Awesome day

Last Saturday I had the most fun I have had in a very long time. I woke up early and headed to the famous Gore canyon on the Colorado for some good class V boating. Gore is basically Colorado's only late season class V and attracts boaters from all over the state. Dana and some friends drove up from Durango for the fun. We had one raft of 6 and about a dozen kayakers along for the fun. The crux of the run is definitely the 3 mile flatwater paddle into the canyon, but once that was out of the way the fun began in earnest with half a dozen quality drops. One of the kayakers, Maria, proved herself to be quite hard when she broke her finger in one of the first class Vs. She didn't swim, just flipped and mashed her finger on a rock. Once she rolled up she realized that another boater (not with our group) was swimming and helped him to shore. Afer the rescue effort Maria gritted her teeth, buddy taped her finger, and paddled the other burl. I was impressed.

After some beers at the take-out, consumed from booties for some, I hit the road to meet up with Mel at Red Rocks. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Red Rocks is one of those super famous venues that artists love. This often means a great performance. Couple that with the fact that we were there to see The Flaming Lips and I knew we were in for an incredible evening. It turns out that I was right. It was everything I expected and way more. Definitely the coolest show ever. Very visually stimulating and they played a great set. For those of you unfamiliar with the music of The Flaming Lips, I have included a song.

Pikes Peak Marathon

A while back Josh suggested an interesting adventure and I readily agreed, mostly because it sounded like a fair bit of suffering would be involved. Josh's proposal was to hike/run the Barr trail (7,000+ ft. of vertical in 13 miles - one way) to the summit of Pikes Peak. The trail was actually quite beautiful and made for a good day out.

My prediction of suffering was fairly accurate. I am accustomed to early starts of the three to four AM variety, but 1:30, that's pushing it. I developed a cool new technique for sleeping while hiking. I call it "sleepwalking." Once I woke up my body performed fairly well until the next day when it refused to move. Maybe I am getting old or maybe I am out of shape, but I can't remember the last time I was this sore. Josh is largely unaffected by the effort and seems to be quite amused by my robot-esque shuffling about the house.

The highlight for me definitely came on the descent when we decided to run the first six miles back to the car. We randomly picked the same day for our outing as the Pikes Peak Challenge, which only ascends the peak. Not only was running down the trail really fun, everyone coming up thought Josh and I were really hardcore for running back down.

Jeepers Creepers

View from the summit of Little Bear. On the right is Blanca and the left is Ellingwood. We traversed all the ridges connecting the peaks and the shadow delineated ridge descending left from Ellingwood.

Three day weekends are great! This time all the roomies plus a random guy, that I think Josh works with, headed down to the Sangre de Cristo range for some backpacking and peak bagging. The backpacking was less than spectacular. The valley we hiked into was beautiful, but we hiked in along "the toughest 4WD road in Colorado." The jeepers really weren't very annoying, but their presence definitely detracted from the wilderness feel of the place. The road/trail into the valley was heinous to hike because of all the boulders strewn about and I kept finding myself thinking, "I can't believe that people drive up this." Not the greatest hiking thought. We did get free cookies though.


Ridge leading up to Blanca.

Climbing on Saturday made the weekend. Josh and I headed out early to climb three fourteeners in a day. A nice class IV route lead to the top of Little Bear. Then we followed a mile long knife edge ridge to the top of Blanca, where we met Ashley and Ryan (the random guy). Ryan joined us for Ellingwood and the descent down the equally precipitous SW ridge back to camp. Meanwhile Mel had a nice ride with some friendly jeepers and hung out with her dog. Back at camp we enjoyed the numerous bottles of wine and beers we had slogged up to camp.


Little Bear Peak with Crater Lake in the foreground.