Purgatory Powder Day

Big snow was predicted for Durango Mountain starting on Wednesday during the day and continuing for two days, so it seemed Thursday would be the big ski day. However, I couldn't ski Thursday, only Wednesday. The area had been through a freeze-thaw cycle all week, so it looked like Wednesday would be light snow on top of hard, frozen packed powder. Thankfully, that turned out to be wrong.

We woke to snow on the ground in town, flurries, and increasing depth on the drive up to the ski area. Although the resort was reporting 0", there was clearly 5"-6" fresh on the ground when we got there. It would snow all day while we were skiing.


I took a run under the lift on the front side, and the steepest parts were a bit rocky with branches sticking out, but powder was everywhere. It only got deeper the farther back on the mountain we were, such as this:


Up near chair 3 and 8, there was not a sign of hardpack; nothing but big powder bumps. As usual, we headed back to chair 8.


We would get a good 1/4" of snow on us as we rode the lift up each time. Visibility was great because of proximity to the trees, and the snow just kept piling up.


This is the slope to the skier's right of the top of chair 8, which had knee-deep snow in spots as I bounded down in between powder-covered catwalks:


The section directly below the top of the lift 8 was great at first, but quickly became a jarring mix of powder and fast sections as it became tracked, so we branched out elsewhere.

This was about the hardest it snowed:


I think this is the middle of Wapiti after lunch:


Check out the slope angle at the bottom of chair 8 below. Even though I was descending 10-20 feet on every bump, it was very skiable because of the powder.


Snow and Mardi Gras beads alongside the chair lift:


By the time we got back to the parking lot, there was about 10" piled up:


We got out of there around 3:30 PM to beat the cars back to town on the snowy roads, which worked out great. Traffic was slow but polite. I can't remember the last time I drove back from skiing when people actually kept a reasonable distance between vehicles. No sign of the speeding, tailgating Denver "citiots" as I sometimes lovingly call them, out here in Durango. Nice!

Going into this ski day I was already regretting I wouldn't be able to ski on Thursday, the "real" powder day, but at the end of the day I absolutely didn't care. It was fantastic, and we had already skied some of the 20" total for Thursday anyway. This was a carbon copy of the powder day last Christmas; yet another great day at Purgatory.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted by Uncommon Sense. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

La Plata Peaks West Of Durango

After days of staring at walls and trying not to make others sick, I had to get out and around town today. I drove up onto the ridge above town and took a zoom shot of the La Platas from near Fort Lewis College:


Update: based on comments by Jaime, I've added a Google Earth image from a similar viewpoint showing the CO trail going over Kennebec Pass (yellow line on the right). I had no idea the trail crossed those peaks in plain view from town:


For comparison below is a wide-angle of the same view.

It's awfully muddy here right now, but hopefully I can get out for a road/path run before I leave. It all depends on when this head cold decides to pass. And on whether I ski tomorrow, for which I would doubtless pay in a few extra days of congestion, even though it's probably worth it.


Interesting note. When I bought the 4-pack of lift tickets from the Durango Mountain Resort tent at the Denver ski expo, I took my plastic lift ticket card (the same size as a credit card) but then left my Visa card at the booth. I was walking past the booth later when someone shouted my name, and it was Sven Brunso from the resort saying he had my card. He had left voice mails (ringer off), and emails (hadn't checked yet). I thanked him profusely.

Today I was at the Magpies coffee shop on Main Ave. and was browsing Backcountry magazine, when I noticed a shot that looked like something from Davenport's Antarctic trip. Instead, it was Sven skiing above a fjord in Iceland. Turns out he's a pro freeskier.

My Broken Avatar

FYI, if you Blogger users notice any of my old comments have a missing image icon instead of an avatar, that's my fault. Sorry if I make your comments section look like the domain of some sort of avatar slumlord.

You may notice this with comments I made during the last half of 2010, on the separate "Leave Your Comment" page only (the main page is fine). Not that anyone cares about such details other than me; that's just what I found out when I was trying to figure out the problem.

This image intentionally left broken
What happened is I went out on a limb recently and wrote a .NET app to scan my Picasa account for unused blog images and remove them (admittedly a risky operation), and it worked fine, except for removing 8 images with spaces in the name, one of which was my avatar during late 2010. Spaces can be represented both as "%20" and "+" depending on the context, and my program did not see them as matches. As far as I can tell, there's no way to restore the image to the original image path, and old Blogger comments have that image URL baked into them. They do not use your current avatar, they use the avatar at the time the comment was added. Bummer.

I've turned off profile images on comments for the time being on my blog. I don't like the broken image icons. The pages also load faster.

Durango Sunset

The western sky from Durango, CO. Hopefully I'll have some outdoor pics soon, since I have not been able to get out much yet due to illness. It's driving me nuts. Happily, I did manage to make it to Steamworks with my brother.


Thursday is a probable powder day at Purg, yet more family arrives Wednesday evening and I will be otherwise occupied. Nature is a cruel and unthinking beast.

Running activity has been nil, and will remain so for the rest of the week while I recover. Getting better takes far too long while lying around doing nothing, let alone while running in the freezing cold.

Holiday Drive Pictures

My drive from Denver to Durango during the holidays is a long one; driving legally, with stops for food, etc. it's 8 hours minimum for me, and I usually make other stops. However, you could certainly do a lot worse from a scenery standpoint.

This is Mount Princeton from just off Highway 285 south of Buena Vista:


The Sangre de Cristos from 285:


A wide shot of the same mountains. The San Luis valley is wi-i-i-i-i-de open:


A snowy Wolf Creek Pass:


The pass was generally clear but a couple of spots found me going too fast for comfort when I felt my wheels slip on a curve, even though I was well under the speed limit. I've had a lot of practice driving on snow, but Wolf Creek seems to have a higher percentage of ice underneath than other snowy roads I've driven. One time when I got to the bottom it was almost solid black ice on the initial straightaway towards Pagosa Springs. Yikes. They must have a healthy melt/freeze cycle going on in that area.

Winter Running With Krupicka

Merry Christmas!

This has probably made the rounds in Colorado's Front Range, but for those of you who aren't local, this is a fun video from Running Times of Anton Krupicka on nearby winter trails. This gives you a moving view of trails from which I've taken a lot of photos for this blog. Too bad I can't make it more often when the days are short. Good fun. - HT to GZ.

Mobile Fun With Gravity

The Blogger team finally (!) introduced mobile rendering of their blogs, and I enabled this feature so my site renders in a mobile version if you browse using a phone. It's not fancy, and it's in beta (so it may change, break or have bugs) but it's way better than browsing the full version on a tiny screen. I'm not sure what will happen with tablets; I'll have to see if my brother has his iPad with him and check it out first hand.


Details about this new feature are here. To enable it for you own Blogger site, go to your Dashboard, and under "Tools and Resources" at the bottom, click on the "Blogger in Draft" link at the bottom, and then follow the instructions in the article.

I have to admit I don't fully understand the relation between "Blogger in Draft" (BID) (which demos new features and takes you to a different URL) and the existing version. For example, enabling mobile templates is done via the BID link, but it seems to stick even if you go back to the old URL and the old post editor. I guess it's just a way to access the new settings.

Break Time

Thursday was day 3 without running in a row, for a lot of reasons: being busy and being close to getting a cold that I don't want to tempt into blooming in full. Last time I tried to run through an illness, I think it added about a week onto it. Bad idea.

I went for a short walk during lunch, at Belmar Park on an absolutely beautiful winter day. There was a haze in front of the mountains, which are typically crisp from Lakewood even in this day and age of smog. Lots of water birds were hanging out, and taking off and landing, on the remaining open areas of water. For a generally arid climate, Colorado has lots of ducks, geese, herons and other water-craving species on its scattered lakes.


I'm taking time off for vacation, but hopefully that will render pictures of the San Juans, and some catch-up time for posts on outings from last summer.

And it would be good to do a look back at the year, and to look forward as well.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted by Mother of Exiles. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Enjoy!

Bad News For The Internet

As usual, a regulatory agency demonstrates its lack of understanding of fundamental principles of government, as the FCC approves rules for so-called net neutrality.

The ruling is not surprising, given the entire issue of net neutrality is flawed as typically discussed. Even a technical publication like Ars Technica never seems to get this issue right. In a recent review of four books on the topic, it confuses free speech protections with rightful exercise of property rights, when it says our Constitution "hobbles any government attempt to act against private censorship".

"Private censorship"? There is no such thing.

Don't get me wrong; I understand the concept of restricting content. I'm simply saying that restricting content on your own property -- which is what Internet pipe really is -- should be protected speech just like writing in a newspaper without being shut down. They both extend from the same individual right to act freely within your rightful domain provided you don't physically coerce someone else.

To blur the distinction between state and private restrictions on content is to reverse direction from protecting freedom to killing it.

It's bad to have government suppressing speech, but it's equally bad to have government forcibly prevent private business from acting on its rights by allowing and disallowing any speech it wants on its property. Both cases involve the same transgression: violating individual rights. Both are morally wrong, for the exact same reason.

As with the recent McDonald's issue, the solution to this issue for the content provider is free choice, i.e. the fact that nobody is physically coercing them to use the Internet pipe. But as I said then:

Note that the responsibility to choose does not entail forcing some people to provide a certain number of choices for you (which is the premise behind laws like antitrust that allegedly promote "competition"), or making it easier for you by depriving others of liberty (such as this case). It means not forcibly preventing you from making a choice among the options you already have.

Key words: "already have". If you can't voluntarily secure the access you want, it is not acceptable for the government to force a business to provide it. That is slavery.

Some claim that providers have no choice, that carriers have a stranglehold on pipeline, and that's a threat to them, to consumers, and to the Internet economy (!). So, someone being able to freely use their property is bad for the free markets, but telling them what to do helps commerce? LOL.

The ultimate irony -- more ironic that claiming that groups advocating a command economy are good for consumers -- is that the limited competition in communications is the government's fault. There are licensing requirements, restrictions on content, restrictions on community access, on pricing, mandates on plans offered, and so on ad nauseum. You can't simply buy property access from private individuals and start providing cable (or other utility) service, which you should be able to do. So, basically the government is saying "We have crippled real competition in the marketplace and helped to establish virtual monopolies, and our solution to this problem is to further restrict your freedom by violating your property rights".

Nonsense. And they do not have the moral right to do it.

Humans must think and act in order to survive. To prevent this in any manner is to prevent us from living. It is anti-life. And you see the result in the grey stagnation of our economy and the sense that things are no longer right in America. Hint: it's not "greed", or the rule of a particular political party. It's the idea that we live only to serve others, and should not be free to live our lives peacefully as we see fit. Flourishing can only happen when we are free to think and act, and free to live our lives free from coercion by government and other citizens.

This ruling is bad for consumers and bad for the industry, and will only result in further intrusions by regulators as things continue to get worse and require more government "solutions".

The real answer is to have truly free markets, instead of the awful government-botched semi-monopolies we have now.

Northern Winter Solstice!

Today is the shortest day of the year, at 9h 21m 22s, with solstice actually occurring at 4:38 MST. The length of day is calculated for "Denver", whatever that means... since my GPS shows a different sunset time depending on what trail I'm running. Just a bit farther east or west makes a difference.

Here's a nice animation. Click on "Show Earth Profile" for more info, then click the play button.

It's all uphill from here. Well, almost.

Sunrise will continue to get a bit later (4 minutes) until January 2nd, and won't be back to this morning's value until about mid-January. It will be about 1 hour earlier by the time change in March.

Sunset has already been getting later for a couple of weeks now, and will be an hour later by mid-February.

That wasn't so bad, was it?

Lucho posted photos of the lunar eclipse if you slept through it like I did. I have a propensity to overdo it leading up to vacations, sometimes getting sick, so I'm getting my sleep this week.

Monday Night Run

Another 5k "leg massage" run, HR around 135 average (half of it was uphill before I was warmed up). Sunday I worked late, so I was tired and almost didn't head out. But a 1/2-hour run is hard to turn down, and it's so pleasant out at night with the moon, stars and clouds above, and the city lights to the east. I'm actually enjoying running at night.


I'm not sure why the grass around this lawn light up at the community college looks so green, when everything else is brown. I don't think lawns have been watered for a month or two. Maybe the color of the lamp is throwing the camera off.

Sunday Run, Path From The Past

Sunday was a relaxed medium (by this month's standards) street run. Distance 7.3 miles, time 1:08, and gain/loss 562 feet.

My right knee ached twice on downhill streets, but I relaxed my landing and it went away. I need to work on that leg (roller/manual). Stopped only a couple of times for cars and once to adjust the headlamp; about 2 minutes total.

I don't have any photos, so instead here's a view from the Amherst, NY bike path I used to run on:


It was pretty nice even though the surrounding land was almost totally flat; the scenery was pleasant and it followed the languid Ellicott Creek. Even though it ran past office parks and the University at Buffalo, I actually saw as much wildlife on that trail as I do now in the Rocky Mountains. I didn't hear elk bugling though.

I spent many hours on that path, and basically learned to run on its asphalt-paved 5.1 miles. It seemed to change just enough through the seasons to remain interesting.

Photo taken using an Olympus Stylus compact film camera, output to Kodak Photo CD (also a blast from the past).

The Needle Mountains Redux

From the archives. I was reviewing this year's photos and I just really like this one, taken from the top of Castle Rock north of Durango. Zoom in and check out those awesome peaks in the middle.


They are rugged and hard to get to, accessed most often either by a long hike starting at the Purgatory Flats trailhead off US 550, or from the Needleton stop on the Durango & Silverton, deep in the Animus River canyon. Both the full train trip and the mountains are on "the list".

Saturday Run

It was a nice day Saturday, and was glad I got out for a run while there was still a bit of sun. Amazingly, there was not a single runner or biker on the home hill, just neighborhood people with dogs.

This is the start of the trail at 6th Avenue West Park, which my father referred to as "a ditch" when we walked there:


True, it's just a ravine between a street and some houses on a hill, with a creek running through it. That's OK, a lot of conserved spaces are leftovers that can't hold homes, or no longer have an economic use, such as abandoned train tracks. Think of all the bike paths across the country that are on canals and rail lines. I like those spaces.

This ravine is farther up on the east side of the mountain, due west of Exposition Place. What a great bit of singletrack:


It was shared with a group of deer who watched me carefully as I ran by:


Some of them end up like this:


Another deer leg in paradise. This was downhill from the deer carcass, about 200 feet from some homes, so it may have moved downhill by Fido, or maybe some bold coyotes?

If you run uphill from the north or east side of Green Mountain, you hit the Summit Loop Trail, which circles part of the upper slopes of the mountain. It's a nice somewhat level ribbon of trail with good views. There was a haze hanging over the area on this day:


Distance was 8 miles, time 1:36, and elevation gain/loss 1,164 feet.

I deliberately tried not to overtax myself and stay under my LT (something I have no problem doing - heh). Nonetheless after reading this, I recognized myself as someone who does drop an occasional hard effort into easy runs. Discipline!

Same issue: an article on Aspen's Christy McMahon, the first woman to ski all of Colorado's 14ers. Her and husband Ted's blog has some great trip reports and photos.

Sue McDonald's To Avoid Saying "No"

You have probably heard that an ironically-named advocacy group called The Center for Science in the Public Interest (apparently there is a science of shakedowns now) is trying to deprive McDonald's of their right to advertise that they include toys with Happy Meals. GZ mentioned it on his blog and ended up with a flurry of comments. Honestly, it would be funny if it weren't so mindlessly unjust.

I'm not going to talk about any peripheral issues here, because they are irrelevant, such as: where McDonald's makes the toys, how much the workers are paid, whether you think their food is healthy, and what its other policies are. People might not like those policies, or other things McDonald's does, but they have absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand.

I'm not going to mince words; this lawsuit is utterly ridiculous, morally corrupt, lazy and cowardly.

And finally, I'm not going to pretend that this is only about advertising, because we all know that this won't stop here, and someone will try to ban the toys themselves, then fast food itself. Such laws are already being passed.

The issue at hand is that of a principle: the inalienable right of an individual or company to engage in a peaceful, non-fraudulent activity; a right that -- unfortunately -- few governments and citizens properly acknowledge.

It is about the responsibility of parents to actually engage in parenting, rather than blaming others because they don't want to enforce rules with their children.

It's about the ability of people who do want Happy Meals to be able to hear about them and continue to buy them, by engaging in an entirely peaceful business transaction with McDonald's, which nobody has a right to interfere with.

Responsibility & Choice

The fact that we, as adults, are responsible for our actions -- including rearing children, is true for all times and all places. It is true whether we live on a farm and never see a fast-food restaurant, or if we live in the city and that's the only thing nearby. The presence of external temptations does not relieve people of responsibility.

Note that the responsibility to choose does not entail forcing some people to provide a certain number of choices for you (which is the premise behind laws like antitrust that allegedly promote "competition"), or making it easier for you by depriving others of liberty (such as this case). It means not forcibly preventing you from making a choice among the options you already have. Choice does not require that your choices be easy, "fair", or plentiful. The ability to choose is not destroyed or removed because wealthy companies wage advertising campaigns to try to lure people to buy their products.

It would actually be better to say that "choosing", rather than "choice", because this clearly places the emphasis on the action. As Ayn Rand pointed out:

A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.
...
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights. [my emphasis]

On the other hand, if you insist that rights should entail the right to a particular choice or product, or in the case of this particular lawsuit, to remove a particular choice, you are necessarily violating someone's rights by compelling them to provide it, or not provide it. There is a word for this as well: slavery.

I'm taking pains to make this distinction because today's culture does not make it. And a line in the sand that is not seen, also cannot be defended. It is the line between having a free society where everyone's rights are protected equally, and moving towards authoritarian government.

Government should not outlaw or punish whatever someone or some group finds uncomfortable or objectionable, or equalize imaginary injustices created by corporate wealth. People's rights (including those of corporations) are not to be thrown out simply because someone is lazy and cannot control their children. People's rights are not to be "weighed" against what someone else does not like. If you don't like McDonald's, drive on. If you don't like your children complaining about it, then stop sitting them in front of the TV where they see the ads.

In a word, grow up and act like an adult human being.

Friday Short Jog

Ran with the HR monitor to see how I was doing with the cold, simply out of curiosity. I remember my heart rate being about 10 bpm high on a chilly morning, but tonight at 27 degrees (about the same temp) it was just barely over normal. I might be adjusting a little.

I fooled around with the camera trying to get a shot of the moon, sitting on the sidewalk propping stuff under it to get the angle right. The blue light is my headlamp. The shots didn't turn out like much, but this one at least looks sort of mysterious. I've been doing this a lot on dark streets lately (lol), and some people probably wonder what the heck I'm doing. Some youngish college-age kids sharing a ride drove by to take a look at me while passing through the parking lot to their other vehicle.


Ran an easy 5k, 33 minutes, 218 feet of gain/loss, avg. heart rate 128, and HR max 158. It was a beautiful still night and I felt good, I just hadn't eaten dinner and wanted to get back home. I can get a decent run in tomorrow, sometime in the middle of my Christmas to-do list.

Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up is hosted by Erosophia. The Round Up features posts by bloggers who advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

A couple of posts on topics I've been thinking about lately: Time for a Free Market in the Alcohol Industry and The Racist Roots of Anti-Immigration Activists Part II: UnFAIR.

Alcohol laws are a mess throughout the country. I should add that I don't regard the recent proposals in Colorado as good examples of free market ideas. See my comments below the GJ Free Press article.

Immigration is a tough one, because it involves so many factors, such as taxation, entitlement programs, budgets, security, the "War on Drugs", and deals with extremely abstract issues such as the proper nature of government, which reasonable people can easily disagree on. A good essay on the general Objectivist position is Immigration and Individual Rights. The gist of it is that governments typically overstep their proper bounds of authority and use borders to engage in economic protectionism (which is a violation of every potential trader's rights) and other restrictive policies guided by bad economics, bad moral principles, and possibly racism, rather than merely securing the safety of its citizens.

Thursday Night Run

This image was taken in the dark at 8:34 PM, but it's a 15-second exposure further lightened during processing. That's a bit of Green Mountain, Lakewood in the background, and you can see some Christmas lights here and there. An unexpected bonus of the light displays is they help me run at night. So this year, I hope they keep them up for a while.


It was a short run because I had things to do at home: 3.69 miles, time 38:55, and elevation gain/loss 302 feet. Day 36 in a row. I've got a couple of good street loops now, and I've learned some shortcuts through parking lots and along social trails between things. That helps string the route together.

Thursday was borderline face mask weather: 25 degrees with wind most of the time, mostly from my blazing speed. Heh. Still, we've been spared really cold weather -- so far. I know it's coming.

Had a short debate in the comments section of GZ's blog about McDonald's getting sued for the sin of putting toys in their meals; a lawsuit that I think is just utterly wrong. GZ is on board, but a particular commenter wasn't getting it and was being obnoxious, so I'll let GZ have the last word (nice one)! I'll try to post something on that later after I attend to some pressing holiday to-dos :)

P.S.

• I don't follow Rush Limbaugh, and I haven't the faintest idea what he says, other than remembering him as being conservative. I usually find conservative TV/radio pundits to be off the mark, though I may agree on some issues. I'm an Objectivist, which is closer to a libertarian, rather than a Republican or conservative.
• When you hear someone say that freedom (or any other principle) is merely "hypothetical" rather than practical, realize that no conceptual argument will ever convince them. Logical arguments require abstract principles that tie the facts together. Knowing this will save you from wondering why they keep piling on seemingly unrelated facts in an attempt to convince you, and why they act like you haven't said anything when you state broad principles. You can't win. My advice: just bail out when you've stated your position sufficiently.

Wednesday Night Run

I watched the fog of snow showers hovering over the foothills Wednesday through which Lucho rode, but nothing but brief rainfall materialized on the plains. I was kind of looking forward to running through some snow on my home turf.

During my run a cold wind was blowing as if bad weather was imminent, but I think it went south. Still, I stopped back at home to change into a warmer hat halfway through my run.


Distance was 6.8 miles, time 1:13, and elevation gain/loss 525 feet. I felt tired.

I have not been on trails much lately, mainly because I want to run trails during daylight, and there's little of that right now. My easily-accessible local ravine apparently has a resident lion. Winter weekends are ruled by snow reports and skiing, and to some extent I run during the leftover time. So, I've been bouncing back and forth between evening and dawn, doing relatively short runs, but at least running. The nearby streets are hilly; that helps as a substitute for mountain parks. I guess I've slipped into a bit of a low point right now, which I'm still confident I can dispel.

Nonetheless, for a lot of reasons, I will welcome the longer days ahead.

Vail Powder Day/Run

All last week I'd been eyeing the weather for central Colorado, and the predicted storm materialized on Friday and Saturday. When I woke up, Breckenridge had gotten 14" of snow in 24 hours, but personal preference caused me to favor the 9" at Vail.

I left at 6:30 AM, which is really too late on a powder day; I should have left at 6:00. Due to weather and traffic, the drive to Vail took a whopping 2 1/2 hours. The drive was slow but mellow until Vail Pass, where I was tailgated and passed by various Canyonero-sized vehicles on slippery snow barreling down the mountain highway as if the road were dry. You highway menaces need to do a little remedial reading.

However, all that melted away once I got on the mountain.

Vail is a big resort, and you can spend a lot of time on catwalks trying to get where you want to go. I've learned to traverse the mountain by zigzagging up and down, rather than laterally via catwalks; you get more skiing done that way. So, from the Eagle Bahn chair I tacked my way over to China Bowl, getting in a few blue runs and a couple of great black runs on trampoline bumps along the way. Here's the view part way down Jade Glade -- I think:


I skied a couple of runs in China Bowl; big choppy powder bumps and a few slow-motion fresh lines through the trees.

Then it was off for one lap of Siberia, where I slipped through an easy spot in a cornice and watched some guys eat it one after the other coming over the top (they were laughing, thankfully). The snow was pretty good back there; it was a tad wind-packed, but it tended to explode into loose stuff when you hit it:


Then it was over to the pommel lift to the Mongolia Bowls, to see about hiking for some turns. If the snow was good over there, I wanted to hike up to the top of "Mini Vail", my name for the hill with the East Vail BC gate at the top, and ski down the front. It's about a 15-minute hike up, and here is a view uphill (the skis are balanced on my shoulder):


See how narrow that track is? Whoever made the boot tracks must have had two left feet, because both of my feet kept slipping inward and I'd go off balance. It must have been a tightrope walker. So, I kicked in some wider steps along the way.

Also, see that grey haze at the top? That's the cloud I'm walking up into. This is the view downhill from within the cloud:


The powder was almost up to my knees, and on a sunny day, it would have been awesome. However, I could not see any details on the slope ahead of me at all. I couldn't tell whether I was on level ground, a slope, or looking over a drop. Also, the snow was fluffy enough that I could not even tell how fast I was going or if I was stopped. I fell over moving about 1 mph because my senses could not keep track of how I was oriented in space! So, unfortunately to some extent my side trip was a waste, but once I got down below the fog, the powder was great.

As always, 3:30 came too soon, and the Back Bowls were closing for the day. I made my way to the front side for once last run, and hit some great choppy bumps on the way down. The sky was clear on this part of the mountain.


I think the trail below is Whistle Pig, which I didn't realize until recently is another term for marmot:


I stopped at the deserted Mid Vail lodge to get a drink (i.e. water). This is a photo from the dining area:


Afterwards I stowed my stuff in the car, changed into what passed for running clothes (winter boots, convertible pants, long-sleeve top, etc. -- it's all I brought with me) and went for a little jog to squeeze in a run for the day. It was nothing strenuous and as much a way to get to Christy Sports for something I needed, as real exercise. Some of the suburban side roads were nice, and had enormous homes on them. Oh, to live in one of those places!

Back in town, I passed this pool with steam coming off it, which would have been a great end to the day. The phosphorescent glow caught my eye:


As it was, I headed back to my modest yet affordable ($65 + tax) room at the Silver Inn in Silverthorne. Dinner was at Smash Burger, which was good as usual. Somehow I misread the menu and ordered the Colorado, thinking it was a burger with cheddar. Instead, it's a burger with jalapenos and pepper jack. Interesting, but a little too much heat for me.

I have to say I still don't get a great night's sleep at 8,700 feet. I often prepare for another day or half day (to beat the traffic) only to bail when I feel like a beating victim upon waking up. Although I'm still not sure if it's the altitude, the activities, the evening beer, or all of the above.

Regardless, it was another fine outing in the high country.

Meteors And Coyotes

Monday's street run was an odd one; late, at 10:30 PM, and a bit dreamlike from the things that populated it.

A bright moon with a faint halo hung in the sky to the west. Meteors streaked past every so often, and Orion was partway through a celestial cartwheel. As I ran up a dark bit of sidewalk between a berm and an unlit hill, a group of coyotes started their spooky yowling about 50 yards uphill. The suburban streets were pretty much deserted, and nocturnal animals had begun their night shift in our absence.


As I walked around the hill, and by a brightly lit parking lot to see if I could spot the coyotes, all the parking lot lights went out as if my presence had turned them off, leaving me nearly in the dark. I retreated towards the lights of streets and buildings.

A handful of people were out: a few cars, a dark figure walking a snarling dog on a taut leash, a silent skateboarder, some people in a parking lot running around and laughing, with a little dog barking crazily.

As I ran back down to a busier area, thick with apartments and offices with immaculate landscaping, near a stoplight a three-point (3 x 3) buck stood on the sidewalk directly in my path. Some plastic tape around a construction area ruffled in the wind and I glanced behind me nervously.

Maybe it was time to go home and get some sleep.

Sundog At Vail

At the end of the day Saturday, I saw a small sundog from Vail Mountain just as I was getting ready to head down to the base area for the day.


Since it was a powder day, I skied all the way down instead of downloading from Mid Vail to avoid the skid-fest. Most of the way down was awesome, with soft bumps everywhere.

Everywhere, that is, except for Pepi's Face, a black run at the very bottom. It was shaved, smooth hardpack, something I didn't realize until I was down hill too far to bother with going back up. Conditions were like this, only without bumps. I tried to carve a turn and just slid. There was a ribbon of rough snow on the sides, where I was finally able to carve turns the rest of the way down. Maybe it's time to break out one of these.

Sunday Short Run

Another shorty. I drove back from the mountains today and did some housework (exciting), then got out for a short run at Ulysses Park in Golden, and did a few laps on the middle school cinder track next door. This photo is from near the track, with Green Mountain in Lakewood behind:


To me this looks more like a painting than a photograph. Maybe it's the dramatic colors and the painterly lines of the clouds. I didn't touch the color; that's the way it was.

Roads are definitely a faster surface than cinders; my feet were slipping slightly, even with trail shoes. And if my pace was any indication, I won't be running 8:00 for a half marathon any time soon. Or, maybe it was the skiing yesterday.

Clouds From Genesee Park

Clouds formed an interesting composition as viewed from the roadside at Genesee Park west of Denver. This was a quick stop on the way home from the mountains.


It was a great powder day at Vail on Saturday (more later), and mostly relaxation and catch-up on a large backlog of to-dos, on Sunday.

Mount Antero Run

No, this is not a late autumn high peak outing; it's a long-overdue post on my run up Mount Antero this summer. Antero was the last Sawatch Range 14er I had left to summit, and I made it to the top on yet another stellar weather day, on September 5, 2010.

I parked on the road next to the Baldwin Gulch trailhead, which is right on the best dirt road in Colorado (at least among the access roads I've been on) a.k.a. Chaffee County Road 162. Here is the GPS track:


Total distance was 15.86 miles, elapsed time was 5:36, and elevation gain/loss was 5,341 feet. Due to the high quality of the trail, i.e. being on a Jeep road, when I was moving, I was running, except for some warm stretches at the bottom and the last part near the summit. As always this was not without lots of stops, so I'm guessing the total time is about 1 hour longer than a continuous run to the summit and back would have been. I don't know for sure.

This is the view headed towards the trailhead from US 285. That's Mount Princeton straight ahead and Antero on the left. The county access road goes down the valley in the middle:


I parked on the road near the trailhead, where there are wide shoulders. The road/trail leaves right from this road and ascends steeply through partly open forest. It can get warm in the sun, and I took it easy in the sunny spots so I didn't get too dehydrated. This is from maybe a mile up, looking down at a red-roofed building through the trees:


The road winds up the valley for a few miles, and this section is really good mountain running on gently-sloped gravel and dirt.

Once in the open, the surrounding mountains take on the appearance of gentle gravel piles. At least some of this may be the product of mining, since Antero is known for its gems.


It's also a popular Jeep outing, and vehicles were up and down the road all day. Normally I'm not crazy about breathing exhaust and hearing engines, but there were only about 10 vehicles total, and drivers were uniformly polite and careful as they drove. We engaged in good-natured competition on the uphill trek, and I got lots of verbal high-fives from passing drivers as I was running up. Very nice. The Jeep in the background and I leapfrogged each other all the way up, and I only passed when they stopped for lunch. We reached the top end of the road at the same time.


This is a typical stretch of road on the way up:


This is Cronin Peak across the valley:


At the end of a long stretch of switchbacks, the trail tops out on a somewhat flat saddle between Antero and Mount White (ahead):


At this point I started feeling the wind, and put on my Gore-TEX hoodie. There are some large informative signs here where at least three roads meet, but I don't recall the contents; maybe they were historical? I did a Google search and didn't find anything, but picked up Anton's post on a run up Antero, in which he experienced the same intense wind on the upper section. Others such as Jim P were being pounded by wind on the same day as my outing.

Below is the view towards the summit, which is on the left. The trail circles around behind the gravel hill the right, and then slopes to a small flat parking area, leaving the last section for foot travel:


This is the view from the summit, looking down on that parking area atop the gravel hill. There were people hunting for gems near the lot, and you could hear hammers ringing occasionally.


Both up and down this ridge, the wind was so strong I had to crouch in the shadow of the boulders to walk safely. There was not a steep drop, but I still could have lost my balance and been hurt. Just below the gravel hill, a hiker got blown to the ground and was writhing in pain, saying his finger was broken. He had a buddy with him, and there was nothing I could do but sympathize. Ouch.

On the descent behind the gravel hill you can see here, the wind was simply ridiculous. It was a steady 20-30 mph, with really powerful gusts that threatened to blow me over, and dust devils to boot. When they passed by, it was like someone was standing a few feet away throwing handfuls of gravel and dust in my face. I was cursing at the wind at the top of my voice like I had Tourette's (nobody was around, so why not?). It was nuts.


For whatever reason, when I got down near the sign in this flat area, the wind died down to simply "breezy" and I could just enjoy the view and the great weather.


This view looks back down the valley, over the many switchbacks. The road and my car are in the valley in front of the mountains in the back, about 7 miles away:


The geology of this mountain was pretty interesting, mainly in the colors of rock that were present, including whites and ochres. This gully was filled with brilliant white rock:


The contrast can also be seen in this view looking back up:


It was great to have a long downhill stretch, although my legs began to tire in the last couple of miles. The weather was sunny and moderate in the valley, which was refreshing after the sandblasting I got near the summit. The last stretch near the bottom was through the aspens again; something I can never resist taking pictures of.


Although Antero was my last Sawatch 14er to summit, I'll be back. Of the peaks in the area, Harvard was one of my favorites for the nice alpine valley; even though the access road was rough and I parked a couple miles downhill. The Shavano trail was great too, because it weaved in and out of ravines in the woods, and there was good variety above tree line. And I like the Missouri Gulch area with access to Belford/Oxford/Missouri, in spite of the washboard road. Having been there four (?) times now, it's familiar ground, but the trail variety, the geology of Belford, the long (windy) alpine trek to Oxford, and the jagged rocks at the top of Missouri were all fun.