This past Saturday Anna-Lisa, Jax, and I made the morning drive down 25 and across to the Lily Lakes TH. Our objective – 13,081 ft “Huerfanito”, a small and often overlooked peak that resides smack in the middle of the dramatic high summits of the Sierra Blanca. “Huerfanito” was the only peak above 13k in the area that I had yet to summit, which was fitting as the word huerfanito translates to “little orphan” in English. Read more…
In mid-October I ran in the 3rd annual Indian Creek Fifties 55k, the final race of the year in the Human Potential Running Series and a big goal of mine for the summer.
As anyone reading this probably knows, Colorado plays host to several dozen trail “ultras”, a few of which can take a couple tries to secure a spot in (the San Juan Solstice comes to mind). Dabbling in the sport more and more has only increased my interest in potentially trying a few of these events at some point in time. And like anything in life that’s hard, the best way to work towards a seemingly impossible goal is to break it up into many smaller, more manageable goals. Well, along those lines, there was no better time than this summer to start thinking about signing up for a 50k race. Keep reading…
With one of the nicest high pressure systems of the summer hanging over Colorado, Brian and I decided to take a day off work and head south for a leisure hike up a duo of peaks that had eluded us earlier in the year. Spread Eagle Peak (13,423 ft) sits in the middle of the range just north of Hermit Pass and bicentennial Rito Alto Peak. It’s immediate neighbor to the southwest, UN 13,524 (aka Peak of the Clouds), combines nicely with a climb of Spread Eagle via a short, mellow ridge. Read more…
Good friends are indispensable in this life: both necessity and luxury. I knew Ryan was extremely busy this year with both wedding plans and a trip to Peru, so I’d assumed a prior talk about him repeating Lizard Head to lead me up was not in the cards. But when I omitted Lizard Head in my list of summer plans at the engagement party for him and Steph, he prodded: “Not interested in the gecko, anymore?” or something along those lines. Read more…