Barr Trail 20-Miler

I'm posting this ahead of some other backlogged trail posts simply because it's a follow-up of the Western States 100 posts from the past weekend. After following that race online, I was psyched to go for a long run, and Sunday's run was 20+ miles and 6,000 feet of ascent, which is long -- for me :)

I rotated the recorded GPS track sideways, because there is significant lateral distance on this run, and a foreshortened frontal view does not show it:


Here is a close-up of the summit area, for those who are familiar with the trail:


The Barr Trail is the route for the Pikes Peak Marathon, and this time I made it within two miles of the summit before I was turned back by bad weather. This has happened a couple of times, because the weather on Pikes seems to be rather skittish, and because it's tough to travel from Denver and start early enough to avoid it. I may have to stay in Colorado Springs some time, so I can run the entire ascent again.

Another reason to get an early start is the heat. Even by 8:00-8:30 AM, it can easily be 70 degrees on the east-facing switchbacks near the base. When it's above a certain temp, I hike this part fast rather than run (I fast-hiked the switchbacks on Sunday). If I don't, I expend half my energy and water just getting through the first 1.7 miles. The reason for the heat is easy to see in the photo below: the open dirt trail forms a sort of curved solar oven, radiating heat from below and from the side:


At just under 3 miles into the trail, you get your first view of Pikes Peak, seen below. My run this day ended on the upper edge of the shadow being cast on the peak's right side. It's 7 miles away and 4,000 feet up from this spot, but you don't really think about it, you just run for a (long) while, and before you know it, you're there:


Along the way, the terrain varies between pine forest and aspen groves, with interesting rocks all around, and trails of granite gravel.


I should mention that the Barr Camp, which is roughly halfway to the top, has facilities including overnight bunks and a kitchen. Full-time caretakers Teresa and Neal Taylor don't provide potable water, but you can rent a water filter or buy a bottled drink for $2. Teresa also offered me a buckwheat pancake with apples, which was unsweetened or lightly sweetened, and it really hit the spot. I filled up my hydration pack with a bottle of lime Gatorade, which was diluted with the water already in the pack. I also crushed the empty plastic bottle and strapped it to my running pack, since I needed to carry it out of the park. I left them a few bucks in the donation box.

I don't have many photos of the next few miles, because my thoughts tend to be absorbed by the run at this point, and it's also largely wooded. There's one of the longest switchbacks I know leading up to the Bottomless Pit trail sign, and of course the altitude passes 11,000 feet on this section of the trail. Below is a photo from the trail around the A-Frame shelter, which is right where the trees end around 12,000 feet (the elevation of 11,500 feet on the old metal sign is wrong). The summit is shrouded in clouds:


A little higher up, I could look back east and see largely sunny skies (below); something that is also common here. There can be lightning on the peak and sun in Manitou Springs, although it often spreads down the valley later in the afternoon.


The following image shows the gathering gloom to the south, even as my ridge would have spotty sunshine for another 15 minutes.


While I was doing my hill climb, race cars were doing their own hill climb: the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and I could hear the whine of those cars as they hammered up the mountain on the other side of the peak. The winner on that day was this driver from Japan. It's the same race featured in this amazing video.

Below is the summit (still obscured by clouds) from near my turnaround point, right before I started to feel rain drops. When that happened, I hightailed it back down into the trees in about 10 minutes. These clouds can go from innocent-looking fog to spitting hail in about that stretch of time, and the onset of thunder on distant ridges meant my time was up. I find I spend a lot of my free time in Colorado avoiding storms :)


I realized something about the descent on this trip: if you are trying to outrun the rain as it rolls east in the afternoon, the terrain here makes it difficult. The reason is the switchbacks below tree line take you down, but they make very little eastern progress. You are basically in the same lateral area for 20-30 minutes while you descend, while the rain marches east to catch you. However, this time it didn't matter, because I made it down to Barr Camp before the rain, then outran it along the ridge line, clicking off 7:00-8:30 miles on the long ridge traverses on the way down.

During this downhill, I also realized I had been shortchanging myself on speed on level areas and non-technical downhills. This time, I let my forward travel carry me as far as possible while still maintaining a mid- to forefoot landing. It resulted in a nicely low-impact, floating stride as long as I was careful to lift my feet up underneath me. Lessening impact is especially helpful on a 5,000+ foot downhill.

Below are a few views from the trail on the way down, starting with Sheep Mountain. If you look at the first photo closely, you will see there is orange-ish rock or sand on the slopes on the left. I couldn't tell if this was due to the natural decay of pink granite, or the result of mining operations. I saw no obvious structures, but piles of gravel on mountainsides are often mine tailings. I couldn't find a single thing online about this mysterious orange gravel.


Here is a typical section of trail, with its interesting trees and rocks. Thankfully, the open trail was no longer being pounded by hot sun, so the temperature was very comfortable.


This a view back up the trail (west), showing the smooth granite formations typical of the Pike National Forest.


I was glad to get down to the bottom this time, because I was pretty beat and my water ran out towards the end. I stretched for a good 20 minutes until all tension was gone from my legs. Even so, during a stop for lunch at La Casita, I felt like an old man when I got out of the car.

The next day was not too bad, with only a bit of stiffness and soreness. I skipped a Monday run and ran a bit at Mount Falcon on Tuesday and my legs felt like new, but my stomach didn't seem to want to go for a run as much as I did, and I ended up walking some of the uphill. However, on the downhill I got in some more of that nice relaxed speed, and it felt great. I try to run so that I'm not impeding myself, but I can still stay in control. After all, if I fall and wreck myself, I won't be able to have any fun :)

Pomplamoose Covers Aerosmith

More music for fun, this time a cover of an Aerosmith song. Again, I'm impressed by the variation on the theme. Nice job.

iRunFar Interviews WS100 Victor Geoff Roes

This interview is interesting to me because it fills in the missing details of the final miles of last Saturday's Western States 100, from the victor Geoff Roes' perspective.

I followed the race online and by phone when I was out of the house, but the real details of what was going on were frustratingly few and far between. There were reports from the checkpoints, and then periods of silence as the runners headed out onto unpopulated sections of trail.

Roes mentions passing Kilian Jornet and Anton Krupicka, and what seems like an initial effort by Krupicka to regain the lead. It will be interesting to hear Anton's thoughts on the race.

St. Mary's Lake View

Here's another view from my St. Mary's glacier outing last month, from below the snow field and next to the lake below. Check out the wind-blasted trees in the front; the some of them can't even manage to grow any needles on the windward side. That's Mt Evans and Mt. Bierstadt in the background, with their tops just barely covered by clouds.

Geoff Roes Wins Western States 100

I can't believe I just followed a 15-hour, 100-mile trail race on Twitter all day.

I was planning on running today myself, but I got sucked in and couldn't achieve escape velocity from the race's gravitational pull. The race started at 5 AM PST, and I caught up when I got up in the morning. After a bit of blogging, I ran errands, had a new Belgian beer and lunch at Southern Sun, and checked the race obsessively, up until the finish at around 8 PM PST. And what a race.

Alaska resident Geoff Roes won in 15:07:04, cutting roughly 29 minutes off the previous course record. Boulder, CO's Anton Krupicka placed second in 15:13:53 (also beating the previous record), Spain's Kilian Jornet placed third in 16:04:49, and Fort Collins, CO resident Nick Clark placed a minute behind him in 16:05:56.

Anton, Geoff and Kilian led for the majority of the race, with Geoff falling away from two other leaders for a while, leaving Anton and Kilian to run side-by-side for what seemed like a long time. I thought for sure one of them would bolt and the others wouldn't be able to keep up. But this was not a 10k, or even a marathon, it was almost 4 marathons long, and you just never know.

Leading into mile 80 Geoff Roes began to pour it on, making up the gap and taking the lead around mile 88. I was noticeably bummed; I must have been invested in Anton winning at that point. As for Nick Clark, he seemed to maintain pace the entire race and was never more than an hour off the leader, nearly taking third place after Kilian fell back by 55 minutes.

Since Krupicka has been doing nothing but training on steep hills for the last six months (for example), I thought perhaps the final hills would be an opportunity for him, but Roes didn't give it up. Very impressive.

I have to say Twitter gets a largely positive review as a means for following such events. Overall it was great, and the Salomon team (Jornet's sponsor) tweeted, as did course observers. But since I was following a topic, i.e. following by searching on the term "#ws100", the results contained a fair amount of excess chatter as people re-tweeted the same message and asked the same questions over and over. There were also lots of posts of Twitpic links to racer photos, which is great for fans of each individual racer, but not good for the rest of us. But overall it worked well. The main impediment was a lack of first-hand observers on the course, which is understandable because it's long and somewhat remote.

Well, I've got to get going and get some sleep, since I have trail running of my own planned for tomorrow. I'm not sure where I'm going, but it seems like a good day to go long... :)

Pomplamoose Covers Gaga

This duo recently released a set of great short (2-3 minute) covers of a wide range of tunes. I have to hand it to anyone who can make me listen to the music of the thoroughly unappealing (to me) Lady Gaga. They transformed a song about an obnoxious, spoiled twit getting too many phone calls at a dance club into an upbeat pop piece. Brilliant.

Western States 100 Webcast

The Western States 100 is under way as of 5 AM PST today, and they have a webcast page that is updated with live web results. A 100-mile distance is still far beyond my capabilities (and probably beyond my desires), but I'm intrigued and follow a bit of the long-distance trail scene, especially with Anton Krupicka based out of Boulder right now and training on some of the same hills I run. I've enjoyed reading his blog this year.

At the Robinson Flat checkpoint (29.7 mi) it looks like the runners are stretching out a bit, with Kilian Jornet, Anton and Geoff Roes in front, but there is still a tough group of runners behind them, including Hal Koerner, Leigh Schmitt, Zach Miller, Nick Clark out of Fort Collins, and Josh Brimhall. There's some good geographical distribution among the three leads, too: Geoff is from Alaska, Anton is living in Boulder, and Kilian Jornet is from northern Spain. This year Jornet tackled running across the Pyrenees, a distance of 430 miles and 131,000 feet of vertical in 7 days.

But this is a 100-mile race in the California mountains, and I wouldn't envy anyone who had to pick the winner. Anything can happen.

I have no personal connections to anyone in the race, other than accidental proximity, i.e. Anton running in Boulder, and being a barista behind the counter when I stopped for coffee in Leadville after running La Plata. So all else equal, I gotta go with the local, Anton Krupicka. Go, team Boulder!

P.S. - The Salomon Running Facebook page is providing regular race updates, and because Jornet is a Salomon athlete and is in the lead group, these are effectively updates about the race leaders.

The fact that it's on Facebook also makes it easy to keep tabs on things using an iPhone or other mobile device. Honestly, I like the Facebook iPhone app way better than the web version, which is cluttered and confusing to navigate. But then, I'm only a software engineer, what do I know? ;)

Or follow on Twitter using tag #ws100.

Mariposa Lily Flower

My "flower of the week" right now (types of flowers seem to bloom in waves, one after the other) is this Mariposa Lily, which comes in many varieties and which has been blooming recently. It's fragile, and it's a bit hard to find an example that is intact, but it has an interesting and delicate form.


Of note are the fact that the forms occur in threes, and the petals have yellow hairs on the inside. Here is the same flower from the side:


Below is Boulder Mountain Park, showing the flowers in situ. This was taken at the end of my run after work on Wednesday. On this occasion I only had time to run up to the E.M. Greenman junction before sunset, about 3.3 miles round trip. I have my watch set to display both the sunset time and current time, and time my runs accordingly.


I have not always succeeded. Once in the fall, when Daylight Saving Time had just ended and we set our clocks back one hour in the morning (and before I had the Forerunner), I forgot to take this account during a run and had to find my way back to the trailhead in the dark along several miles of canyon road, rather than through miles of dark pine woods. That was not fun. It was also when I bought a headlamp, which I now take on longer outings.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted by Trey Givens. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Just a few of the many topics include protecting yourself from ObamaCare, Nathaniel Branden, a new house, and Mother of Exiles, a new blog on immigration. Enjoy!

St. Mary's Glacier Snowshoe

Since the country is starting to swelter in summer heat, how about a nice snowy post from a month ago in the high mountains? This report is about a snowshoe hike I did at St. Mary's Glacier (which, as reader Mark pointed out, is not a true glacier since it doesn't move). Here is my GPS track:


The hike starts a few hundred feet from a parking lot in Alice, CO featured in this post I did last month. The first part of the trail is on forest service roads through the pines, and leads up to the lake below the glacier. Most of the first section of trail looks something like this:


The photo below was taken just a little bit up the glacier, with the ascent path off-camera to the right. You can see ski/board tracks on this slope on the right. The pinkish-brown color of the snow is accurate; this is caused by airborne dust, and gave the snow the appearance of pink beach sand in places. Occasionally dust storms will blow over Colorado (often from the red sandstone of Utah) and give the snow a pink, orange or brown cast.


Up above the glacier on the ridge, the view opens up to high peaks. Below is the view toward the southwest, with Mount Evans on the far left, and Grays and Torreys to the right of middle. This is the large white area in the center of the GPS track image:


For this outing, I decided I would simply go as far as I could, given the weather and time, with the thought of reaching the summit of James Peak, which is on the right:


Due to the accessibility of the trailhead, the summit is only a 3.3 mile trip. However, it's still a 2,500 foot ascent to just over 13,000 feet, and the weather at the top was dramatically different than down below the glacier. Down there, it felt like a beach. Up here, the wind was howling and the sun kept hiding under the clouds. At least it made for some dramatic lighting.

Below is the view from part way up the slope to the summit. The trail comes up through the V-shaped notch between the light brown hills on the right.


The snow conditions made for pretty slow going; it was a combination of soft and crusty, so each step was a bit of work. Even at this point, it was still about a 1/2 mile round trip to the actual summit, and I was running late, so I stopped at a nice scenic spot to snap a couple of photos before heading back. Just FYI, I was standing on solid rock while taking the photo below :)


This view is farther to the right (north) overlooking more of the Indian Peaks:


On the 3-mile walk back to the parking lot, the wind died down and the warm afternoon sun followed me down. Melt water poured over and under the snow, and formed pools on the tundra. It was idyllic.


There is a small lake below the snow field, which was beginning to melt in late May. In the background is the Mount Evans massif. Note the pinkish snow in the lower left... it looks almost like dunes along the ocean, with grass on the side, except for the snowboard tracks in the middle.


Last but not least is this cool little hill to the left of the lake called Fox Mountain (at least on my topo map). It's surrounded by gnarled trees and full of nice outcroppings that would make it a nice scramble some time.

Gizmodo On iPhone OS 4 Features

For those of you with qualifying iPhones*, Gizmodo has a nice article on the more subtle features of the new OS. I downloaded the update when I got home last night, and while it was a bit slow, it wasn't awful considering how many people might have been downloading at the same time I was.


*iOS 4 works with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G. Not all features are compatible with all devices. For example, multitasking is available only with iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.

Toohey Nominated For Health Post

Wow. As I read through the list of viewpoints apparently advocated by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, President Obama's nominee for the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), I am stunned. This man is thoroughly evil. He is the soul mate of the fictional Ellsworth Toohey from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

The theme running through every opinion listed in this article is: human sacrifice. Not the literal, Bronze Age kind involving temples and stabs to the chest, but the modern, government-facilitated kind*, where success is sacrificed to failure and plenty is sacrificed to deprivation by outlawing the former for the sake of the latter. Here are just a few examples of such ideas:

• In his book, "Escape Fire: Designs for the Future of Health Care," Dr. Berwick assailed "the dangerous, toxic and expensive assumption that more is better."
• "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
• "Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault," he said at the annual conference of his institute in 1993. "In economic terms, it is waste."
• Dr. Berwick has championed efforts to "reduce the total supply of high-technology medical and surgical care"
• "The N.H.S. [the British National Health Service] is not just a national treasure," he wrote; "it is a global treasure." Among its virtues, he told a British audience, is that "you cap your health care budget."
• "Please don’t put your faith in market forces."
• "In the United States," he wrote, "competition is a major reason for our duplicative, supply-driven, fragmented care system."

I simply cannot imagine a worse person to be the head of a health care agency.

Bear in mind that when Dr. Berwick talks about free markets (which we do not have right now), he is talking about voluntary choice. When he talks about getting rid of markets, he means outlawing choice and voluntary decisions, and replacing them with edicts enforced at the point of a gun by the federal government.

Medical care is not some sort of free-standing, pre-existing object that simply needs to be distributed and managed properly. It is a product that is created and traded by those who created it, ideally on terms that they regard as acceptable. To treat it as if it were some sort of natural resource is to regard health care industry producers as mere beasts of burden, whose products are to be stolen and forcibly redistributed.

Values such as X-rays, drugs and surgical talent do not simply grow on trees. Human beings think and act to create them, and in a social context, they must be left free to engage in this activity, or society will perish (or suffer a downward spiral of stagnation and crisis, as is happening now). That is the source of the concept of "rights": a right is a moral imperative imposed on society to protect what is morally right, i.e. the ability to think and act, and therefore to survive. Dr. Berwick's opposing viewpoint is contrary to human nature, contrary to the nature of life, and is therefore morally wrong and doomed to fail.

It is also no mistake that advocates of government health care talk a lot about rationing. This is not because rationing is some sort of more efficient and necessary process than free choice and free markets. It is because the politics advocated by those same people kills economic production, thus approximating in real life the false premise that economics is a zero-sum game, meaning there is a fixed amount of wealth that must be distributed, and greater wealth implies stealing too great a share from the common pie.

It is not real-life economies that are zero-sum, but rather economies struggling under the state of stagnation induced by bad economic policy. With low or stagnant growth, there actually is something approximating a fixed "pie" of wealth. But that's a case against the restrictive policies, not a case for equally "dividing" a "pie" that is actually property owned by individuals, and which can only be "divided" by force.

We need to make sure this man does not get the job. Anyone who cares about freedom in health care, the quality of their care, and their ability to be able to make medical care choices, should contact their legislators to oppose this nominee. Here is a link with contact info for U.S. Senators.

*Of course, if this is implmented consistenly, you do end up with literal sacrifice. See Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Longs Peak From Chasm Lake Trail

This is one of my favorite views in the area: Longs Peak from the Chasm Lake trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is about 3/4 of a mile from the lake, which sits below the steep east face of the peak that you can see directly ahead.


This was from the run I did recently. I'll post more photos soon.

Loose Cow Rounded Up In Eagle

You gotta love it when a news site posts a story with a title like "Loose Cow Rounded Up In Eagle". The entire earth may not stop turning to read it, but it brings a smile to my face.

And I've had a couple of loose livestock experiences of my own. Once I was driving around Lakewood (a suburb of Denver) and came upon a horse that was all by itself, and seemed like it was patiently waiting to cross the street like a pedestrian. I slowed down, and it turned and started walking along the road instead. I guess it didn't like the odds of crossing the street after all. I must not have had my phone with me, because I usually call someone in situations like that, and I don't remember doing so.

Then again, maybe I was deterred by prior experience, such as in upstate NY when I once called animal control about a pack of feral dogs* killing something in the bushes (imagine desperate animal shrieks) near an apartment complex with plenty of children, and I was told "they're living things too". I guess they didn't have young kids living in that complex.

The aforementioned horse must have gotten out of an open gate at one of the neighborhood stables. Even though Lakewood and Arvada are well-developed Denver suburbs, they are dotted with small farms that seem to have stayed there while the suburbs grew up around them. I like that about Colorado: both the fact that the farms are left intact, and that zoning laws seem to allow a hodge-podge of land uses. It keeps it interesting. There are also a lot of horses here, and they are also allowed on many of the hiking/biking trails.

Some of the local open spaces and parks have trails that run through ranches, and horses and cows graze right there on and around the trails. For example:

Have you seen a cow from Eagle?
You have to open and close gates as you run, to keep the animals in. They end up scattered all over, and form a living obstacle course on the trails. When I approach, the adults grudgingly inch out of my way, and the young ones trot away with more energy and a bit more fear. They stare at me as I go by, batting their large eyelashes. Dodging cow patties is also part of running on these trails.

It strikes me as amusing that an animal that could put me in the hospital just by stepping on my foot is actually afraid of me. Instinct? Or experience? Since I once had a deer fawn walk right up to me with totally innocent curiosity (a scene right out of Bambi), I suspect that the fear is learned behavior.

*At the time, I thought they looked like coyotes, but I'm not sure.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

Adobe's plan to provide free beta versions of its next release of Lightroom, and thereby hook me like a meth addict, worked beautifully. This is just like the drug dealers those posters warned me about in school!

I just bought the most expensive software I've ever purchased at $299; the newly released Lightroom 3. After all, the beta expires at the end of the month, and then what? I can't go cold turkey!


Actually, if this is the most expensive software I've ever purchased, I'm doing OK. Adobe's pro packages can run over a thousand dollars. I am a hobby user, and I'm cheap, but I still like to get the right tool for the job, whether it's clothing, skis, or software.

I've been editing photos with Lightroom almost exclusively over the last couple of months, and I have to say it's worth the money. Some of the reasons are:

• Pleasing conversions from Canon camera raw format.
• Non-destructive edits (LR keeps your edits in metadata, and shows you the preview, rather than actually changing the original file).
• A nice batch export feature: select multiple photos in the interface, and export many at once.
• Although the editing interface took a while to get used to, I like it now and can find my way around quickly.
• I've only just scratched the surface with the image catalog, but so far so good. Again, there's a learning curve.

For more extensive edits or image rotation, I need to bring the images into Photoshop Elements, which is a solid program as well, and I think I only paid $80 for it when it was on sale.

Photoshop CE would be nice, but I don't have $699 lying around, and I don't get very fancy with my photo editing, just the basics: exposure, rotation, sharpness, and an occasional tint adjustment. The only thing I really miss from the full version is the Levels dialog (Elements has a dumbed-down version), but maybe someday they'll add that.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted at 3 Ring Binder. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Just some of the many topics include efficient gardening, Rwandan health care, public education, drizzle, and the BP spill. Enjoy!

Germani On Daniels On Rand

A few months ago, The New Criterion published a hit piece on Ayn Rand by Anthony Daniels. Since the Criterion purports to be a politically conservative journal, one might think that it would be predisposed to embrace someone who supports individualism and capitalism.

But no.

Of course this comes as no surprise to us Objectivists, who have experienced the opposition of conservatives all along, starting with Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley. Objectivism tends to irk religious conservatives in particular, due to its uncompromising stand on reason and egoism. Our closest conservative allies tend to be secular fiscal conservatives who lean towards libertarianism.

As I noted here and here, the gap between Daniels' account and the truth makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in a sidewalk.

I thought I did a decent job of addressing some of the article's major shortcomings, but this month's issue of The Objective Standard includes a detailed critique of Daniels' article by Alan Germani that is nothing short of brilliant. For those readers who thought Daniels knew what he was talking about, I'm here to tell you that this article shows what it means when someone knows Objectivism. Germani tears Daniels' article to shreds.

Here is one example of many: the attempt by Daniels to show a contradiction between Rand's economic views and her fiction. Daniels says:

Rand fails to notice that, by the standards of the marketplace, [Howard] Roark [The Fountainhead’s architect hero] is a comprehensive failure and [for much of the book] is prevented from being a success by market forces—all those supposed philistines who do not commission him, but retain instead the people whom he and Rand consider second-rate, philistine, and unoriginal. Either the marketplace is not always the source and proper judge of value, or Roark deserves his failure.

To which Germani responds:

Once again, Daniels is unable to quote or cite Rand in support of his claim, because she never wrote, said, or implied that the marketplace is “always the source and proper judge of value.” Rand held that the proper standard of value is the requirements of human life. She held that a “value” is “that which one acts to gain and/or keep” and that a morally legitimate value is one that furthers one’s life. Applying this view of values to the marketplace, Rand identified a distinction between values that are “philosophically objective” and those that are “socially objective”—a distinction that clarifies the seeming contradiction that Daniels believes he has found.

In support of which Germani provides the following Rand quote:

By “philosophically objective,” I mean a value estimated from the standpoint of the best possible to man, i.e., by the criterion of the most rational mind possessing the greatest knowledge, in a given category, in a given period, and in a defined context. . . . For instance, it can be rationally proved that . . . the works of Victor Hugo are objectively of immeasurably greater value than true-confession magazines. But if a given man’s intellectual potential can barely manage to enjoy true confessions, there is no reason why his meager earnings, the product of his effort, should be spent on books he cannot read. . . .

Just as the number of its adherents is not a proof of an idea’s truth or falsehood, of an art work’s merit or demerit, of a product’s efficacy or inefficacy—so the free-market value of goods or services does not necessarily represent their philosophically objective value, but only their socially objective value, i.e., the sum of the individual judgments of all the men involved in trade at a given time, the sum of what they valued, each in the context of his own life.

If this sounds like the Austrian School, it's no coincidence, since Rand knew both von Mises and Hayek, although she regarded them as philosophically mistaken, particularly with regard to ethics.

Germani's entire article is like this, dispatching Daniels' points one after the other. Devastating. Read the entire article here.

Green Mountain Drizzly Run

Sometimes going for a run in the mountains is less like Nature wrapping you in a pleasant, comforting blanket, and more like... well, a wet blanket.

I ran up Green Mountain in the clouds the other day, and it totally changed the character of the mountain; for worse (the water) and for better (the misty views). The clouds continually spewed a light drizzle, and drops of water rained from the trees, so after 2 hours I was basically drenched. Here is the view going into the run:


The actual summit of Green is normally out of sight; it's above and behind the tallest rock formation in the middle, and on this day, basically the upper 2/3rds of the mountains were in the clouds.

On certain parts of the trail, I felt like I was running back in the Midwest, or in a Pacific Northwest rain forest. Everything was a shocking green, humid and wet.


For those of you who are not locals, this is not what Colorado is like. Colorado is arid and high, and the mountains are dominated by either desert trees and shrubs, or conifers. Deciduous forests are usually limited to river beds, and, as it turns out, a few microclimate pockets such as in Boulder's Flatirons and damp valleys that trap moisture.

Although I like the dry air, and it's great for running because sweat dries quickly, I don't mind variety either, and some Colorado-muggy weather and green plants are sometimes welcome.


The clouds turned the forest trail into a series of misty and mysterious turns:


Wildflowers that might normally appear bedraggled and withered thrived in the rain:


Higher up, the terrain changes to mostly pine forest, but I was still in the low clouds, and it was still misty:


The summit normally provides sweeping views of both the plains to the east, and the Indian Peaks to the west. This time, there was a circle of pine trees, then nothing, as if the rest of the earth had disappeared.


My main concern with rain is not getting wet, but cooling down too much on a 2-hour run and getting chilled. On this day, it was cool but not cold. I've been susceptible to cold since I was a kid playing in the snow. It's amazing I ever learned to ski, but there's no better way to enjoy an otherwise cold, dark and snowy winter, than to take up an outdoor winter sport. I recommend it!

Due to my thorough drenching, though, I went to REI today and picked up their OXT Airflyte top, which is made of eVent waterproof/breathable fabric. eVent tests at the top of its class, even over GORE-TEX, when it comes to breathability. I have a Rab eVent jacket for winter, and I've never been hot, and it blocks wind 100%. A truly amazing material blend.

Mt. Galbraith Overlook

This view is from the Nightbird Gulch trail at Mount Galbraith Open Space in Golden, CO. I liked the spindly branches of the tree, topped by a wavy line of needles. In the valley, in the shadow cast by the mountains, is the city of Golden, and the low greenish-brown lump in the back right is Green Mountain in Lakewood. The view is looking south and slightly east.


This is my GPS track for the run, facing in a similar direction. The run distance was 5.5 miles, elevation gain was 1,300 feet:


Mount Galbraith is a hiker-only park, which is great; no mountain bikes. Let's just say that after four years of running trails, I've slowly drifted away from trails that allow bikes, out of self-preservation. Otherwise, one of these days my number will come up, and some ignoramus who doesn't follow the rules is going to hit me. Call me silly, but I'd rather be running than be in a hospital bed. But that whole topic is probably best left for another post.

BP Oil Spill Parody

This video only seems funny since I scratched my head over some of the repair attempts made by BP, and pondered the amount of time it took them to take substantive action after oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure it's not as easy as tying your shoe laces, but it certainly seems like they lacked a contingency plan.


On the serious side, while BP error may be the immediate cause of the spill, a more fundamental cause is the fact that oil companies have been chased out of more easily accessible areas of the country, including by making it illegal to drill for oil along vast swaths of the U.S. shoreline. This magnitude of disaster could have been avoided, and certainly made less difficult to deal with after the fact.

Happiness And Age Study

I heard this item on NPR the other day, in which they discussed the issue of personal happiness and age. A self-reported study indicates that people are happier before the age of 20, and then again after the age of 50, especially their 70s and 80s.

That's good news to me; since I've been pretty darn happy in my forties living in Colorado, I'm going to be positively ecstatic by the time I'm 70 :)

Of course there are hypotheses being formulated about why this is the case, for example:

One of the big theories out there is from Laura Carstensen at Stanford University. And her view is this, that when you're younger, you're making decisions with a forward-looking, aspirational head about you. That is, you're looking to achieve things in life. And that may mean that you're not really focusing on your current well-being.

However, in my view it's not necessary to have a forward-thinking outlook at the expense of the near term. If your thinking is consistently reality-oriented, i.e. based on a realistic appraisal of your situation, then there is no reason why you cannot focus on both the future and on your current condition. The future and present are merely areas of focus, not indicators of how good our choices are. This is a subjective* viewpoint, and does not address the real heart of what makes us happy.

I think that those who are "forward-thinking" in this negative sense (of ignoring the present) are not really forward-thinking at all, but are unrealistic-thinking. In other words, their aim -- conscious or not -- is not so much to achieve a realistic goal and thereby become happy, but to be in a position of not having achieved anything yet; to simply be in motion of some kind -- any kind. Once they attain their putative goal, such a person will not be happy but will instead move to some other goal without a full and integrated understanding of what they are doing. This is the mark of someone who has not completely thought out the goals they are pursuing, and does not understand the relation between their current condition and their long-term aspirations. I think we've all met people like this, and perhaps have engaged in such pursuits ourselves.

It's also not an all-or-nothing proposition; many of us follow this method in part, with some things and not others. It's quite difficult to develop a realistic and reasonable life plan, and follow through on it, as many teens contemplating college can tell you. It requires a great deal of introspection and planning, and frankly not all of us are capable of it to the same degree. I know I've gotten better over the years.

Which brings me to my explanation of the study's results: the reason that young people report being happy is because their goals are simple, and more easily attained, and the reason people report being happy in old age is because they have gotten better at setting complex goals realistically and attaining them, or have already attained them.

The complex period in between, which usually involves developing a career, establishing long-term romantic relationships and perhaps families, and entering into serious financial commitments, is undoubtedly difficult to navigate. If you don't go into it with a proper and fully conscious understanding, you can trap yourself in situations that are bad for you and can detract from your happiness.

My saving grace was having an independent-thinking friend point me to Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead in college, just when I needed guidance most. It's "just" a novel, but it lit the flame of curiosity and a conviction that there are ideas out there that can truly bring the world into focus. Twenty-five years later, those ideas still ring true, and have allowed me to live the good life, and keep my life on track and successful in spite of the occasional setback.

Which is why I am happy now, rather than waiting for 70.

*I am using this term here to mean an analytical viewpoint that focuses on arbitrary personal choice to the detriment of objectivity and understanding the real world, which I regard as a flawed viewpoint. I am not simply using it as a synonym for "pertaining to a state of mind", which I regard as a legitimate use of the term.

Bergen Peak Run

This post is about a run I did on May 9th up Bergen Peak in Evergreen, CO. It is the green mountain behind Elk Meadow Park. This run was 10 miles, with a total vertical gain/loss of 2,200 feet. Elevation was between 7,600 and 9,700 feet.


When you stand in the park and view the green hill above, it may cause you to question the term "peak", since I usually associate peaks and mountains with barren, rocky summits at high altitude. However, this mountain reaches to almost 10,000 feet, and it does have rocks on the top :) And it seems like a mountain when you are running the 5 mile ascent.

This distance is interesting in itself. The summit is roughly 2 lateral miles from the trailhead. However, there are so many twists and turns on the trail that it results in 5 miles of trail each way. Here is a typical trail section, with the nice afternoon light filtering through the trees:


This is when I count my blessings for being able to use trails like this for daily running. The air is fresh, it smells good, and you run by some nice views to the south:


This is also the run on which I shot some video of this ptarmigan:


What a cool little bird, and very tame, behaving a lot like the domestic chicken it resembles. Sometimes they scare the heck out of me by waiting until the last minute, then taking flight noisily. This one must be used to trail users.

Near the top some winter snow lingered, but most of the trail was dry.


Below is a view from the summit, looking southeast. You can just barely see the plains in the upper left. On a less hazy day, Pikes Peak would be visible on the horizon.

Yucca Flowers

I took these photos while running the Homestead trail from the South Mesa trailhead in Eldorado Springs, CO. This trail has been full of wildflowers, and different types keep blooming every week. This time it was yucca.


The color ranges from icy green to cream to reddish brown on the outside. The green is the color of pale green melon or a Luna Moth (the coolest moth ever). Below is a view of the entire plant.


Week in, week out, in the warm months I end up with scratches all over and don't even remember where I got them. Many times they are from snagging the scratchy stalks and leaves of yucca plants. Desert plants are not the most epidermis-friendly.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted by Titanic Deck Chairs. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Just a few of the many topics include environmentalism and the BP spill, rational green, and Atlas Shrugged podcasts. Enjoy!

6 Days Of Vertical Running

I did a running experiment last week, just to see what would happen, namely I ran several consecutive days on trails with a fair amount of vertical in them. I wanted to see how my body would adapt. Would I burn out? Would I adapt and the runs begin to feel normal?

For purposes of comparison, let me say that I am not a competitive runner; I just like to run on mountain trails. My running is done primarily after work, with longer runs on the weekend. Therefore the mileage and speeds are what I would consider a vigorous recreational level, rather than competitive.

My running streak lasted six days before I had to stop and catch up on the rest of my life, so to speak. The after-work runs were causing me to get home late, which in turn was pushing my day late enough to cause loss of sleep. If I do this again, I realize it's going to require some more efficient organization!

Total distance for six days was 38 miles, with a total vertical of 10,800 feet. Elevations ranged from 6,000 to 11,800 feet, with the biggest ascent being 2,800 feet (Chasm Lake). Four runs took place after work during the week, with two longer runs on the weekend.

Day 1 (Wednesday) was at Mount Galbraith west of Golden, CO:


Days 2 (Thursday), 4 (Saturday) and 6 (Monday) were at Boulder Mountain Park. The two runs on the right overlap somewhat:


Day 3 (Friday) was at Mount Falcon in Morrison, CO where I took this picture:


Day 5 (Sunday) was at Rocky Mountain National Park on the Longs Peak trail, going up to Chasm Lake and then back down:


The weekday runs after work were up to 1 hour and 40 minutes in length. The weekend runs were 2 and 4 hours. The latter was up to Chasm Lake, and was extended by the fact that I lost the trail in the snowpack, and ended up searching around in the trees with others who were also looking for the elusive snow-covered trail. It was kind of amusing, actually. A hiker eventually pulled out a GPS and we found the trail was only about 20 feet uphill. If you look at the bottom image you'll see a little yellow loop in the middle of the GPS track; that's me wandering around :)

I spotted one of the other hikers at the parking lot after I was done, and he said several of them had bushwhacked through woods to a creek we could see. I'll have to remember to bring a mapping GPS when there's significant snowpack.

Some observations from my experiment:

• It was tough to keep my legs loose through the six days, even with stretching.
• I did not fatigue that much overall, and could have kept going.
• The hardest day was day 4, on Green Mountain (it also has some of the steepest terrain). I definitely pushed into the pain zone trying to keep myself running the last half mile without stopping like I wanted to.
• The next day, number 5 at Chasm Lake, was surprisingly easy even though it was highest in elevation. It seemed like my body had finally become accustomed to what I was asking it to do.

The Chasm Lake run used to really hit me, and whenever I approached 11,000 feet I could feel it, like a bell going off in my head (this happened on every high-altitude run), but that does not seem to be true anymore. I've actually become accustomed to it. I think this is just due to the fact that I run higher and hillier terrain than I used to. This bodes well for peak runs this summer.

My overall conclusion is that my body seems to adapt to the running rather quickly, but that it will take some careful stretching and religious massage to keep my muscles properly relaxed through a longer stint of running if I decide to do so. And real discipline to manage the rest of my life in the meantime.