The Scene Begins

I’ve known about the Colorado Trail Race for a few years, and have been wanting to go check out the start since it begins just a mile and a half from my house.  I finally made that happen by getting up at 05:00 Monday morning and heading down to the Waterton Canyon trailhead, which is the beginning of the 470 mile Colorado Trail.

The parking lot was just starting to show some signs of life as the sky got lighter in advance of the 6:00 AM start.

The CTR is a totally self-supported event.  No crews or caching allowed.  Stocking up at gas stations and grocery stores whenever the route passes civilization seems to be the way to go.  Riding from convenience store to convenience store – now that’s my kind of race!

The rules are simple:

• Race from Denver to Durango, self-supported, under only your own power, along the entire CTR route.
• No pre-arranged support, with the exception of maildrops to a post office and only a post office.
• Don’t break the law.

The bike geek in me really wanted to hang out at the start and see how the 70+ racers had packed and loaded their equipment for this adventure, but the photographer in me won out and I rolled silently out of the lot a half hour before the start to set up for a shot.

I rode about a mile and a half before ditching my bike and climbing several hundred feet up a ridge where I have been doing some hill repeats.  It is a nasty, steep, loose, overgrown ‘trail’.

I knew it had a nice view of the canyon road below, and it the riders would be nicely packed together so close to the start.  I hung out and took some test shots to get the exposure settings dialed in.

The sunrise wasn’t too shabby.

Before too long the racers appeared, and my legs were wishing I was pedaling with them.

I was a little high up and far away to have the racers turn out like anything more than tiny specs on the road with my wide angle lens, but I wanted to convey a sense of their smallness in the massive landscape they were moving through, and symbolize the magnitude of the journey they were just beginning.

One cool feature of this race, is that everyone carries a Spot GPS device.  There is a tracking map where you can see the position of everyone in the race in near real-time.  This is how the map looked after I got in to work:

As of tonight (Wednesday evening) the leaders are already past the imaginary line you can draw North-South between Pagosa Springs and Gunnison.  Ethan Passant has ridden 360 miles and has just over a hundred to go and looks to have a shot at breaking the current 4 day – 3 hour record.

Track them here.

2013 ???

Another spur of the moment adventure for the kid and I.  When the windows of opportunity open up, we have been jumping through them with boots on and packs loaded.

This time it was a late Thursday departure to take advantage of the final day of vacation.  We spent most of Thursday cleaning house and garage, then threw our supplies in the car and bolted for the hills.  Destination, Quandary Peak.

Despite this being one of the more accessible 14ers, I hadn’t been up it yet.  Malcolm had summited the previous month and we agreed that it would be a good candidate for a night outing with a very straightforward approach and no real difficulties to deal with other than the usual incline and altitude components.

We got started a little after 7:00 and took our time, getting to the summit a just after dark, then making it back to the car at half-past midnight.  I hauled the camera along and was glad I did.  We ran into a large herd of goats about halfway up, and having the place entirely to ourselves, spent quite a while  observing them and taking pictures.  They put on quite a show.

We hung out on the summit for a good 30 minutes or so.  The weather was nice, but I got pretty cold up there and was glad to start hiking again to build up some heat so I could stop shivering.

Our plan to raid Taco Bell on the way through Frisco proved misguided as they were closed.  4th meal, whatever.  Instead we scavenged what we could at 7-11 and got back on the road to Leadville, finally dumping our bags on the ground a little after 2AM (right on the LT100 course no less).  It was a stellar night for sleeping out and I actually caught a Z or two unlike our last trip.  I told Malcolm that if asked, we weren’t camping, we were taking a nap.

The eyes cracked open just after 05:00 in time to take in a sweet, but very rapid explosion of pink over the mountains.

We stumbled around for a bit and then hopped in the car for the short drive up to the Mount Massive trailhead.  Our legs appreciated the gradual approach along the Colorado Trail for the first few miles before the real work began.

After some time, we finally broke free of the forest and could see our objective.  This is a big mountain!

We didn’t push too hard, taking time to check out marmots, moths, and butterflies.

The view from the summit was impressive, with row after row of mountains marching off into the distance.  We nicknamed this the mountain hatchery.  It looked like some sort of giant peak nursery.

The trip down was long, but uneventful.  We were both feeling the miles and lack of sleep, but happy to be up in the mountains for the day.  We spotted a cool cloud that was giving off a rainbow reflection and it was a great ending to a great trip.