For about a decade now Anna-Lisa and I have been slowly ticking off each of the main four Hawaiian islands together. To us, Hawaii is the perfect place for a tropical getaway as relaxation and beach time are very much a priority, but unlike many other beach destinations, there are also active things to do. Thanks to Hawaii’s mountainous inland terrain, each island boasts anywhere from dozens to literally hundreds of hiking trails and trail running opportunities. We’ve done our best to explore them over the years, with Oahu being the last island we’d yet to visit. Read more…
Almost 20 years ago I took a family vacation to the Big Island. I love my memories from that trip. The Big Island is a very, very unique place. Between its scale, oceans, beaches, resorts, rainforests, culture, history, mountains, and active volcanoes, it has almost everything you could ever want in terms of both relaxation and adventures. I had always wanted to go back.
The chance came early this year thanks to some killer direct flight deals from Denver to Kona. The prospect of a week away sans children (something that’s literally never happened since we had kids) in Hawaii sounded pretty dang great to Katie and I. At the top of the adventure list was a trek up Mauna Kea. There is a lot to love about this remarkable mountain. Keep Reading…
As silly as it may sound, one of my primary motivators for recently completing The 2024 Arizona Ironman was to see how it compared to a 100 mile ultramarathon. I had seen some discussion about this in various endurance communities online, but I was very curious to glean an understanding for myself. My hypothesis was that a 100 miler would be the bigger feat, but there was no way to know how it compared until I had completed both events for myself. In 2022 I ran The Bear 100 in Utah & Idaho. Now that I’ve added the Arizona race to my resume, I figure this would be a fun chance to compare and contrast the two events against one another. The results were a bit surprising. Keep Reading…
For several summers now I’ve headed over to the Elks and pieced together a big wilderness loop of some kind. I’ve always felt if you’re gonna spend all day on your feet whether it’s for training purposes or not, you might as well look for something unique in a cool area to make things more interesting. With its vast network of trails, there are lots of options for these kinds of big days in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. So I decided to check out another loop in the Capitol Peak area of the northern-Elks which had long been on my wish list.
This one is a tad on the obscure side in that I haven’t noticed too many people mention it or run it over the years. One or two trip reports from over a decade ago can be found online, but generally speaking, this linkup doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as some of its more popular siblings (Four Pass, Three Pass, etc). The route goes like this… start at the Capitol Creek TH and follow the ditch trail up to Capitol Lake. Continue up and over the pass north of Capitol Peak… Read more…
