For my housemate’s birthday, we did the Flatiron Quinfecta – a local scrambling challenge to climb the five number flatirons in a day. My housemate has really only scrambled for a limited amount of time, and I was most impressed of his fortitude in successfully completing the task. Happy birthday, dude!
Summit County! I’ll be talking at Wilderness Sports in Dillon, CO on August 29th, 6:00 to 9:00pm! Do come! I’ll have loot to raffle off from Ultimate Directiojn and La Sportiva, and tons of stories to share! RSVP here.
Update: here’s coverage of the presentation by the local paper, The Summit Daily. Front page story!
Last Thursday, I thought a righteous challenge would be to see how many laps on the Second Flatiron’s “Freeway” route I could do, before my arms fell off.
After 16 hours, I had accumulated 40 laps! 20 up, and 20 down, done in succession with little rest in between. A fantastic day of moving meditation after weeks of preparation on the route searching for the most efficient route to climb. 16 hours of staying in the same 900 foot rib of rock, netting 11 miles, gaining/losing 10,600 feet of elevation. Such an intense concentration of expressing various mountain disciplines in a familiar setting just a few miles from the house.
Earlier this month, I sat down with Like a Bigfoot and talked bikes, mountains, and all points in-between. Have a listen!
With another run of the Tour Divide this year, I’m reminded again of this awesome cross-country route and the many great memories I have on it.
The last time I was riding on the GDMBR was on my Tour of the Highest Hundred, where I rode up Marshall Pass after riding the 100 miles from Lake City to summit my first Sawatch of the trip: Mount Ouray.
The route itself was excellent, and provided a relatively quiet and mostly dirt route linking two disparate mountain ranges. The GDMBR barely gets into the San Juans, which is a real shame, as the San Juans are truly one of the crown jewels of Colorado. I’ll explain the route from Salida to Lake City, as this is where you’ll get on it via the GDMBR, then detour off towards Lake City. Once at Lake City, you’ll have to make a choice of where to go, as detouring back to the GDMBR is a trip in of itself and is also, sadly, all on pavement.
Here we go:
My long-form trip report of my Mosquito-Tenmile Traverse is up on the Ultimate Direction blog. Grab a coffee and have a read:
Knowing When To Just Go For It: The Mosquito-Tenmile Range Traverse
The Mosquito/Tenmile range in Colorado runs south to north between Buena Vista and Frisco, CO. Inspired by Peter Bakwin’s nearly futuristic vision and attempts to traverse the entire ridgeline from Weston Pass (outside of Leadville, CO) to the Mount Royal trailhead, I awoke early Saturday morning from my bivy underneath a tree at Trout Creek Pass, 30+ miles to the south to start on, “The Line”.
The Complete Mosquito/Tenmile Range Traverse is almost completely off trail, with terrain covering everything from shifting talus to crumbling spires, hours of Class 3/4/5 scrambling, twenty-seven contiguous miles above 13,000′, and dozens of separate peaks – named and unnamed. It’s hard to even fathom, let alone describe succinctly.
I was (irrationally?) determined to first cover the *additional* mileage to Weston Pass from the true southern terminus of the range, then continue on to Frisco. I knew realistically I had little chance of completing. From my research, no one has even tried this traverse from Trout Creek, and only one documented traverse from Weston had ever been completed by Jeff Rome in ~2012. I’m no Bakwin, nor Rome.
What chance did I have? Why should I even try? Well – what did I have to lose? With little prep. (I lied to myself – spinning a yarn that this was a scouting mission to myself – to friends…), and bringing along food I thought would last for three days, I set off on terrain that I was completely unfamiliar with to see what lay ahead.
91 hours, 87 miles, and 30,000’+ of elevation gain later – completely unsupported/unaided and carrying everything I needed except water, I had run out of mountain range to *range*, and was at the northern terminus. The Mosquito/Tenmile was traversed!
And I was myself shattered to pieces. It had taken everything I had to keep it together, to make it through without incident, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other in moving (and stumbling, and falling – often) meditation. But, “The Line” had been traced as best I could have hoped for, given what little talent I really have.
As with every challenge in life: mandatory – or I guess recreational (for those so privileged to have the resources for the latter), the act of transcending your perceived weaknesses against imposing odds… then finding the other side leaves you perhaps in that self-awareness state of serenity for just a second. Then life begins again – the Earth never did stop revolving – maybe you just stopped thinking so much?
I have much more to write, share, and teach about my experiences this past weekend (and all those other days/months/years I’ve found myself doing silly things in the Wilderness), but that’s itself its own separate, much larger project, for which I’ll spend much of my life practicing. Thank you to everyone that has helped me with this and my other misadventures. Sometimes, I’m chanced with Awesome things coming together. Find a line out there – real or imaginary, and fill it in with your own experience.
I took my buddy Nolan up his first 14er, and he made this video of our trip. Enjoy!
I’ve found the Garmin eTrex Touch pretty useful on my long distance trips, and I love the touch interface, but the unit is a real pain to use in the rain, even if I’m not interacting with it. I’ve found that the unit will think I’m tapping the screen to navigate through things like menus and settings, when I’m really not – the unit is just being jostled in my pack.
This video goes over a few simple steps to mitigate this problem.