View from South Boulder Peak
View from Bear - the toughest of the Boulder Peaks as these ladies would agree
Ran the Holy Cow 10K in Westminster Saturday. Started faster than I could sustain - a 6:56-mile pace after 3 miles. Finished 11th with a 7:10 pace - good for the coveted bronze cow bell!
Maureen & I hiked in Magnolia in the afternoon
Yikes! This was a big leg
We were startled by - and startled - a moose who was alongside the trail. It's hard to tell what he was thinking - he never took his eyes off us. We moved on and skipped the photo op
Sunday we headed to St. Vrain Mountain TH. After a mile Maureen's knee wasn't doing well with the rocky trails, so she went to Camp Dick to hike on Buchanan Pass. After I hit Meadow Mountain I would come down the south side into the the Indian Peaks Wilderness and meet up with her
Looking into the Rocky Mountain National Park
Headed down the St. Vrain Mountain trail but lost it after awhile - a lot of fallen trees. Got the compass out and figured as long as I kept going down and to the SE all would be OK. There is no cell coverage in the Wilderness areas. It was disorienting, coming down a few thousand feet off-trail in the woods over large fallen trees that cut the heck out of my legs. After an hour I didn't know where I was and all I could see were trees. I assumed I was close as I could here ATVs, but I was on top of a rocky ledge and wasn't keen on scrambling down with no one around. So with maybe an hour of phone battery left I decided to retrace my route back up using MapMyRun (GPS app). The battery died just as I made it back up top
Ran the 4 miles back to the St. Vrain Mountain TH and started running to the town of Allenspark. I was now 2 hours late and had run something like 17.5 miles with 4,600' of climbing with 10 miles to go - although I assumed hitch-hiking was a good option. Sure enough, after a mile or so a USFS Ranger was driving up so I flagged her down and hitched a ride to Camp Dick
Looking at the GPS later that evening on my computer, I was only 300' away and 700' above a trail. Sigh
Bought COSAR (Colorado Search & Rescue) cards for us later that night just in case...
