Two Weeks of Colorado Hiking Heaven

From Sunday July 5 through Friday July 17th, with both of my kids at overnight camps, I took the opportunity to do some serious hiking around this fine state. The first week would involve 14er hikes in the San Juans by Lake City and Ouray, while the second week would involve peaks and lakes in the Indian Peaks and Rocky Mountain National Park areas in the Front Range. This post details the highlights of those hikes.

Total miles - 78.12
Total duration - 44 hrs, 38 mins
Total elevation gained - 25,028 feet

July 6th - Uncompahgre Peak

7.58 miles, 3,686 feet gained

My 18th 14er summit, done with Laura Chren, Kim Styles and Nicole Smathers.

July 7 - Handies Peak
5.29  miles, 2,541 feet gained

My second time summiting this peak. Hiked with Nicole, Kim and Laura.

July 8 - Wetterhorn Peak

4.70 miles, 1,669 feet gained

No pictures this day. The hike was rained out and the summit was not reached. Hiked with Nicole.

July 10 - Mt. Sneffels

3.68 miles, 1,885 feet gained

This summit was not reached either, but I did get a few pictures on the way. Hiked with Nicole.

July 11 - Cannon Mountain

2.30 miles, 656 feet gained

Kathy and I saw a trail head near our house above Jamestown and explored it on this day. It took us up to 8,615 foot tall Cannon Mountain with some nice overlooks of Longs Peak. A short wooded hike, no pictures on this day. Hiked with Kathy.

July 12 - Bluebird Lake

13.68 miles, 3,007 feet gained

This is a longer hike from Wild Basin. Without the kids or a dog to worry about, we set out to find this alpine lake at the base of Copeland and Ouzel Peaks. We also checked out Ouzel Lake, Ouzel Falls and Calypso Cascades while carefully dodging moose along the trail. Hiked with Kathy.

July 13 - Deer Mountain

10.60 miles, 3,029 feet gained

This was a last minute decision for a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. A wooded hike with a great overlook of Estes Park and the RMNP big peaks. We opted to hike the longer loop rather than the up and back route. Hiked with Kathy.

July 14th - Blue Lake

5.39 miles, 1,041 feet gained

This hike originates in the Brainerd Lake recreational area. It is a relatively short but incredibly beautiful hike to an alpine lake surrounded by Pawnee Peak, Mt. Toll, Paiute Peak and Mt. Audubon. Hiked with Kathy.

 

July 15th - Pawnee Peak

10.32 miles, 3,130 feet gained

While it is true I am on a mission to climb as many 14ers as I can, I am also just as interested in climbing as many of the major Indian Peaks mountains as I can as well. Pawnee Pass leads up to an easy opportunity to summit 12,943 foot Pawnee Peak, and although it was completely clouded over when we got there, we summited it anyway. Hiked with Kathy.

 

 July 16th - Sky Pond

10.73 miles, 3,053 feet gained

I had heard great things about this RMNP hike and was especially interested to see the steep scramble up Timberline Falls to Glass Lake just below Sky Pond. We left from the Glacier Gorge trail head before 7 AM and saw very few people along the way. We even managed to have the lake to ourselves for about 15 minutes before the later starters began to arrive. We hiked back past Lake Haiyaha and passed hundreds of tourists as we made our way back around Dream and Nymph Lakes.

July 17th - Lily Mountain

3.85 miles, 1,331 feet gained

Our last day of hiking, we were looking for something relatively close and short. 9,786 foot Lily Mountain, just north of the Longs Peak trail head, fit the bill. It was only a couple miles to the summit, but the last mile was where most of the elevation was gained, and the last 100 yards included some good scrambling. Great views of Longs Peak, the Twin Sisters and Estes Park. Hiked with Kathy.

This is how Kathy and I celebrated our birthdays (July 18 and 23) and anniversary (July 9), and it was great to explore so much of Colorado with her and some good friends over the past couple of weeks. So much more to see...I love this state.

Mt. Sneffels - Cold at the Col

Friday July10th marked the final day of a week of 14er summit attempts in SW Colorado. I had successfully summited Uncompahgre and Handies, and was turned back by rain on Wetterhorn. Mt. Sneffels was listed as a difficult class 2 climb, and with Nicole's jeep, we could cut the round trip distance to about 5 miles. As long as the weather held, it seemed very doable and would make a nice finisher.

The day before the climb, we scoped out the trail head to see how bad the road really was. It was about 8 miles to the lower trail head (for a 6 mile hike), and another 3/4 mile up a rough 4wd road that would make the hike about 4.5 miles. We parked at the lower TH and hiked up the road to the closure and didn't see anything that looked like it would stop us, but decided to wait until morning to see how Nicole's nerves were feeling before making a decision on how far up to park.

The road up had some sections cut into the rock wall.

Much of the road was on a shelf high above this canyon.

At the top of this road, the views around were amazing, but the road got really rough. In the end, we did end up driving up this road to just a couple tenths of a mile from the closure. The rough road up made for an exciting start to the morning.

At the start of the hike, 13,694 foot Gilpin Peak flanked the south side of the upper basin. The drainage off of that area was really impressive looking.

The first mile of the hike followed the closed 4wd road. Up ahead there is some very rugged terrain that leads up to Mt. Sneffels, but the route we were taking cut to the right up a less rugged but certainly just as steep gully. We were also a little nervous about the cloud cover which was hiding the upper elevations, but we hoped that maybe by the time we got up there it would burn off.

A closer look at the jagged ridge along the top of Yankee Boy Basin. We would be cutting to the right in front of that and going up from the other side of Sneffels.

There is really not much to this hike. You take the road up to the upper trail head, follow a talus field to the base of a gully, climb the gully, climb the col at the top of the gully, and the summit is right there. The gully really sucked to climb. It was pretty loose and very steep. Toward the top, the dirt was hard enough that it was tough to kick in steps to get any traction. This is what it looked like from the bottom. Yes, the top is still covered by clouds, and it was getting windy. That small bump just right of center in the clouds is our next destination, and it was pretty slow going.

We finally got to the top of the gully and were on the saddle between Sneffels and Kismet Mountain. At this point the wind was howling, so we found a place to hide behind the aforementioned rock at the top and tried to decide how to proceed. We had been hiking with another gentleman, Van, who was on the saddle with us and also not sure about the final pitch. Yet another hiker ahead of us was coming down the col as we huddled behind the rock, and he said that if you had spikes or crampons that you could probably get up through the snow, but he had neither so he turned around.

The top of the col was still mostly clouded over (the shot below came during a very brief clearing), and we were starting to shiver uncontrollably and our fingers were getting numb. We had anticipated good weather, but the wind had really gotten to us to the point we were concerned about getting hypothermia. Nicole and I both had spikes, but we weren't even feeling good about our ability to get them on, let alone trying to climb the 500 feet up the col in the cloud cover. We hung out on the saddle for what seemed to be 20-30 minutes hoping for things to clear up and trying to stay warm.

The day before, we came across a couple hikers who had summited and asked them about the conditions. One hiker, a girl in her early 20s, said that they did ok but that some hikers below them "had a couple epics", which, as a 40+ year old, I interpreted to mean "bad falls". I was not interested in having any "epics" myself that day, so we decided that today wasn't the right day to summit, and we would try again on a better weather day with hopefully a little less snow. Another missed summit, but we both felt good about our decision. It just wasn't worth it that day.

We started the rock ski back down the gully. Other than being a little hard on the knees, it went by a bit quicker than the ascent.

After about 3 1/2 miles and 4 1/2 hours, we were back to the jeep and ready to head out. Even though we didn't summit, we saw most of the route and know what lies in store when we attempt it again down the road. It was truly beautiful up there, and just seeing those mountains made it worthwhile.

I still have unfinished business in the San Juans, but it is just a matter of time until that business is taken care of. Experience was gained, even if the summit wasn't.

Uncompahgre Peak

Like last year, I chose to visit Lake City to climb some 14ers while my kids were away at overnight camps. Unlike last year, I made the trip this year with a few friends, namely Nicole, Kim and Laura. None of us had ever hiked Uncompahgre, and it was supposed to be a fairly straightforward hike, so we chose to start our week there.

One of the best parts of this trip was that Nicole had recently bought a jeep, and we planned to use it often to get higher up on the trails and reduce our hiking time.

For Uncompahgre, this meant we could 4wd four miles worth of nasty road and shave 8 miles roundtrip off of our hike. This was Nicole's first real test of her new toy, and it was a good one. It was quite steep, very rocky in some sections, and there were a couple of stream crossings. This was the smaller of the two:

At 5:30 AM, we were on the trail to Uncompahgre.

Laura, Kim and Nicole all looked rather chipper before our hike this morning.

And up ahead, the unmistakable shape of Uncompahgre Peak, the 6th highest peak in Colorado at 14,309 feet.

We followed a good, but sometimes wet, trail up toward Uncompahgre. There were a ton of wildflowers on this trip.

As we got closer to Uncompahgre, we could see the bands of cliffs that made up most of the summit block. The climb up was around the back side, and I was curious to see just how bad that climb would be.

Most of the snow had melted, but there were still a couple of snow field to work through on the way up.

On the back side, we got some really amazing views of some far off peaks, although it was a bit cloudier than we had hoped for.

Now the fun part of the hike would begin. On this side of the summit block, we would be required to climb about 150 feet of some pretty steep class 2 rock.

Laura made quick time of the climb.

And Nicole was happy to almost be at the summit.

After this scramble, the rest of the way to the summit was pretty easy, and we hung out there a good 15-20 minutes. We all took turns holding the rock sign that indicated we were, in fact, on the correct summit.

 Still chipper after almost 4 miles up to the summit.

This was my first 14er hike with Laura, and my first hike with Kim since we did Mt. Elbert together last year, and my sixth 14er hike with Nicole.

For me, Uncompahgre would be my 18th 14er. I grew an additional pair of arms to commemorate the occasion.

The hike back down was uneventful, and as far as hikes go, this one couldn't have gone any smoother. We finished in just under 6 hours, and other than some clouds swirling around at the summit, the weather was perfect, as was the company. A very good day for a hike, and another peak is in the books.

The Great Longmont Wing-off

One of the things I love about my daughter is she loves hot wings. Much more often than not, if we are ever out for a meal and they are on the menu, we give them a try. I'd been kicking around the idea for awhile of trying out some new places and then blogging each of our individual takes on the same plate of wings just to see how they compare, and today turned into a great day to do that.

Both kids and I visited four places in downtown Longmont: Longs Peak Pub and Taphouse, Pumphouse, The Roost, and Dickens Tavern. When we ordered, we gave the simple instruction "We would like one plate of your best wings. Now. Please." This left a lot to the server's discretion, but made for an interesting exercise. We started about 11:00 and just went from place to place until we were done near 1:30. We didn't consult with each other as we jotted down our notes so we could present our unbiased opinions.

What follows is the results of our extremely scientific study of who has the best wings in Longmont. On Main Street. On the 4 blocks between Longs Peak and 3rd Avenue. On Tuesday.

Longs Peak Pub and Taphouse

Chris' take:

We started at the Longs Peak Pub and Taphouse. When we ordered, the server seemed amused that we wanted "their best wings", and we got to hear some of his conversation when he explained to the cooks that "yeah, they just said 'bring your best wings'" and the cook asked the server if he thought we wanted feathers. Come to think of it, maybe we shouldn't have eaten what he brought us, but man were they good wings. These were the "hotBQ" wings, a mix of BBQ and hot sauce. Very large, meaty pieces. Now I generally don't like much breading on my wings, but these were deep fried to about the perfect amount of crispy but not "crunchy fried". Several different people came by to check on us during our experience to make sure the best wings they had were really all that. And they definitely were. Only problem, this was the first stop, and we just ordered 12 wings. This was going to be a long couple hours.

Becca's take:
I haven't actually tried too many Barbeque Style Wings, but these were actually pretty good. They were very flavorful and tangy. The Wings were pretty big, and unlike some wings I've seen had a lot of meat on each bone. They weren't too terribly spicy for me, but I'm not a very good judge on that matter.

Aaron's take:
Good.

Pumphouse

Chris' take:
Pumphouse tends to be our wing of choice, as we eat there all the time. Unlike Longs Peak Taphouse, lunch was rolling now and we were not the only people in there when we ordered. We asked for their best wings, and I was a little disappointed that the server chose to bring Buffalo wings even though they had other flavors (I think Becca was pleased, though. She loves the Buffalo flavor). And these were just like the best wings Pumphouse usually serves us. Pretty spicy, average sized pieces, cooked through nicely, very slightly crisp skin. The sauce is really strong with these, which can be good or bad depending on what you like. At one point we must have looked too critique-y because the server asked if we were trying to hunt down the best wings in the Longmont. Yes, in fact we were. So how's it going so far? Well, you're the second place we've visited, and you're not winning. Still, I dig these wings. As Becca said, "they've never disappointed me". I can't go QUITE that far, but more often than not, they are indeed quite good.

Becca's take:
Pump House is where I tried my first Buffalo Wing. They weren't as big as the Taphouse's Wings, but they weren't too tiny. I always loved the flavor of their Buffalo Sauce. Nowadays they aren't very spicy to me anymore but I'm sure they seemed a lot hotter when I was younger. Overall, they were amazing.

Aaron's take:
Good.

The Roost

Chris' take:
We are only at our 3rd stop, and already I'm getting a feeling of dread that my head may have bitten off more than my stomach can chew. I was not hungry anymore, but thankfully I knew that the wings from The Roost were quite small, so maybe we'd be ok. When the server came to take our order, we again said "bring us a plate of your best wings". He tried to see what direction we were leaning as far as flavor, but I remained as ambiguous as possible and said "whatever your think is your best". He smiled, said "you got it", and shortly thereafter, out came a plate of Thai wings.

I've actually never tried Thai wings, so I was glad I got to expand my horizons a little. The server said he was going to bring Buffalo, but that was too traditional, so he brought Thai. Good man. I envision Thai as "burn your face off" hot, so I was prepared for a meltdown, but these were not spicy at all. There was some Thai flavor, and they were actually quite sweet. They were cooked through well, and they were indeed quite small but slightly crisp. Interesting texture to the sauce, as it appeared relatively light but it was very hearty. I'm glad we could try a different style, and they were good for what they were. (Of course, the server may have thought "our Thai wings suck, but this dude and his kids probably won't know the different between good and bad Thai, and we're really trying to reduce our inventory, so I'll bring those", but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt). Not my style, but not bad.

Becca's take:
Like the Barbeque Wings, I had never tried Thai Wings before today. The Roost's Thai Wings were on the smaller side, but still packed with flavor. I really couldn't come up with a better word for how it tasted than "Thai Flavored." These Wings were not spicy in the least, but were delicious nonetheless.

Aaron's take:
Good.

Dickens Tavern

Chris' take:
Finally, we ended up at Dickens Tavern. By now I was not hungry in the least, and nor was anyone else in Longmont anymore judging from the empty tavern. But we were going to see this through. We listened attentively to the special of the day (which I can't remember), and then we ordered: "we would like a plate of your best wings". Well, we've got <stuff she said here that I can't remember>, and she asked if we like Parmesan because they had a garlic Parmesan dry rub that was really good. "Go for it" I said, with all the enthusiasm of someone who had just consumed his fair share of three plates of wings already that afternoon.

I love garlic. I really like Parmesan. These wings looked like they were just swimming in both, so I was a little disappointed that they tasted rather bland. If you scooped off a pinch of the rub on them, you could taste a little Parmesan, but I couldn't taste any garlic at all. They were cooked well, and they were average sized pieces, but again, they really didn't do anything for me tastewise. The veggies here were not terribly crispy either. Perhaps the combination of "end of lunch hour", the dry rub, and the fourth stop for wings made for the perfect storm of "meh".

Becca's take:
I don't think I've ever heard of Garlic Parmesan Wings before today. These Wings were on the smaller side, but didn't seem to have as much flavor as some of the other Wings. They didn't have much Garlic flavor to them. While they had beautiful chicken that tasted amazing on its own, the seasonings didn't help it with it's flavor.

Aaron's take:
Better than they looked like they would be.



Becca summed up the experience thusly: "What a great day. I got to sleep in, and then we go out and eat wings all afternoon". And that, my friends, is how we spent our summer vacation. In Longmont. On Main Street. Between Longs Peak and 3rd Avenue. On a Tuesday.

100 Burpees a Day for a Year

In March of 2014, I came upon this blog post by Ross Enamait, one of my all time favorite as well as one of the most inspirational trainers I know (look him up on youtube doing the ab wheel, pushups and jumping rope). The post featured a woman named Nikki who had just completed a 100 burpee a day for a year challenge, and it details everything about that journey in her life.  Her transformation from beginning to end was absolutely incredible. Seriously, go watch her video, I'll wait.

Amazing, wasn't it?? A couple years earlier, I had completed a 100 day burpee challenge with Lisa, one of my kickboxers. Rather than do the usual challenge of starting at 1 the first day, then 2 the second all the way up to 100 on the last day, I actually started with 100 the first day, 101 the second, 102 the third, all the way up to 200 on the last day. It was definitely difficult, and while it felt great to be done, I also liked how I felt over the course of the challenge while I did them. The door to another challenge was left open, I just didn't know when I'd go through it.

Spring forward again to March 2014. I had just seen this post about Nikki and her accomplishment, and I thought I just might be able to pull that off myself. I told a few people about it and kept putting off my start date, but I eventually I decided that June 1, 2014 was the day I would officially begin. 100 burpees a day. Every day. For an entire year. It was on....

I wish I had kept a better record of this past year like Nikki did, but unfortunately I didn't, so I'm left to reflect on what I remember over the past 365 days. Here are some things that stick out in my mind:

Getting Started

It took awhile to get used to doing a lot of burpees again. I generally did sets of 10 over the course of the day. When I could, I tried to do them close together and get them done. Many times, I was up past 11:00 trying to peel myself off the couch to reach my quota before midnight (that was my self imposed rule, do them all by midnight each day). When I felt good, I would string longer sets together. Sometimes I did them within my workouts or after a run. In the summer of 2014, I hiked several 14ers, and the burpees I did on those days were always exceptionally difficult, but I did them. I often did them before and after my kickboxing classes, many times with a student or two there to sweat along with me. Whatever felt right that day, that is how I would do them.

Health

I knew there would be some luck involved around being sick. People asked what if I had to miss a day? Would I just make them up later? I honestly didn't know, and I hoped I wouldn't have to ever make that decision because I really wanted to do the entire year without skipping even one day. I had one particularly difficult couple of days where I struggled to get out of bed because of a particularly bad cold or flu, but I still managed to do groups of 2-5 through those days to get 100. It was pitiful, and those were the worst days of the year but they taught me that my strong will to succeed can overcome much more adversity than I gave myself credit for, and I didn't miss even one day.

Injuries

Injuries were another worry, and I got lucky there as well. I remember one incident in particular where I was coming up from a pushup and my right shoulder completely gave out on me. I could barely move it and figured if that didn't get better really quickly I was done, but it did in fact go away almost as quickly as it came (within a couple of hours) and I'm still not sure what exactly it was I did but it didn't stop me.  I'm also fortunate that I have an exceptional physical therapist and massage therapist in Brenda and Jill in my kickboxing classes, and I went to them from time to time to help me work out some kinks.

Burpee Mile

By September 2014 I was feeling good and wanted to try a little extra, so I went to the Rec Center in hopes of completing a burpee mile. Now a couple years prior, I had gone to a local track to see how burpees over a distance would feel and hoped to go maybe 400 meters. I went about 100 and was toast, so I had no idea what to expect after a few months of 100 per day.  An hour and 35 minutes and 580 burpees later, I was done, though, and it was much easier than I expected. Burpee mile - check.

Burpee 5K (Lake Mac)

On to December 2014. I was feeling really good, I was approaching the halfway point, and I had been thinking about another crazy goal of mine, a 5k distance burpee set around Lake Macintosh here in Longmont. I thought for awhile that that would be a great way to finish my challenge, but then I thought what happens if something didn't work out that day, like I was sick or injured or the weather just sucked? On December 7, the day was exceptionally perfect and I was completely healthy, so I headed out to try to burpee around the lake. And in just over 6 hours, after 1915 burpees, I had completed the 5k+ around the lake. My immediate next goal was to make it the 5 mile drive home without losing my breakfast all over the road before I got there, and needless to say I did not quite accomplish that goal. My apologies to the people on Antero Drive.

Approaching 40,000

I continued to cruise along for the next several months. Seven months down. Eight down. Nine. Ten. About that time I thought it would be interesting to add up my total for the year, including the mile and 5K I had done. If I completed my 100 a day for the year, it would put me just about 1200 short of 40,000. Now 1200 is a lot of burpees, but in the course of doing 580 and 1900, 1200 suddenly didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. And I was never going to be this close again, so I decided to go for it.

Rather than just add in a few extra for the rest of my 100/day, I decided I would rather just do them all during one day and get them over with. This would also be a great opportunity to see how quickly I was able to do a large set of them. And on May 28th, just three days before my year long challenge was over, I did them. My goal was to do 10 per minute for as long as I was able to maintain, hopefully for 2 hours that would get me right to my goal of 1200. I manged to do 25 sets of 10 before I had to rest beyond the minute, and I was able to get to 500 in 59:52. Not bad.

My next goal was to hit 1000 in 2 hours, but after a couple minutes of rest, my next set made me realize there was no way I could keep up that pace. I still managed to complete 1000 in 2:27:53, which was about an hour and ten minutes faster than I had done a thousand of them a couple years prior, so a significant improvement that I was really pleased with. The pressure was off now, and I slowly chipped away at the final 200 (206 to be exact) plus my regular 100 over the next several hours. When all was said and done, I had done 1306 burpees. If you ever want to know exactly which muscles are activated along the entire range of motion of an exercise, do about a thousand of them, and it will become painfully obvious, let me assure you.

Here are my last 10. And no, the other 39,991 of them were not done with nearly this much enthusiasm. ;)

Lessons Learned

The question I was asked the most about this challenge was simply "why?". There are certainly many reasons, but a few stand out. First, Nikki's story really inspired and motivated me to push myself to do something huge, so maybe I'll be able to pass that on to someone else to try something they didn't know if they could do. For example, my wife, who can run forever but could count the number of burpees she's done in her life on one hand, is months into her own 25 burpee a day challenge. I'd like to think that at least some of the motivation to start that came from me. :)

Honestly, I didn't know if I would be able to complete this when I started. 100 burpees a day, if spread over the course of a day, is really not as difficult to pull off as one might think. The kicker was going to be the relentlessness of doing it for an entire year, and having the discipline to do it on days where it was the last thing I wanted to do. I am the world's biggest wuss when I'm sick, and I figured one bout of the flu like I've had in the past would knock me out, but I stayed relatively healthy and I pushed through the few times I did get a little sick. There was definitely a luck factor that I would have little control over, and I was fortunate that I had good luck the entire year.

Ross Enamait sums it up best in his blog:

In summary, I am not sharing this story to suggest that everyone should perform burpees each day. Instead, look past the specifics and focus on what is truly important. Nikki is a tremendous example of hard work and commitment. Her willingness to consistently hold herself accountable is something that most could benefit from. Hopefully her example will inspire others to make similar changes if they have failed in previous attempts.

Accountability is the key word. Every day I had to figure out when I would be able to get in 100, and many times it was not convenient but I knew I had to make it work. I look back at the total numbers and am really psyched because I think they look pretty impressive as a whole. But when you boil it down, that may average about 20 minutes of work per day.  Lay down and jump up ten times. That may take anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. Rest an HOUR. By then you are completely recovered, and doing another 10 is not problem. And that is the point. The steps themselves don't have to be difficult, but being able to do them consistently over and over and over again is what is the hardest for most people.

40,001 Burpees?

So why 40,001? The extra one is to symbolize that if you dig deep, you can find the strength to do that little extra. Like Spinal Tap's amplifiers...these go to 11. It's in there, you just have to push yourself to let it out. You came this far, what is one more step?

A good friend once told me that you can't stop time, and eventually the trial will come to an end. If your goal takes a sustained effort, you focus on the individual steps, one step at a time, and eventually time will take you to that goal if you don't stop taking those individual steps. Doesn't matter if it is burpees or hiking, the end result is success.

So to all who have encouraged me this past year, I am forever grateful for your support. You've inspired me in many ways, and I hope I can give a little of that back. Consider this challenge officially, and successfully, ended.