Saturday was the Leadville Marathon. The course normally climbs Mosquito Pass and returns to Leadville but due to the snow, the course was changed. At the start, the weather was awesome but the forecast called for showers in the afternoon – they never came. On the adjusted course, I finished about 30 minutes faster than I expected.
WP Strava ERROR strava_info should be an array, received: false
Afterwards, Preston and I went to Deerhammer and played cards. The dogs assumed their positions.
Today, we walked bridge to bridge with the dogs and Preston practiced his climbing skills.
On Thursday we leave for Amsterdam and then Tanzania.
It’s been a great couple of weeks. Preston has been here and Tracy visited for a few days. She will be here for almost a month next week while Preston and I are gone to Africa. Preston and I spent last week doing various short hikes around the area. On the Colorado trail we came across this guy which acted like a rattle snake but turned out to be a large Gopher snake.
We also hiked from St Elmo up towards Tin Cup pass. Had heard that an avalanche had taken out the road and yes it had…. Seems like 500 yards of Wildcat ridge came down into the creek and carried 200 ft up the north ridge. There is still ~8′ of snow under the debris and once it melts there will be no way of picking through the mess. We climbed 100 vertical feet up the north ridge to see if we could get around it. With a little work this could be a temporary trail. This road is part of my race at the end of July so I hope it’s cleared by then. If you look closely at some of the pictures below, you can see Preston picking through the debris field.
Last weekend, Preston and I worked on a new trail across the river from the house. There were close to 100 people out and we added almost a mile of single track trail. It was warm both days and we were extremely dirty.
The weather has been beautiful and the snow if finally melting. It has caused the River to rise to twice the volume of last years high level. It’s brought out a lot of kayakers who want to surf the steps in the river.
One Monday, we went out to Avalanche trailhead with the dogs. The snow is melting fast, but we still had to turn back about 2.5 miles in. On Tuesday, we hiked 4.5 miles up Little Brown’s Creek trail. We were able to make it past 11k feet for the first time. It’s a pretty hike and there are seldom any people on it.
Darby and Izzy enjoy all the activity. They are exhausted by the end of the day.
Tomorrow, I have the Leadville Trail Marathon. Because of the snow, the course has been rerouted to lower elevations but the race will still be challenging. I’m hoping for sub 6 hours.
The week after the snow storm, the sun came out and I spent some time at Mt. Princeton resort. I was only out an hour, but I got so sunburn.
I also used the break in the weather to stain the deck and create a planter around the side of the building. I planted flowers in there today.
The dogs and I tried out the Colorado trail again to see how high we could get before the snow set in. We made it about 300 vertical feet further than last time, but there is still a lot of snow. Darby still can’t resist rolling in the snow.
Very tired dogs after a day on the trail.
Last week we made a trip back to Austin for Preston’s graduation. It was held at the Erwin Center since his graduating class was 625 students. He went to an all night party afterwards and will arrive in BV tomorrow.
I drove back to BV the morning after graduation. The weather has finally turned nice so I set up the deck and made some corn and potato soup.
The dogs and I made our Sunday pilgrimage to Deerhammer. Izzy and Darby assumed their positions after they cleaned the floor of any scraps.
Tracy has taught Darby to eat her evening treat on a towel.
