Future Projects: Tenmile/Mosquito Range Traverse + Sangre de Cristo Range Traverse

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Sometimes it’s seems that it’s hard to follow up something like the Tour of the Highest Hundred with the next project. It took years to get myself physically and mentally ready to take something like that on – save nothing for the financial burden of taking so much time off work and the burden of that food bill!

Still, in the heartbeat, I’d do it all again. But the world is a big place, and there’s so many fun and challenging things to do – even so close to where I live. I don’t necessarily like to repeat myself, but I do like to progress in what it is I do, and in doing so: explore different facets of the talents I’ve taken a life to develop.

Anyways, the future! What’s on my mind to do this summer (or next)? Here’s two projects I’d like to try (more coming, later…)

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Fastpacks From Hell: Capitol/Snowmass/Hagerman

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Stats (approx.):

  • 36.5 miles
  • 12,815’

Starting Date:

  • 9/2/17

Total time:

  • 2 days, 11min

Three Centennials Summited:

  • Capitol Peak
  • Snowmass Mountain
  • Hagerman Peak

After cruising through the Sawatch, I had to once again cross west over the Continental Divide – this time with an unruly bear canister in tow, to dash off the Elk Range.

Hagerman Pass

Hagerman Pass

A fairly stout portion of the tour was awaiting me, featuring some interesting climbing, some fairly loose and dangerous routes, and some unknowns for me with Hagerman, Cathedral, and Thunder Pyramid.

Timing wasn’t very good. It was coming up on Labor Day weekend. I certainly didn’t want to visit the Maroon Bells at that time – an already busy area would be a mad house (lots of people = lots of potential rockfall), so I opted to take the range in a strange order: first Capitol, Snowmass, and Hagerman in the west, then Cathedral, Castle, and Conundrum at the east side of the range; and finally the Bells and Pyramids right in the middle.

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Dispatch Radio Podcast: FKTs, OKTs and WTFs with Cat Bradley, Darcy Piceu, “The Long Ranger” Justin Simoni and Bryan Williams

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Thanks to Dispatch Radio for having me on among so much talent and stoke. Listen here, or below:

 

We packed The Studio (Boulder) Airstream with a grip-load of talent to dive into the topic of fastest known times (FKTs). We talk with four athletes who set new records in 2017: Cat Bradley, Darcy Piceu, “The Long Ranger” Justin Simoni and Bryan Williams. Two legends of Boulder joined us to guide the conversation: Buzz Burrell of Ultimate Direction and Peter Pakwin (both of whom hold their own claims to fame, from speed records of the Flatirons in Boulder to running the double-Hardrock). The attention tonight is on the 2017 speedsters. In this episode, we meet Cat’s beloved puppy, Surely, and learn about her years-long quest to notch a Grand Canyon FKT. We laugh as Darcy tries to convince us she was out there having fun and chatting up all sorts of strangers as she cut 12 whole hours off of the women’s FKT for the John Muir Trail. We learn the depths of suffering that “Long Ranger” Simoni is willing to endure. And we learn from Bryan what adjustments are made when one’s running partner drops midway through a pursuit due to injury. Strap in for a fun and inspiring conversation!

Special appearance by producer Nick Mott talking about a recent story he did for the new Alpinist podcast, a co-collaboration with Dispatch Radio and Alpinist Magazine.

Fastpacks from Hell: The San Luis Trifecta

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Stats (approx.):

  • 32 miles
  • 10,000’+ elevation

Total time:

  • 1 day, 2hr, 30min

Three Centennials Summited:

  • “Phoenix Peak”
  • San Luis
  • Stewart Peak

I questioned framing this leg of my Tour of the Highest Hundred as a, “Fastpack from Hell”, as the numbers really don’t compare to the Crestones, Sierra Blanca – let alone the mighty Weminuche. A motivated person, starting early with fine weather, could potentially do this course between sunrise and sundown. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my situation, when I left my bike far above Creede, CO in the summer of 2017.

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Fastpacks From Hell: The Weminuche Throwdown

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Stats (approx.):

  • 81.4 Miles
  • 34,847’+ elevation

Total time:

  • 5 days, 1hr, 44min

Nine Centennials Summited:

  • Pigeon Peak
  • Turret Peak
  • Jupiter Mountain
  • Windom Peak
  • Sunlight Peak
  • North Eolus
  • Mount Eolus
  • Jagged Mountain
  • Vestal Peak

The Weminuche. This was the make-or-break section of my tour. A large project within an enormous project. Lots of terrain to cover, lots of mountains to top. Technical scrambling in a desolate setting. For example, Jagged Mountain’s easiest route rated at 5.2 is one of the technical cruxes of the whole trip and is located more than a dozen miles from any trailhead. Jagged is also one of the more remote peaks in the Highest Hundred itinerary. I also planned to take Vestal’s Wham Ridge (5.4) to summit, rather than the easiest, if much looser, Southeast Couloir. I would have to descend the Southeast Couloir anyways, but Wham Ridge seemed too incredible to pass off in the name of speed.

Let’s talk logistics of even getting in there. There are nine peaks of the the Weminuche (sans the isolated Rio Grande Pyramid, which I did in a separate trip). First the good news. Five of the them: Jupiter, Windom, Sunlight, North Eolus, and Eolus are clumped into one area, easily accessible from each other in the quite popular (for Weminuche standards) Chicago Basin.

Now the bad: Turret/Pigeon, Jagged Mountain, and Vestal Peak are spaced quite far away from each other, separated by gnarly mountain passes, with no trail connecting them together.

Further complicating matters is the weather: it can be terrible, especially in the monsoon season, which is when I inevitably hit the area. With the trip being a multi-day affair and my goal of moving quickly, I could only afford bringing just so much food in my 35 liter pack, which limits how long I can stay out for. Margin of error is low, or I would face the problem of needing to go back into town to resupply, and making yet another unplanned backpack approach in, which I imagine would feel completely demoralizing for someone like me going for clock time.

For Seekers of the Self-Powered Way, there are only a few access points that make sense to gain these summits. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad is often used to cut down time/distance to access many of these peaks. For me, that would be of course: off the table.

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FKT of the Year Awards 2018, Why the Tour of the Highest Hundred is so Weird (and why that’s so awesome)

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Blanca Peak, after traversing directly from Little Bear Peak (in the background), Tour of the Highest Hundred , 2017

The 2018 FKTOFTY Awards have been announced. I’ve very thankful that the Tour of the Highest Hundred was selected in the lineup! Although, it didn’t “win”, I really had no reason to think I would! I’m actually a little confused how different FKT attempts can even be compared to each other, but if all we want to do is celebrate FKT projects in general, I think that’s a worthwhile reason to make such lists.

But if I hope that the Tour of the Highest Hundred would win something like a popularity contest… forget it. It’s too long, too hard, too weird, and too obscure to ever become the type of, “Destination FKT” something like the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim or the John Muir Trail are quickly becoming. And that’s totally fine with me. A litmus test is this: try to visualize exact what teh Highest Hundred challenge would entail. Kinda hard, right? What do you focus on? The distance, the peaks themselves, the elevation gain, the route? It’s a complex mother.

But, there’s a lot of reasons I think going for the Colorado Centennials by bike and by foot self-supported makes a totally life-changing challenge, even if you don’t make it your own FKT.

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1/8/18 – 1/14/18 Training Journal

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The theme of this week was, “Am I getting sick? I’m getting sick. No, not quite sick, maybe tomorrow?! Tomorrow I’ll be sick?!” Thus, it was an easy-ish load of training. Trying not to overdo it, as everyone around me seems to be inflicted with the plague.

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The First Ever Longs Peak Self-Powered Duathlon

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Before I completed my first self-powered Longs Peak Duathlon (after a few failures) from Arvada, I knew of only a few others I was certain had made the trip: Bill Wright, The Briggs Brothers, Stefan Griebel. I never thought about who the first people to complete the feat were – perhaps the names were lost in mountaineering history?

That’s until I started reading Paul Nesbit’s, Longs Peak: It’s Story and a Climbing Guide mentioned:

1977: Cleve McCarty of Boulder and his 12-year-old son Eric bicycled to the trailhead, climbed the Kieners route on the East Face […] went down the North Face and biked home, all in one day.

Not bad! Cleve McCarty is fairly well-known in Colorado Mountaineering lore, and that makes it all the stranger that I never heard about this adventure of his. As well as this long day, Cleve once held the FKT for completing the Colorado 14ers: 54 14ers in 54 days (or was it 52 peaks in 52?) back in 1959. He’s also the co-author of High Over Boulder, with Pat Ament.

What’s also amazing is that Eric McCarty repeated the trip with his own 12-year old son, 32 years later!

And of course, Eric is still around, in Boulder, and works a few blocks from where I work. Small place, this world.