Leadville weekend

After my long day of 14ers and stuffing my face I took off to Leadville to do some easier repeats of 14ers and just to be at altitude that was higher than Lake City at 9,000ft.  I drove straight to Mount Elbert trailhead where once again I slept in the back of the 4runner, I love this car!  Anyways in the morning I ran into both Fred Ecks (one of my pacers at Leadville and a 100 mile monster) and his wife Ann.  As I was chatting with them who pulls up looking for me, the man himself  Bob Sweeney and the plan forms.  I was going to run suffer up Elbert with Sweeney while Fred hiked with his wife and we would meetup on the way down.  It was another awesome day in the hills!  Here are the GPS tracks for this run. This gave me about 17,000 feet of climbing in 3 days, I was wasted after this run.

Photos:

The rest of the day was hanging out at "The Compound" (Bob's place) shooting guns and drinking beer!  Just like being back in Nebraska, love it.  Here are the views out of the front window of "The Compound", doesn't get much better than that, right in the middle of the Leadville 100 course.

Saturday morning after waking up from a late night of drinking, we bagged our plans of doing Elbert again and I just hung out in town watching friends and family kick ass at the Leadville Marathon.  I needed a day off, I was pretty wiped.

Photos of the Marathon:

Wyatt Hornsby

Tim Long

Brandon Fuller

Stacy Wilkins

Drove home Saturday night getting home about 11pm, what a weekend.  Now I am laying on the couch Sunday trying to make myself go out for a jog.  Motivation is low, I am tired but in a good way.

Only 2 more weeks until pacing at Hardrock 100!  Hopefully the last few days did me some good to get ready for that upcoming adventure.

Scartop 12K in 4 days, that will be a fun/hard race with about 1000ft of climbing if anyone else is looking for a quick race the morning of the 4th, I highly recommend and it is in Lucho's hood so maybe there will be a rare siting, who knows.  The link to the race's website is on the sidebar of my blog if your interested.

Wetterhorn/Uncompahgre Combo

After sleeping at the trailhead last night after doing Redcloud/Sunshine I got up early to knock out this route of Wetterhorn/Uncompahgre in one shot.  These 2 peaks are about 4 miles a part with a trail that connects them all above 12,000ft.  This route is not on 14ers.com and got the idea and all the details from Eric Lee, it did not disappoint!  I did the route backwards from how Eric did it though, I did Wetterhorn first then Uncompahgre last.  My thought on doing this was that I wanted to do the hard technical climb first while I was fresh and the weather was good.  This ended up being a wise choice.  On the way back across the high valley a storm moved in and I had to haul ass to get down below treeline before my luck with lightening ran out.  Nothing like a storm to make you from dragging ass to being able to knock out some fast miles.  At the end of the day the route ended up being about 18 miles with about 7,000 feet of vertical with about 17 miles of the route above 12,000ft.

Here is the GPS track for the day, it was a big day!  After finishing I drove back into Lake City to chug a beer or two and stuff my face.  Number 44 and 45 out of 58 14ers.  Only 13 left!

Next stop-- Leadville  that night!

Photos:

Redcloud/Sunshine 14ers.

Thought I would put a few short posts of the past 4 days with my photos.

So I decided at the moment to drive down to Lake City for a few days to get away for a bit after getting someone to watch the dogs.  No TV, phone, ect...  Left in the morning arriving in Lake City about 1pm.  After a light lunch drive out to the trailhead of Redcloud/Sunshine to bag them before dark.  This is an awesome 12 mile route with awesome views.  Here is my GPS tracks of the jog.  Numbers 42 and 43 of the 58 14ers.

After getting back to the truck and rinsing off in the nearby creek I drove over to the trailhead of my adventure for tomorrow and slept in the truck.

Photos: