Weekend Wrap

Well, it's been a good bachelor week and it has come to an end. I miss my family, and am glad to have them back tonight. My weekend was essentially living here:


Camp at 11,300' somewhere on the east side of Mt. Princeton.

The quick and dirty is this:

Friday after work Gunner and I drove to Manitou to hang with Ives and get ready for Pikes on Saturday. Getting ready meant beer and food at Trinity. Mmmm.

Pikes went well, we took it easy and made the others wait for us at the summit. You see, my friend Keith was dumb enough to blindly accept anything we had planned for the weekend. Don't bother telling us that he'd previously never run further than 10 miles and those miles being flat. Pikes marathon route? Sounds good to me. He did great, a bit of heat on the descent made a bit of a drag last 4 but we made it through. I even got to add a bit of bonus km's and vert in search of water.

Refuel with Pizza/beer/creeking. Drive to Princeton, set up camp, food.

Day 1 in the books.

We woke up Sunday morning, ran down to the base of the hill to meet Jaime and then proceeded up Mt. Princeton. The legs were ok, but sluggish and the technical last 2 miles or so were a grinder and somewhat hard to find the trail but we made it. It was crazy warm on the summit and the views were priceless. Tagged Tiger on the way back down, again struggling to find any resemblance of a "trail" but made it back to the dirt road and down to camp without issue. Great day on the hill, and nice to spend some time with my pacer from Twin to Fish.

Refuel with turkey and cheese sammies/beer.

Ventured down to town and forgot to get what we actually needed. We were having too much fun.

Day 2 in the books.

Wake up for what Gunner and Ives had deemed "beach day" and packed up camp to drive to Leadville. On the way down the hill we (and by we I mean I) may or may not have nearly driven off the side of the mountain, but team gunderson and the sergeant successfully "maneuvered" the 4runner back to safety via superhuman strength. Anyway, it was a blip on the radar and we grabbed our coffee and headed to Fish. Boys dropped me at Fish where I ran up over powerline (7 false summits if you're counting) around and down to CR4 then back to Tabor. Felt sluggish on the first two steep pitches of powerline, but as the grade eased I got stronger and ran everything from the top of the second pitch. Took it mellow down the dirt road, then got to feeling great coming around the CT and picked it up, from Mayqueen to Tabor I was hauling ass, bogged down a bit to CR4 then picked it up again back to the boys who were enjoying a nice start to "beach day". After a soak, we headed back home.

Refuel in BV with a cheese steak/sweet potato tots.

Home.

Lots of good times out there with old friends. Probably too many inside jokes and things that need not be repeated to others. What a memorable and great trip. Remember 4X4 roads mean 4X4, but you can leave your hiking boots at home you pansy...