Meeker Ridge

Adam and Laurel agreed to let me pick our adventure for today. We got another early start -- by 5:25 am we were hiking from the Horse Creek trailhead. Eventually the sun broke over the mountains behind us and cast shades of red on the hillside.

At the saddle between Lookout Mountain and Meeker Ridge, we left trail and began bushwhacking towards treeline. Cairns were scattered along the way, but didn't appear to be marking any trail that we could see. (On the way back we discovered an established, well-marked trail! It was only a few hundred feet southwest of where we had hiked up.)

We broke out of the trees and began climbing talus. Tough work that went on for hours.

Eventually we realized there was very little chance of summiting and descending back to treeline before the afternoon thunderstorms came in. We decided to continue on anyway, to see how far we'd get. 10:30 was our turnaround time, unless the weather were to miraculously improve.

We made it to a large headwall and found a way to climb up that wasn't too scary. Once we "summited" this block we could see just how much more scrambling there was to even get to the lower east summit of Meeker.

It was just about 10:30, and the weather was behaving as expected, so we decided this was our summit for the day.

On the way back we navigated towards Lookout Mountain. Just before reaching treeline we heard thunder rumbling, and shortly after there was 10 minutes of rain. We managed to pick up a trail once we got into the trees, which was much better than slipping down wet scree.

At the end of the day, we had hiked a bit over 9 miles, gaining 4500' along the way. (See our GPS route for Meeker Ridge.)

Tubing Boulder Creek

Adam and I tubed Boulder Creek today while Laurel made movies of us. It was nice to cool off in the creek -- the temperature was almost 100 today -- but once the clouds came in our teeth were chattering!

The Arapahos

(see pictures)

On Friday, Adam, Nick, Dan and I embarked on a grand adventure known as North and South Arapaho.  Regular readers of the blog may recall that Dan and I attempted this route last September with Dan and Evan, but got only to the summit of South Arapaho due to snow.  Yesterday this was not the case.

We met Nick in Boulder at 5am and drove past Nederland to the 4th of July trailhead.  We began hiking up the Arapaho Pass Trail at 6:15.  It was a moderate and beautiful hike through small waterfalls and tons of wild flowers.  We even saw a whole meadow of columbines.  Pretty!

We reached the Arapaho Glacier Trail in about an hour and a half and switch-backed to the saddle for an hour.  From here, it was a steep class 2 hiking to the summit.  We reached the shelter about 3.5 hours after starting the hike. 

Here the real fun began.  The traverse to North Arapaho was .6-miles and class 3.  In places there was some exposure and the crux was a 4th class slab with two or three rock climbing moves.  We very relieved to reach North's summit after 2 hours on the ridge.  We savored the summit for 20 minutes or so before beginning the long traverse back to South.

Once on South the hard climbing was almost over.  We still had to make our way down the steep class 2 summit cone which took an hour.  From there, it was easy hiking, though a long 3.5 miles, back to the car.  The entire day was 11.25 hours.  Wow.

Adam's Visit

My brother Adam flew in from Florida yesterday morning. Since then, we've had a very busy 30 or so hours. On Wednesday we hiked up Boulder's Green Mountain from Flagstaff via the Ranger Trail. It was a fun 2.5 hour hike.

Today Adam expressed an interest in hiking again. So I picked out a couple of hikes and, of course, he picked the hardest one. We hiked 4.25 miles from Allenspark up to St. Vrain Mountain at 12,162 feet. It was such a beautiful day (aside from the very strong winds) that we decided to hop over to Peak 11,642 and then up to Meadow Mountain at 11,634. It was about 2:00 at that point and the wind was blowing steadily at about 30mph with gusts up to 40mph. Fortunately, the wind wasn't too cold. We got back to the trailhead just about 7 hours after we left. Click here to view all pics.

Mount of the Holy Cross

While Dan was buying and testing out new shoes this weekend, I was hiking just southwest of Vail on Mount of the Holy Cross with Tim and Adam. We drove to the trailhead Saturday afternoon, as it is three and a half hours from Boulder. We set up camp and had a leisurely evening before waking at 4am to tackle this 12-mile, 5600 ft elevation gain giant.

Fortunately, the weather was beautiful and we had a great hike up to the summit. My favorite part was the tons of pikas we saw once we got above the treeline. They're so cute, but unbelievably fast, so getting a picture was very difficult (and proved impossible for me).

We reached the summit after nearly five and a half hours of hiking. Clouds were beginning to form, so we tried to make a quick exit. We scrambled down 1,500 ft of scree and another 1500 ft of trail before making it to the hardest part of the hike--- 900 ft elevation gain after 9 miles of hiking. Just after starting our ascent, we heard nasty thunder fairly close by so we booked it up to Halfmoon Pass and then on the last 1.7 miles to the car. We got a little rained on, but it wasn't too bad. Once we got back in the car and on the road, it was pouring all the way to Vail Pass, so we considered ourselves very lucky.

A great day, a great hike, a beautiful 14er and great company! Click here to see all pics.

South Mesa Trail run

Went for a loooooooooong run in my new shoes today.

• 5.75 miles from N to S, ran in 1:23
• 10 minute break @ S. Mesa TH
• 5.5 miles from S to N, ran/walked in 1:27

Biked home very slowly!


View Mesa trail from NCAR to S. Mesa TH in a larger map

Twin Sisters Run

Ann joined us today for a run up Twin Sisters Peaks. We ran 3.7 miles each way with about 2400' elevation gain. That works out to a 12% grade, so good training for the three of us for the Pikes Peak Ascent -- only 6 weeks away now!

Last time we were on this trail was almost exactly three years ago with Brian Doki (who is now tramping around Alaska).

Royal Arch Run

Today we biked to Chautauqua to run up the Royal Arch trail (via the Chautauqua trail, Ski Jump trail, Bluebell-Baird trail, and 2nd/3rd Flatiron Loop trail). Steep! Probably got up to a 20% grade in sections. Everything was wet and slippery.

Dan ran an extra 2 mile loop from the Bluebell shelter, going down the Enchanted Mesa trail and up the McClintock trail.

We finished in roughly the same time, about an hour and a half. Here's our route.

Adventure Surprise!

Last night I had an idea for a run that would help us train for the Pikes Peak Ascent in August. That race is all uphill so there's not much sense in training on downhills. I worked out a route that would gain 2700' over 4.5 miles -- about the same grade (11%) as the race. All I told Laurel was that we were going on a long uphill surprise run.

This morning we put the bikes on the Xterra and drove up Flagstaff Rd. to the highest trailhead. Then we zipped down the steep hill on bikes, retracing our path. It took us 30 minutes just to get down! I think we only had to pedal once. We locked up the bikes at Eben G. Fine park and started running.

Up the Viewpoint trail to Panorama Point. Up the Flagstaff trail to the summit of Flagstaff Mountain. Down the Ute trail to Realization point. Down the Ranger trail until it started to climb up the valley. Up the rest of the Ranger trail (steep and continuous!) then up Green Mountain's West Ridge trail to the summit. Took us about an hour and a half for that 4.5 mile segment.

We sat on the rocks up top for a while then ran the West Ridge trail 1.3 miles back to the car. This is our route.

Coal Creek Peak

Nick from WTS organized today's hike -- thanks Nick! It started not too early and not too far away -- thanks again! The goal was to scramble up Coal Creek Peak along one ridge and descend another.

We started the day around 8:15 by crawling under a barbed wire fence. Only at the end of the hike did we discover that the fence enclosed a parcel of Jefferson County Open Space. Probably they wanted to make sure the invisible cows didn't escape.

After crawling through another fence or two, crossing some railroad tracks, crossing a meadow and dipping into a valley, we began angling upwards towards the peak. We found a ridge and followed it northwest-ish. The terrain was a mix of live and fallen trees, boulders, rocks, cactus, brush, etc. A few places offered opportunities for some hands-and-feet scrambling -- class 3 stuff.

At one point along the ridge we heard an invisible snake. We made sure to stay away from the area that was rattling. A bit further up, our ridge joined the peak's south ridge. Things looked somewhat familiar to Nick, who had done the hike once before, but there was uncertainty about which way to proceed. We knew to stay away from the steep west side of the ridge. Rich and I scoped out the possibilities and decided a short climb would get the team to a point where we could either continue upward along the east side of the ridge, or retreat into the valley.

We split up around 11:45 am. Nick, Linda, Karen, and Elizabeth headed down the valley. Rich, Laurel, and I continued up the ridge. From there we figured it would take us about an hour to summit. At 12:30 we reached the summit, which was full of butterflies, bees, fleas, and flies. We stopped for lunch and checked out our descent options on the topo.

From the summit we had distant views of Pikes Peak and Longs Peak:

We followed the east ridge as well as we could, but there were places it was easier (and safer) to drop down into the valley. Eventually the valley eased from loose scree to a more vegetated hillside and we were able to wrap up the hike back to the cars. The whole hike was probably under 3 miles but took over 7 hours to complete.

Click a picture to see the whole album. Click here to see the route we took.

Fourteener Friday #2

For today's fourteener, I chose Mount Princeton back in the Sawatch Range in an area called the Collegiate Peaks (go figure). Unfortunately, Ann couldn't make it today so it was just Dan and I.

We started the day at 3am to get to the mountain for a decent start. It took almost three hours to get to the Buena Vista area and the roads to the mountain. With the Xterra, we were able to drive 3 miles up the 4wheel-drive road to start the hike at almost 11,000feet. I drove up the narrow, steep road to a pull-off. Go Laurel!

We started hiking just after 7am, and there were already clouds in the sky. We knew the forecast wasn't stellar, so we wanted to move quickly up the trail. We followed the road on foot for a mile or so and then turned off along the ridge of Tigger's Point (baby mountain on the flanks of Princeton).

There was lots of scree from here to the top, but most of it was pretty big and relatively stable. The entire time we were hiking the circumference of a big bowl and were able to see clouds build throughout the day. They started as whispy little clouds and ended up building into an angry-looking thunderstorm, that luckily kept moving east of us.

We summited before 10:00, had a quick stay and headed right back down. There were a lot of other clouds building so we wanted to get back to the car quickly. Once we got back in the trees we heard thunder from the storm in the east, but we managed to stay dry and safe. It was a short hiking day, as we were at the car around 12:30, but we were happy to head down away from the storms. We drove through Buena Vista and Leadville on the way home.

This was my 14th 14er (25% complete) and Dan's 11th (20% complete). Yay!

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On the way down we saw this on the side of the 4WD road. What is it?

Estes Cone run

Our plan for today was to run part of the Sourdough trail. The segment starts at the CU Alpine Research Center at around 9,000', ends at around 10,100' (if we actually made it all the way to the Brainard Lake area), has a fairly consistent grade, and would be in the shade.

Once we started driving to the trailhead, we realized that would put us right in the neighborhood where a guy with a rifle tied two hikers to a tree a few days earlier. OK, scratch that plan.

Instead we drove up to the Longs Peak trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park and ran up to Estes Cone.

Compared to our planned run, the trail started a little higher (9,400'), ended a lot higher (11,000'), had many ups and downs, some very steep sections at the end where we had to stop running and start hiking, and was almost entirely in the sun.

At least the first 50 minutes was runnable, so we got a good workout in. And then we got to run that part on the way back too.


View Estes Cone in a larger map

B360

We tried to bike this year's B360. Missed a few turns, but we still probably got 20 miles in.

James Peak

We've been to St. Mary's Glacier twice for CMC classes, since there are good snow slopes to practice on. Each time, we looked up the slopes and wondered what's up top. We know James Peak is up there, but never got a glimpse since we stayed low on the slopes.

We decided to hike James Peak, but from the other direction -- starting at the Moffat Tunnel / East Portal trailhead. This trailhead is just 5 miles due north of where we park for St. Mary's, but 45 miles away by car. Starting here instead of St. Mary's meant less driving, but more distance and more vertical gain. And so of course, an earlier start.

By 5:45 am we were hiking up the trail. It was already 50 degrees -- surprising at 9200'! The trail was fairly moderate so we set out at a fast pace. Our goal was to summit and return to treeline by 1pm.

The trail follows the South Boulder Creek to its headwaters. With the high temps, there was a lot of water, and not just in the creek! Parts of the trail had streams running down so our boots got pretty wet and muddy.

Around 10,000' we started to see snow, and not long after that we were spending more time on snow than on dry ground. Most of the snow was pretty soft but we weren't post-holing too bad.

Many of the creek crossings had split-log bridges or stones to hop across, but there was one place we had to cross a snow bridge over the river. The snow was a few feet thick and solid so it wasn't much of a concern.

After 4.5 miles we got to a beautiful meadow and soon after had views of Haystack Mountain, Roger's Peak Lake, and Heart Lake. The trail up to Roger's Pass was wonderful -- for such a popular area, it was nice to be hiking on overgrown singletrack.

From there is was about another mile and another hour hiking up steep switchbacks to the Continental Divide. From the ridgetop we could see the town and ski slopes of Winter Park.

The trail stayed on the west side of the divide, avoiding the steep corniced slopes on the east side. There was one place we had to get out our ice axes -- only 30' of snow to cross, but the way down would have been quite a ride if we slipped without any way to arrest.

Finally we got to the northern slope of James Peak. The trail was fairly well marked but easy to lose where covered in snow. There were no tracks to follow. About halfway up we aimed for a misplaced cairn and ended up off trail for most of the rest of the ascent. We eventually saw another person hiking up the ridge. It looked like he was on a trail, so we aimed for that and had an easier time completing the hike.

We arrived on summit right at 11:00, joining three people who had hiked up from St. Mary's. The clouds weren't looking great so after a snack and a summit photo we turned around pretty quick.

Following the trail on the way down was sooooo much nicer than scrambling on the talus! Only a few drops of rain fell on us as we were hiking down the divide -- somehow we managed to stay dry for the 4 hour hike back down.

At the end of the day, we had hiked almost 15 miles (with 4,000' elevation gain) in about 9.5 hours.

Mesa trail run

Today we headed up to Chautauqua on our bikes shortly after we woke up. It was a gorgeous day to do some trail running. We headed up the Old Kinnikinic Road to the Mesa Trail. Our plan was to run for half and hour and then turn back. We both made it to Bear Creek (Dan was ahead of me by a couple of minutes) and back. Click here to see the route and elevation gain. On the way back home we stopped along Boulder Creek to cool down. We had a competition to see who could keep their feet and ankles in the icy river the longest. I won after 11 seconds. Rushing snow melt is very cold.

Fourteener Friday

Friday was the first meeting of the Fourteener Fridays Club. My friend, Ann, and I decided that we would attempt some fourteeners on Fridays this summer as I'm not working and as a realtor, she would likely have some free time on Fridays. For our first hike, Mount Massive, Dan came along, too.

We met in South Boulder at 4:30am and drove all the way through Leadville to the trailhead. Dan and I were pleasantly surprised by the roads, as we were on them three years when we hiked our very first fourteener, Mount Elbert. However, we kept going on the dirt road past the standard trailheads to try some 4-wheel driving and get to the North Halfmoon Creek parking lot. We saw one other truck there.

The beginning of trail was absolutely beautiful. It meandered through lush forests and a beautiful meadow. We saw a big rabbit and lots of early season wild flowers. After a mile and a half, we left the main trail and headed straight up for almost three miles.

Though the trail was very well built and maintained, it was steep and large portions were hidden under huge snowfields. Several times we got out the axes and kick-stepped up the slopes. Amazingly, we managed to keep finding the trail and followed up to the very, very long summit ridge.

Mount Massive has many small peaks along this huge ridge that are all above 14,000 (Massive ranks second highest in the state at 14,421 ft). Once we climbed one small peak, there was always another, higher one further along the ridge. We FINALLY reached the true summit at 1:30 and had a leisurely lunch as there was not a cloud in the sky.

On the way down we were determined to speed up our descent by doing some glissading down the large snowfields. After sliding down the summit ridge, we hiked over a saddle to a very steep, rockslide slope. We were actually planting our axes into the loose dirt and scree to safely walk/slide down it. We were able to glissade down several more snowfields before meeting back up with the trail back to the car.

I think Massive is probably the prettiest fourteener we've hiked, but it was also very long and steep. It took us 5:45 to travel 4 miles and ascend 4,000 ft and 3:45 to get back to the car. This coupled with a 6-hour round trip drive, made for a very, very long day.

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From the summit we had great views of the Tenmile and Mosquito Ranges. We could even see Pikes Peak! When we got home Dan identified and labeled the peaks. Use the scrollbar below to view the entire panorama, or click for a larger view:

Intermediate snow, part 2

The second field trip for the Intermediate Snow class was crampon practice in Rocky Mountain National Park. Laurel didn't make this trip since she had a pretty bad spill on her bike earlier in the week and sprained her shoulder.

To get some good hard snow on steeper slopes, we needed an early start. At 2:50am my alarm woke me up. I picked up a few other CMC'ers in Lyons at 4am then met the rest of the class at the Bear Lake trailhead at 5am. It was raining lightly but soon turned to snow as we gained elevation. We hiked to some steep slopes near Lake Helene, arriving there before 8am.

Despite the early start, the snow was not great for crampon practice, as there was 5 inches of new soft snow on top. We practiced the techniques, but unfortunately the conditions didn't always warrant those techniques. Still, it was great practice and a great experience. At the end of the day we glissaded back down the slopes and hiked back to the car. We made it to Oscar Blues in Lyons around 1:30 for lunch.

See pictures someone else took that day.

Intermediate snow

We got up not-so-bright and early Sunday morning to meet for a field trip with the CMC Intermediate Snow School. At St. Mary's Glacier we practiced building anchors in the snow using natural features, pickets, flukes, and ice axes -- standard snow climbing tools. We learned how to do hip belays from bucket seats, boot-axe belays, and a few other techniques. We also practiced traveling in rope teams and setting protection up a steep snow slope. Both of us got a turn leading our rope teams. It was fun and we met a lot of nice people. After 8 hours on the snow we unwound at Tommy Knockers in Idaho Springs.

Yay Summer!

Dan slept in a bit today, so I wen for a nice run before we headed to Chautauqua for some climbing. At lunch time we were standing at the base of The Hammerhead, a rock that Gerry Roach calls classic despite its easy rating.

I led (yes, me!) the first two pitches of the climb. I was slow, but I protected the route well, even on the 50 foot long arch in the middle of the route.

Dan led the next half pitch to the the back of the rock and then led up behind the summit block to the top. The summit was huge and flat (hence "Hammerhead") and we hung out for a while.

Great views of the Fourth Flatiron from this summit:

Fields of wildflowers on the hike back: