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….
I felt the urge to write this trip report for two reasons. First, because the southwest ridge up Ellingwood is a very cool route. But we don’t really have any documentation of it on the site. So, this felt like a good chance to highlight its many enticing features. And second, because the Lake Como road is NOT a cool route. And in spite of how much documentation exists in the world about how much it sucks, I still feel the need to remind everyone of what a nightmare that road still is.
Read more…
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…
It’s no secret that this winter has been a great one in Colorado and is currently showing no signs of slowing down as we are now into April and it just keeps on snowing. The statewide snowpack sits at 139% of average as of April 3rd with the graph trending almost identically to the historic season of 2019. It’s the type of year that has one wondering just how long we’ll be skiing for given the snow totals to date. Read more…