored up to French Gulch, following the TH directions Brian laid out in our guidebook (he skied this route in 2011 and included it as the first chapter of the Front Range section). Once at the parking lot we geared up and began the long ascent up the French Creek drainage. Keep reading…
The Sangres are an area of wild contrasts. A linear range running from Salida all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the mountains are characterized by prominent, jagged conglomerate masses, rising straight out of the San Luis Valley. Much has been mentioned throughout this site of the intimidating nature of its mountains, and long, arduous approaches to the alpine. Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is a nice change of pace from this and is the perfect place to exercise your inner child for a weekend, or longer. Keep reading…
With ski conditions starting to deteriorate up high and a good amount of summer driving on the agenda, I knew I wanted to keep things local this past Saturday. My buddy Jason Fruh and I talked about going for Pettingell Peak which resides at the head of Herman Gulch only an hour’s drive from Denver. We knew it was in (thanks to beta provided by Brandon Chalk and Co who had skied it a week and a half prior), and with the good possibility of a sub-par freeze the night prior we liked the idea of going for a low-angle route. Read more…
