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….
Between spring skiing, the summer race season and spending a lot more time on the mountain bike this year, I had somehow not hit a single new thirteener dating all the way back to October of last year. So now being into late-August it was time to finally get down to the San Juans and hike a few peaks. As Steve needed to be in Durango the following evening, I drove down and met him for dinner in Ridgway before we motored over to the Thistledown Campground above Ouray. Keep reading…
Late-June in Colorado. With the spring snowpack all but melted out, green landscapes blanketing much of the state, and our days just barely starting to get shorter again, it was time to head down to Lake City for another run at the San Juan Solstice 50 this past Saturday. The SJS is about as time-honored a race as you’ll find in Colorado. This was the event’s 24th year and I’ve now been fortunate enough to participate the last four times it’s been held. Keep reading…
