Kauai in Photos and Videos

Not going to write a big post on all the cool things we did, just thought I would hit the highlights with some photos and videos. This island is freakin awesome and the photos don't do it justice. These are some of my favorite photos out of the 600 plus photos that everyone took during the trip.

Thank you again Dad for having us!!! Enjoy!

Sunset







Trailrunning







Snorkeling














Food











Beaches



















Luau





















Ziplining












Waimea Canyon







Mahalo Nu'i Loa for reading!

Books Read in 2011

At the end of year I post my list of books that I read at year and link them to Amazon so you can check them out if interested. Here is my list for 2011. The ones that I put the number in bold are worth the read, the rest were either for work or just plan crap.

If you have any suggestions of books to check out for 2012 I am all ears. I try to read at least 12 a year but if I ever want to knock down my growing list I am going to have to read more than 25. I just don't see that happening.

1. K2: Life & Death on the Worlds most dangerous mountain
2. The Extra Mile- Pam Reed
3. In Defense of Food
4. Coaching for Performance
5. Food Rules
6. Eiger Dreams
7. Paleo Diet for Athletes
8. Relentless Forward Progress
9. Running on empty
10. Seal Team Six
11. Cycling home from Siberia
12. The Big Year
13. The Man Who Cycled the World
14. The Big Book of Endurance Training
15. And Then the Vulture Eats You
16. The Raw Truth
17. Now Discover Your Strengths
18. The Paleo Diet
19. Steve Jobs

Kilan's Quest

This is just bad ass.... Wonder if his FKT of Mount Sanitas will be in it.

Tor des Geants

I have never even heard of this race before today but this makes any race in the US look like child's play. HOLY CRAP!

The Tor des Geants, held this year from Sept. 12 to 19, is a 200-mile race through the Italian Alps, with a couple dozen passes, rough and rocky trails, and nearly 80,000 feet of climbing. Beat (guy in the video from CA) finished the race in 132 hours - more than five days - on less than five hours of sleep. He didn't intend to try to convey the entire experience of the Tor des Geants, just touch the surface of what it might be like to barely sleep for five days and cross 25 steep passes in the Italian Alps.

Freakin NUTS!! I think this one might have to go on the bucket list.

No sleep 'til Courmayeur from Jill Homer on Vimeo.

James Peak via Saint Mary's Glacier

On Sunday a group of 5 of us decided to tackle James Peak just west of Denver. Here is what SummitPost has to say about James Peak:

At 13,294 feet James Peak is the 5th highest summit in the Indian Peaks. It is also the Gilpin County highpoint. Its giant southeast slopes route can be seen from I70 as you head towards Idaho Springs. According to Walter Borneman in his book Colorado's Other Mountains the peak was named after Edwin James, a highly respected botanist who was part of an 1820 expedition to the Rocky Mountains. James became a mountaineer and was the first person to do a recorded ascent of a Colorado Fourteener. Ironically it did not end up being named James but was called Pikes Peak instead. James is a peak of many options, with easy walks, a technical east face and an interesting ridge walk from neighboring Mount Bancroft. It is an extremely popular peak and is a common first ascent for those who are interested in ski mountaineering. James Peak and vicinity has just been made into a Wilderness Area. See the following for details
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=wildView&wname=James%20Peak%20Wilderness

It was a great day and we could not have been more blessed by the mountain gods. It was about 9 miles and 3500ft of gain which we knocked out in about 4.5 hours. What a better way to spend a Sunday morning. I even got home in time to spend the afternoon with my girl and take in a movie with her.

Grizzly Peak D from Loveland Pass

Yesterday Kirk and I decided to head up into the high country for some fun off of Loveland Pass. I had a vacation day to burn and he had the day off work. With all the running and training that I have been doing lately I have not been climbing as much as I would like and with days like yesterday it really makes me miss it. Here are some pictures of the awesome day that we were blessed with. It is great to go during the week with no one else up there. We ended up with about 8 miles and about 4000 feet of vertical all taking place at over 12,000 feet above sea level. Sounds like good altitude training to me.

T- 2 weeks for the 1st 50 miler of the year, CRAP!

Enjoy and have a great week.

Mount Sherdian 2-8-09 and upcoming Red Hot

This past Sunday a group of 6 of us went to climb Mount Sheridan at 13,748ft above sea level. It was Kirk, Tracy, Chris Deck, Matt (Chris's cousin), Art (Kirk's co-worker) and myself. The road to the summer trailhead at Four Mile Creek on the Fairplay side of the mountain was closed due to snow about 3.25 miles from the trailhead. With this added mileage the hike came out to be about 13 miles round trip and 4500ft of gain. It took us 6 hours total which is not a bad clip considering the 30mph winds and snow that was thrown at us. Out of the 6 of us, Tracy, Chris, and myself hit the summit and the others turned around about 400 vertical feet from the top due to the cold and shivering wildly. I never took my snowshoes off my pack the whole day, the snow was hard enough that I could just walk on top of it and only sink a few inches. Here are a couple of pictures that were taken by Tracy. They show Chris and myself on the summit and a group picture at the end of the day.




This upcoming Saturday 2/14 I have my 1st race of the year, Red Hot 50K. I am more nervous about this race than I have been in past races and I can not figure out why. Is it because I have been working with a coach the past 3 or so months and now I feel higher expectations? Or is it because it is just the first of the year on my way to another 100 mile attempt? I think a huge part of it is the first question I raised, higher expectations. After feeling like I let down lots of people with dropping from Leadville at mile 78 last summer the last thing I want to do is have another let down due to a slower than expected time, hell I don't even know what time I should be shooting for or what pace I should try and run. I know that I am stronger than last year the question is how much stronger am I? I just don't want to let down myself, Ashley, or anyone else for that matter.

Well that is enough rambling and whining for today. I have to get back to work. I will post a race report next week and let you know how it went.

Crestone Traverse (Peak to Needle) 9-7-08

I was going to type up a long drawn out route description and trip report but decided against it. The reason being that this is a dangerous traverse and I do not want to be responsible for leading anyone on the incorrect route. That happened to us and we got stuck in some hairy areas for about an hour by following someone else's trip report. Anyway the main key is to stay on the Cottonwood Lake side of the mountain until you are ready to head to the summit, do not cross over to the South Colony Lake side of the mountain. Also make sure you do your research! The route is not marked very well if at all in a lot of areas. Also it is better to go from Peak to Needle. I would not want to try and downclimb off the Needle without a rope, that is just asking for trouble.

Here is a very short breakdown of the climb:

Last Saturday Chris Deck, Kirk Tubbs, and I went down south and did the Crestone Traverse, one of the four classic 14er traverses in the state. We took off from Castle Rock at 4:30pm arriving at the upper 4X4 trailhead around 8pm. It takes about 1 hour to 4X4 up the 5-6 mile road from the main turn off. We slept at the trailhead Saturday night and climbed on Sunday.

The hike was about 13 miles round trip with about 6000-6500 feet of gain/loss. It took us about 11.5 hours and would have been quicker if we would not have gotten into some hairy spots during the traverse.

Here are the pictures from the climb so enjoy:

Snowmass Mountain-- Kirk's 14er finisher

Last Sunday a group of 7 of us went up to Snowmass Mountain to hike with my buddy Kirk on his 58th and last 14er. We choose the hardest route on the mountain called the S-Ridge. It was a great day even though I was still wiped out from Leadville 100the weekend before. I willed myself through the climb even though I really did not want to go. Looking back though I am happy that I went, it was well worth seeing my good friend finish and having the chance to do so with him. This was the 33rd different 14er that I have done, 25 left!

Here are some pictures from the climb (the wild flowers are nuts in this area):



Here is the link to Kirk's trip report: REPORT

Thanks for reading and HAPPY TRAILS!

Shad

Doing the Bells with Traverse (South to North)

This is the trip report that I wrote on 9/1/07 for the Maroon Bells climb. Enjoy
Maroon Peak & N Maroon Peak
Date: Saturday, Sept 1st 2007
Route: ascend S Ridge of Maroon Peak, traverse to N Maroon, descend N Maroon NE Ridge
Team: Kirk (KirkT) and Shad (Shad)

I have been zeroing in on these peaks all summer after seeing them on my 4 pass loop trip around the Bell in June. That was the first time that I have been in this area. The first time I saw the Bells I got the urge to climb them. They were officially on my summer of 2007 list.

One week before Labor Day KirkT called me to see what my plans were for the Labor Day weekend. I was supposed to go down to the San Juans for a few days but really was not in the mood to drive that far and had to be home on Monday. He made the suggestion of the Bells and it was game on from that point on.

Friday night at 5pm we left the Denver area and headed to Aspen arriving around 8-9pm. The overnight parking lot was full so we had to park in the overflow parking about 1/4-1/2 mile down the road. I was a little worried about this. How many people are going to be on the mountain tomorrow? Was it going to be safe? We will see.

After a great night of sleeping under the stars we were off at 4:15am hiking up the road to the trailhead. After about 45 mins into the hike I realized that I should not have been leading without my head lamp on. I was on the wrong trail and was doing the loop around Maroon Lake, I missed the turn off for Crater Lake. So an hour was wasted, oh well. After getting on the the correct trail we hit Crater Lake and the turn off to head up the ridge by the bent tree in no time. At Crater Lake I thought about hiding my rope and climbing gear here and picking up on the way back because I had a pinched nerve or something in my neck and the weight was bothering me. I decided to take it anyway and suffer with the weight so I popped a couple of pills. Good think I did as you will see later. From here on out it is going to be an uphill slog.

The first half of the trail to gain the ridge was easy to follow but we lost the trail once we got into the rocks so we decided to make our own way up. Here is a trail map. In blue is the standard route and in red is our route. I may be off a little but should be very close to where we went. We tryed to stay as direct as possible.


At this point in the game we have passed 2 or so people and could see 3 head of us. I guess all those people were somewhere else and not on the Bells. We only saw about 10-12 people all day.

We finally gained the ridge by the notch.

From here we just followed the carins to the summit.

It took us about 6 hours to get to the top of South Maroon with the 1 hour side trip around Maroon Lake that I lead us on. But we made it no problem.

After spending a half hour on the summit watching the clouds we decided that we both were ok with the weather and that we were going to commit to the traverse. We left down the traverse around 11 or so. The first part of the traverse from South to North is the down climb down into the bottom of the saddle. This down climb is not bad if you take your time and not rush it. After hitting the bottom of the saddle the fun begins as you climb up North Maroon.

It took us two hours to complete the traverse from South Maroon to North Maroon.

The decent off of North Maroon took all of my energy and I did not take the time for pictures. This was one of the hardest down climbs that I have ever done. We did the traverse without using the rope but due to how poorly the route was marked on the decent of North Maroon we kept getting off route and caught in cliff bands. We ended up doing 2 repells to get off this mountain, one of about 30 feet and one of about 100 feet. It was the longest and most tiring decent I have ever done. It took us 6 hours to get from the top of North Maroon back to the car.

We finally reached the lovely site of Kirk‘s truck at 7:30pm, 15 hours after starting. What a day!!! We were both beat and in trouble, Kirk with his wife and me with my girlfriend. It took us 5 hours longer than we thought it would and they were worried. They had every right to be for we under estimated how hard the route finding on this mountain would be. Even with all of this this has been my favorite climb so far as I hit the halfway point of my 14er list. I would gladly do it again for everyone that knows me well knows that I am sucker for punishment.

Here is a link to all my pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/shadmika

Link to trip report on 14ers.com, just cut and paste into browser:
http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=3754