Friday 21 August 2015

Colorado 2015 Begins

Well here I am again in the amazing CO. I landed on Sunday evening and first thing Monday morning I was up and out the door sharp to head for Longs Peak(4300m) I ran Longs last year (almost to the day) so I was interested to see just how my time up and down compared against last year when I was properly acclimatized. Last year I managed car to car in 4hrs 11mins and was delighted with it however this year I managed it in 3hrs 44mins! I felt pretty damn dizzy on the last couple hundred metres to the top but whereas last year I really slowed on the descent this year I flew back down felling really good. I was not expecting to be faster and not by this much so It was kind of a shock to see that time on my watch when I got back to the Rangers Station. It is around a 26km run with 1600m of climbing and descending with the upper section being a little easy scramble and a short exposed traverse.
Back on the summit of Longs
The following day was a 16km 1200m outing with Kim , Will and Phil up Rosalie Peak which sits at just under 14'000ft. I then headed off on my own up to the high country and after a nights sleep in the car I headed for La Plata peak via Ellingwood Ridge. It was last year driving over Independence Pass I noticed an awesome ridge line going all the way up to this peak and knew I had to return to get it done. It's a rather long day of around 21km with 1500m of ascent. The route starts off on the normal trail to the summit and then quickly veers off into trail less terrain up through dense forest. Once out of the treeline it was a long slog up a huge boulder/scree field to hit the start of the ridge. The ridge is about 5km long and consists of a ton of easy/moderate scrambling , incredible little narrow ridge spines to run and some sketchy down climbing. I tried to stick as true to the crest for as long as possible but a couple of times had to back track as the ridge would cliff out to an abseil point and not having a rope I had to find other ways around but it never posed any major problems at all. It continues like this for a while and once the main ridge was over it was again a bit of a slog up more scree to the summit at 4377m. The descent via the tourists path was fast and a lot of fun on beautiful smooth trails all the way to the car. The round trip took me 4hrs 35mins. Guidebook time allows 9-12hrs so I was rather pleased with this time but in all fairness guidebook times are based on walking and not running although I am sure now I have knowledge of the ridge I could get it under 4hrs next time.
Yup , up that!
Then along this!
Looking back along Ellingwood Ridge
I was up again early the next day(Thursday) and decided on a shorter morning so I headed off for the normal route up Colorados highest peak Mt Elbert(4420m) I ran Elbert last year on the longer south ridge but with Leadville pacing duties this weekend I decided to have a shorter outing. The trail is super easy to follow and is never technical at all so I managed to run most of this except from maybe the last 300m up as the altitude is still pretty difficult on the lungs right now. So another 13km with 1400m in a time of 2hrs 22mins.
Summit of La Plata looking back to the ridge
Mt Elbert summit
So far so good and I am pretty damn happy with how I am moving at these altitudes and I have not even been here a week . Once over 4000m I am still feeling it a little hard going but I should be feeling it easier in a week. I am now in Leadville and tomorrow I pace Stephen for 10 miles over Hope Pass and Kim for the last 25 miles on the Leadville 100 course. It's great to be back here now for the third year and to meet friends and enjoying crewing and helping out at a race that still means a lot to me.

Rosalie Peak with Kim
After the race I head down to the San Juans for about a week to explore my favourite place here in CO. There is an abundance  of ridges I want to do down there and I would like to run a small section of the Hardrock course but I just will not have time to do everything I want although I cannot wait to get down there.

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