I woke up Saturday morning to some slightly tired legs from
the previous night’s jaunt up Green Mountain with JV, Rob, and Joey. After
eating a grilled pita with peanut butter and downing some coffee I suited up
and hit the trails.
My first decision of the day came within steps of leaving my
apartment: head towards the Chautauqua area or go ahead and knock out Mount
Sanitas. I decided to head towards Chautauqua. Likely because I hate going up
Sanitas and wanted to put that off as long as possible. As I headed up the
Viewpoint trail I began contemplating the rest of my route. Ultimately it came
down to whether or not I wanted to descend the Shadow Canyon Trail versus
ascend it. Seeing as how the last time I descended Shadow during the Boulder
Basic I ended up injured and forced into taking 19 days off from running I
decided to ascend Shadow.
This decision took my route down the Flagstaff Trail to the
Chautauqua trailhead before riding the Mesa Trail all the way to the south
trailhead. Overall, the conditions on Mesa were not too bad. It was frustrating
at times as there would be huge patches of ice that almost necessitated MicroSpikes
followed by sections with exposed rocks that forced the decision of whether to
remove the spikes or dull them. Since my spikes were already pretty dull I just
left the damn things on throughout and slowed to a hike on the rockier
sections.
I reached the south Mesa trailhead in about 1hr 55min.
Nothing spectacular, but I was only 9 miles into a potential 30 mile run so I
didn’t have any complaints. At the trailhead I downed a Cliff bar while talking
with two park rangers about the mountain lion my roommate and I saw going up
Flagstaff earlier in the week. I turned around to start the ~1.75 mile climb
back up the Mesa to the Shadow Canyon connector. This along with the ~0.75 mile
section leading up to the canyon was the last section of runnable trail until
reaching the top of the canyon.
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| View coming up Mesa from the south trailhead |
This was the first time I’d ever ascended Shadow Canyon and
it was pretty brutal (especially on tired legs). While I can’t say that I
particularly enjoyed taking 45 minutes to cover 1.1 miles I will say that it
was a better experience than the last time I was on the trail when I busted my
knee open and limped 6 miles back to the Chautauqua trailhead. I’m fairly
certain that I began my mountain marathon already slightly dehydrated, which
was evident by the fact that I had already drained one of my water bottles by
the top of Shadow Canyon. I had made the 28 mile run from Boulder to Nederland
the weekend before and only drank one water bottle during the entire run.
When I finally made it to the top of Shadow I caught up to
another runner and talked with him for 10 minutes or so. This proved to be a
slight lapse in judgment since I had just worked up a sweat on the Shadow
ascent and we were standing in the shade to talk. I quickly got cold (most noticeably
in my feet) and knee that I had to get going soon. JV was cruising down from
SoBo at that time so we chatted for a few minutes. I debated skipping the SoBo
summit and tagging along with JV because he was going at a nice pace and I
needed to start running pretty strong to warm up. I knew it wouldn’t be much of
a Boulder Mountain Marathon if I skipped the first summit so I pushed on to
SoBo slow and steady. My feet were pretty numb so I didn’t push the pace much
on the ascent or decent.
Finally at about the time I reached the Bear Mountain summit
my feet started to warm up a little. This was a welcome relief as the descent
down Bear was pretty slick for my dull MicroSpikes and I needed all of the foot
function I could get.
About mid-way through the Bear Peak West Ridge Trail I ran
into another runner named Trip from the Denver area. He wasn’t too familiar
with the trail network so I spent about 10 minutes explaining his options for
getting back to Chautauqua from where we were. After getting back to running I
eventually hit a trail junction that didn’t look familiar at all. I took the
route that seemed to be the most logical progression of the trail…I guess
wrong. It ended up being an off-trail route that apparently enough people had
taken to the point where the snow was trampled down enough to look like a real
trail. The route ended up being a steep descending shortcut between the Bear
Peak West Ridge Trail and Bear Canyon. I slipped and stumbled down the trail
like a drunken idiot with my spikes basically serving no purpose at all. I
finally reached the Bear Canyon Trail about 0.75 mile from the Green Bear trail
junction.
As I made my way back up Bear Canyon to hop on Green Bear I started
eating a little snow to try to hydrate and conserve the water I had in my
remaining bottle. A couple heading down the canyon saw this and offered me some
of their extra water. Without this I was going to call the run short early
since I was pretty dehydrated already. The extra water now took away all
excuses for not seeing the run through to the end.
The trip up Green Bear offers several amazing views of Bear
and SoBo. I eventually reached the 4-way trail junction leading up to the Green
summit. Up to that point the route was fairly easy. The last 0.2 miles was
exhausting and proved to be challenging on dull spikes. I could never get my
spikes to fully pierce the ice which meant the ascent involved a whole lot of
slippage.
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| View of Bear (left) and SoBo (right) on the trip up Green Bear |
When I finally reached the summit I sat on the rock and
downed a few gels. I can honestly say that the view from the top of Green never
gets old. I spent about 15 minutes on the summit admiring the view and I
probably could have stayed up there for hours more.
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| Looking back at Bear from the summit of Green |
The descent from the summit back down to the Ranger trail
junction was just as slick as the ascent…Only more dangerous because I had
gravity going up against me on the steep staircases. I finally reached the
Ranger trail after some careful tip-toeing and then took off down the mountain.
I always enjoy the descent on Ranger. It’s a fun downhill run where you can
just open up and let lose. I pushed on to the Ute trail heading up towards
Flagstaff where I began hiking the majority of the ascent to the trail due to
essentially all of the snow/ice being melted off the south side and my being
too lazy to take off my spikes. Once I reached the Flagstaff trail junction I
took off at a decent pace. There were sections towards the top of Flagstaff
with little snow/ice cover which made for a much slower descent than usual, but
as I got further down into the areas with more tree cover the ice became more
prevalent and my pace picked up.
At the bottom of the Viewpoint trail I took off my spikes
and began running on the creek path. Here I was forced with the hardest decision
of the day: go home and have a beer (I was running right by my apartment) or
push on through Red Rocks and shimmy on up Sanitas to finish the mountain
marathon. I pushed on to Sanitas.
I had only been up to the top of Sanitas once since moving
to Boulder and it was about three months ago. I hated it. Well, here I was
again, heading up to the top of Sanitas…After being out on the trails for 7
hours or so. The stairs were much, much worse than I remembered. The only two
things keeping me going to the top were trying to catch a nice sunset at the
summit and finishing the damn mountain marathon. There were times when I was
forced into a hands-and-feet crawl up some of the rocky sections of the
mountain, but eventually I reached the Sanitas summit, the last one of the day.
It was a great feeling until I realized I had to go back down the same damn
trail I had just ascended. A steep, technical, rocky descent on exhausted legs
was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do at that moment.
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| At the summit of Sanitas after a successfully tagging all of the Boulder summits |
Once I reached the bottom I ran the “home stretch” through
Red Rocks and back to my apartment where I sat down and had a beer. Words can’t
describe how great it feels to sit down after being on your feet all day long.
In all, I covered 27 miles and 8,400 vertical feet over
7hours 42minutes. I was pleased with the run being as I’ve only been in Boulder
for 3 months and this was just my third full week of running since returning
from a knee injury.
The next day I fully intended to do a 16-mile recovery run
with relatively little vertical. That didn’t happen…The nice and easy recovery
run turned into another ascent of Green (that made 4 days in a row of ascending
Green) and Flagstaff with about 4,000 feet of vertical. Somehow my legs started
feeling good a few minutes into the run so I just went with it…
Weekly totals:
Miles: 90
Elevation Gain: 24,950 feet
Time: 21hours 10minutes
