Fast Times on Longs Peak

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

I would have posted this sooner, but things have been busy. I’ve also been dealing with the loss of a friend, who died while skiing alone in RMNP this past weekend.

Last Friday night, I went to bed extremely early, planning to get up around 11pm. Instead, I was up at 9pm, unable to sleep any longer. I was getting ready for my annual Longs hike, with a much larger group than normal this time – Nate, Matt, Hans, Ryan, Alan, and myself. We all met up and drove to the trailhead, getting started on the hike shortly after 1:30am.

It was incredibly foggy down low, and the six of us had red headlamps, making for a fairly creepy train of hikers in the night. After our break at the bottom of the Boulder Field, we essentially broke in to two groups, the lead group being Nate, Matt, and myself. I started to slow in the Trough, while Nate and Matt, well-recovered but still trained from their race in May, powered on ahead. The four of us (I ran in to a guy named Caleb and we hiked up the rest of the way together) topped out about 5:30am, a good 15 minutes before sunrise.

It really was beautiful up there – moreso than usual, due to the undercast. Continue reading →

Ten bucks and half an hour

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

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That’s all is takes to get some vertical bike storage in your home. I’ve been aggravated and annoyed by errant bikes around the house, and finally dealt with it. All I needed was a stud (less than three bucks), some bike hooks (less than a dollar a piece) and some deck screws, and the problem is solved. Don’t forget the pilot holes. Now if only I had more wall space!

Two Weeks in Alaska

~ Mike ~ 2 Comments

This trip was a long time coming. Though discussions started last autumn, things were cemented on this fateful night when Hans convinced me to join him (Lauren assisted) on a 12-day mountaineering course with AMS. Six months (and a plane ride, and 6 hours in the Ted Stevens International Airport and a 3-hour shuttle) later, we were dropped off at the Talkeetna Hostel, where we would be spending a night before flying out to the Pika glacier.

After dropping off our stuff, Hans and I struck out to check out the town (he’d been here before, I hadn’t).

Continue reading →

Nice, Quiet Morning Rides

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago, I decided I wanted to get up and go for a bike ride this morning, before things warmed up too much. I just got back a short bit ago after riding around the reservoir (in fact, breakfast is still cooking!). I took the camera because it was just going to be a leisurely ride, and…well, I like taking photographs. This route is one of my favorites; it’s about 25 miles round-trip from home around the Cherry Creek reservoir, and mostly in very bicycle-friendly areas.

With a target start-time of 7am, we were out the door just before 7:40, and enjoyed a quiet approach to the trail.

It was a perfect morning for a ride, as it was a little overcast and stayed cool the entire time. Continue reading →

Summer’s Here!

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, mostly because “real life” has been particularly busy. The skis are hung up for the year (and actually have been since closing day at Loveland), and I’m riding bikes a ton, even though I’m down to only two bikes (from five), though I expect that to go up again. Got out for a little dawn patrol on Friday with Hans before it got too hot. Yay summer!

A Long Day on Ellingwood and Blanca

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

After Culebra last Saturday, I thought the misery would be over for a while. It’s turning into spring, I thought. No more bitterly cold, painfully long, 11+ hour days for a while, I thought. We’ll have good, stable, easy to climb snow, I thought. And then this past Saturday happened. After driving for a few hours to the Lake Como road, and an hour of 4-wheeling (which included cutting branches and shoveling snow-drifts that were obstructing the road), we arrived at 10,100′ for a luxurious three and a half hours of sleep, my spot being the front passenger seat. It was not warm, and I was only able to be comfortably warm by wearing a puffy on top of my other clothes inside my 15 degree bag.

The 3:30 wake-up call was not a pleasant one. It was so cold that I abandoned my oatmeal plan, and just shoveled down a PB&J that I didn’t eat for dinner, and downed a bottled Starbucks thing that I grabbed at a gas station the night before. As tends to be the case, getting started in the morning was slow, and an hour later we were walking up the rocky road towards Lake Como.

Another hour and a half later, it was still bitterly cold, although it was finally starting to get light out. Shortly after crossing the lake, we saw a group of five or six approaching for Little Bear.

As seemed to be the case with everything this day, we took an approach line that, while beautiful, was certainly “interesting.” Continue reading →

Ski Culebra

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

This trip got started a couple weeks ago when I got an urgent email from Carl about a date set for a climb of Culebra in a couple weeks; with spots likely to fill fast, I jumped on it. I’m glad that I did, because all 20 spots filled in about four hours. For those of you not familiar with Culebra, it’s the only 14er that’s entirely on private property. During the summer it’s possible to get on the mountain more often than not for a $100 fee, and certainly on weekends. Winter and spring availability is much more limited, and in the past has had a climbing fee of $200-250; this time it was only $100. The original plan was to ski the North Face, assuming good weather. Unfortunately the weather was not good (as seems to be the case with most Culebra ski descents), but we certainly got our $100 worth of adventure. Keep in mind when you’re reading this that most of these photos have been enhanced to de-fog them and make people a bit more visible.

A major spring storm rolled in to Colorado late last week, bringing with it lots of snow. People in their right minds were enjoying an amazing powder day. Nine of us decided to take our shot and chance the weather. Besides, the forecast was for the storm to ease up and clear out by about 2pm, we would just have to fight our way through it most of the day. A few days ago things were dry pretty much to the summer trailhead, which would mean a 7 mile round-trip day with about 3,200′ of vertical. Things changed a bit, so we had a 14 mile day with roughly 5,000′ of vertical. I’d like to think Carl was saying something like “we have to go how far?” in this photo.

Continue reading →