GPS Data from our Route on Google Earth

In the Colorado Springs Cycling Club, there are three nutballs that are always the most competitive and always finish first. Steve, Josh and myself. We're all about the same age, the same stage of life and share the same passion for going fast on a bike. With the exception of Josh (who crushes EVERYONE on the climbs), we have the same physical abilities.

A few weeks ago, while ignoring ride instructions at a club ride, we hatched the idea of going to the summit as hard as we could from Barr Camp. Today was the day.

We covered the 12.68 miles in a total time of 4 hours, 54 minutes, 3 seconds and a moving time of 4:04:09. The weather was perfect but we were a little alarmed when we got to Barr Camp and a woman said the temp on top was 15 degrees with a 25 mph wind from the west. Screw it we said and trudged on in our shorts and long sleeve t-shirts.

Interestingly, all three of us had difficulties keeping up at various times on the course. I struggled and was dropped on the 2 miles after Barr Camp but felt the best the higher we got. Not surprising since I've always done extremely well at altitude and generally get better as a race goes on. In an incredible display of timing, Amy appeared in my truck to pick us up at the top and take us back home.

I'll spare you the rest of the banal details but would say this was the most fun I've had since moving to Colorado back in March of 2007. It was a lot of suffering but in fine company and great scenery.

I don't have any group pictures, just memories to hold, that grow sweeter each season, as we slowly grow old (big points for knowing the song and artist!).

Due to the pace, we didn't talk much and took almost no pictures except our camera phones. Here are the pictures off mine:

This was our first glance at the Peak

The Shelter at Barr Camp

Me at the Barr Camp Shelter

Baby Chip

Big Chip

Chip on a Mac

(via Reddit)

I finally got around to posting the pictures on Flickr.

The trail can easily be seen when traveling westbound on route 24 and it is unbelievable to think that people or even a machine could scale such a grade.  In numbers, it doesn't sound so bad; the climb starts at a little over 6,500 feet elevation and ends at 8,644.  According to the US Geological Survey, the average gradient is 41% with the maximum being 68% and is 1.02 miles long.

Despite the land being privately owned with warning signs all over the place, people climb it everyday and today was my turn.  Since I spotted it the very first day I arrived here, the thing has been taunting me every time I pass it, begging me to climb.  No more procrastination. 

Midway through an incredibly lame conference call, I decided on a whim that the time was now.  I left the phone on the hook so they couldn't hear me drop and busted out to the car where I changed out of my jeans into my running shorts.  30 minutes later (it took me 20 just to find a damn parking spot), I was ready to go.  Whatever you do, DO NOT park in the lots owned by the Cog Railway, these people take parking very seriously and have several guards with binoculars watching the precious few spaces. Park at the Barr trail or drive back down to Downtown Manitou Springs and park on the street.  It's not that bad of a walk.

Once in the lot, you'll see the famous Barr Trail sign but you don't want the Barr Trail (which will take you all the way to the top of Pike's Peak), you want pain and suffering.   Go to to your right and the back of the lot and you should spot a faint trail.  Take the obvious path until you come to the railroad ties.  This is it.  Before you start, look up, take a deep breath and notice that you're breathing is fairly relaxed.  Say goodbye to that.

Immediately upon hitting the ties, it kicks up quickly, but not too bad. Unless you're a freak, resist the urge to jog this part, I wish I had.   It doesn't really look that bad from here.  About 5 minutes of climbing later, you'll come across the last warning sign (see above) and though it looks like it's all fun and games, you are trespassing on private property and breaking the law of you continue.  Whatever...

From here on out, it's just one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.  I had my Garmin 305 GPS/HRM with me and almost immediately, my heart rate was in the mid 170's.  My goal was to make it to the top in under 30 minutes. 

Every now and then, the path levels out to 40-50% grade and you can stop, turn around and enjoy the scenery.  Here is a shot of downtown Colorado Springs from the midway point.

Right after this point, the climb gets seriously steep and you must lean forward (sometimes on all fours) to keep from falling back.  There were two instances where I actually had to crawl. Not for people afraid of heights.  Each of the 2,809 ties is an extreme effort at this altitude and grade.  It seemed like every time I looked at my heart rate monitor, I was at 180+ beats per minute.  I stopped twice, once to tie my right shoe, the other to keep from going totally anaerobic. 

Cruelly, there are two "false" summits along the climb and it is humbling even though I knew they were coming.  This post is already far too long but I completed the climb in 36 minutes and 14 seconds which isn't bad considering my 218 pound frame.  I was passed by three people, one a young girl who was jogging up.  Yes, jogging.  But I easily weighed twice as much as she did and I'm a cyclist dammit, not a runner.  Getting to the summit was a little anticlimactic honestly but I was glad to see it.  The cement car holder can still be seen but I was sucking too much wind to snap a picture.  After the climb, I ran the 3.5 miles down the Barr Trail back to the trailhead which topped me off by killing my legs.  Don't even think about walking back down the climb, you WILL get hurt.  Here are some images from the top:

And the obligatory Google Earth Images:

You can see more in the Manitou Incline set on Flickr.

A week ago tonight, wrote this post about how I was going on spontaneous hiking trip for a few days out on the Olympic Peninsula. In short, It was great except for the parts where it sucked.

I barely made (and I mean barely) the 5:50 am ferry from Edmonds to Kingston though when I got on, I was surprised to pick up a wireless access point on my MacBook Pro. Not a huge technical feat at all, but I was surprised nontheless, especially since it was free that day. The boat ride (yes, we stay in our cars the whole time) was over quickly and then I got to cross the Hood Canal Floating Bridge for the first time and then on up to Highway 101. Past the bridge and Port Ludlow, there's not much civilization until Sequim (pronounced Sk-wim). As the sun rose, I was treated to the eastern foothills of the Olympic Mountain rage and water almost everywhere else. It is a stunning drive. The first (and really only) large town on the Olympic Peninsula is Port Angeles and I was blown away about how big it was. I stopped at a Starbuck's drive through and got a latte.

About 20 miles outside Port Angeles, a body of water on your right appears as you wind your way down a pretty large road. But suspiciously, the water is oddly clear with a green sheen. This would be Lake Crescent which gets it's color from it's source, glacier runoff. The lake is stunning. It's incredible stillness and green color is something I'd never seen before and I stopped for an hour just to chill out along it's banks. It's huge! A few years ago I'd read a very interesting story in the Seattle P-I (it's worth stopping here and reading) and I thought alot about the young couple that's probably still at the bottom of this lake. What were there last thoughts before the accident? What would they have done that afternoon had they not crashed? What was the day like? And on and on.

After the lake, there's not much, I don't think I saw a single car for over 50 miles. It's primarily logging land so make sure you get gas in Port Angeles (click for map). I was tired but wanted to get Rialto Beach and hole in the wall before I checked out Forks and possible lodging. I turned right on Route 110 and headed for the beach. Along this road, I saw a surprising number of large homes that looked pretty civilized.

The beach was beautiful and I was the only one there. Low tide was scheduled for 9:54 and I had arrived at 9 so that gave me time to get my gear together (I obviously didn't want to drive 5 hours in my hiking pants) and get out to the beach. The approaching storm (the one that dumped almost a foot of snow on the eastside of Seattle) made for a rough surf which is what I had wanted. I must admit that it was not easy to hike on this beach. The surface was made of billions of tiny litte stones that were wet and felt like quicksand. It took me almost an hour to cover the first mile. It was cool being the only person in the world on this beach. At the one mile mark, I reached what was supposed to be a small creek. Heh. Not exactly. This was a raging river. The water was at least 4 feet deep and swift enough to carry a 20 pound stone 20 feet down the way. I didn't want to risk getting my feet wet so early so I spent about 30 minutes pacing up and down the thing (to the ocean water) until I devised a clever path using some fallen logs. When i decided to go, I was committed since I had thrown my pack over to the other side which had my car keys and everything else in them. Turns out I shouldn't have worried about getting wet. A few minutes after crossing the creek, I got tackled by a 9 foot wave that came at least 10 feet furhter up the beach than anything previous. Completely knocked me on my ass but I was smart to keep my camera over my head. I really wasn't worried about getting pulled into the sea by an undercurrent but I was shocked about how warm the water was. It was like a warm bath. I went to Hole In the Wall and turn around towards the car. I walked half in the water though since I was already wet.

I drove into Forks, looking for some lunch and a possible hotel. Forks (click for map) is a small logging town about 12 miles from the shore and there's not much here in the summer, let alone the winter. The only place to get food was at a small grocery store but there was a nice little hotel called the Forks Motel. It looked clean and rooms for $39 a night on the weekdays during the off season. Since the place was so cheap, I decided to call it a day (I'd been awake now for 39 hours) and I got a room. I took a warm shower and was asleep within an hour. Around 8 pm, my cell phone woke me.

The trip was over. It seems I had not obtained the necessary permits. I packed up, checked out (the woman at the desk insisted I get a refund while I insisted I pay for the night) and got on the road. 9 hours later (I missed the Bremerton-Seattle ferry by less than two minutes) I was home.

I'd love to go back, but probably won't. You can check out all of my photos from the tip in my Flickr gallery.

It occured to me yesterday while watching the Seahawks squeak by the Cowboys that I have a unique opportunity to do some exploring and shouldn't pass it up. So starting in a few hours, I'm taking the first Edmonds to Kingstong Ferry and am hitting the Peninsula. The plan is to not have a plan. I have no idea where (or even if) I'll be sleeping, or where I'll go. For safety reasons and to keep my family from freaking out and calling the coast guard at noon today, here is my rough draft:

1) Monday: Rialto Beach to Hole in the Wall (low tide is at 9:54 am), will likely stay somewhere in Forks
2) Tuesday: Point of the Arches & Shi Shi beach
3) Wednesday: Ozette Loop?
4) Thursday: Crescent Lake?

The weather? I'm not looking for a sunny day here. Meteorologists are expecting a pretty good storm to roll in off this part of the coast tomorrow afternoon and I'm hoping to see some pretty impressive surf. Other than mist, most of the rain forms between the beach and the Olympic Mountain foothills 20 miles inland, that being said, I'm still expecting to get extremely wet.

Point of the Arches from the air

I'm taking my good cameras and hopefully there will be some decent pics here in a few days.

My Dad and Stepmom came in for only about 36 hours last week and on the one day we had together, I mistakenly suggested we drive up to Sunrise in Mt. Rainier National Park. After all, it was the only touristy thing they hadn't done in Seattle since I moved here in 2000 and we would get a pretty early start. I totally underestimated the mileage and missed the White River entrance to the park and to make a long story short, we ended up turning around halfway up Chinook Pass on a fabulous day. So my interest was piqued and I made a mental note to myself that I wanted to return on the weekend.

I got up early on Saturday (Hell has frozeth over) and drove up to Sunrise, deciding to do the Burroughs Mountain hike on the way there. It was a bit chilly out and I'm glad I took one of the many jackets I have in my closet, it would be needed since I would get above 7,500 feet. The hike itself was unremarkable but I'm pissed that I had just missed the 4.6 magnitude earthquke by about 20 minutes. Apparently, the trail I had just walked was damaged and the road up to Sunrise has some significant rockfall. I had actually considered hiking the route in the dark (a full moon was out) but I was a little apprehensive since I wasn't familiar with the terrain and was alone. I hiked a little past Burroughs 3 and my GPS said the round trip was a little over 7 miles (I took some detours). On a weird note, on the way down back to Paradise, I met two park rangers and I made a remark about how fragile the trail seemed to be and how much it would suck to have an earthquake or major lehar up there. Heh.

I took a bunch of pictures but most of them were trash since I had to play with the exposure do to hiking westward in the evening. The salvageable ones can be seen in my Flickr gallery.

The trail through the clouds to Mason Lake and Bandera Mountain

I received a call around 6:30 Thursday morning from my Dad saying his plane was having engine troubles and was not able to take off in time for him to make his connecting flight to Seattle. This was a bigger bummer than usual as I wanted to take him on some cool hikes I had discovered since he was last out here in 2005. Dad and I had planned on moving my fence (extending it into the rest of my yard- long story) on Thursday and then do a hike on Friday and possibly Saturday. I had pre-selected Bandera Mountain for the hike which I'd never done before but was supposed to have great views.

Dad didn't make it out but there was no way I was giving up my days off work. I slept in until 1-ish and lounged around all day on Thursday. On Friday, Bryan and I went to Bandera. It was cloudy out but we hoped we'd be above them. Nope. As we climbed higher and higher, the clouds got thicker and thicker. There weren't any views (visibility was maybe 50 feet above 3,500 feet) to speak of or photograph but I really enjoyed the hike. Call me crazy but I actually prefer hiking in the clouds. As much as we enjoyed the hike through the clouds, we decided at the trail junction to Mason Lake that it would be better to come back and do the summit to Bandera on a better day. The summit trail is pretty steep and not so easy to follow, hardly worth a long scramble when there's no view. So on to Mason Lake we went where we still found some snow on the 200 foot descent to the Western lake shore.

You can see the pictures in my Mason Lake Flickr photo gallery.

Bryan's trip report can be found HERE and his pictures of the same hike HERE.

Stats:
Distance: 7.2 miles
Time: 2 hours 32 minutes
High point: 4,849 feet
Elevation gain: 2,096 feet

Getting There:
Take I-90 to Exit 45 turning left on Forest Road 9030, cross under the freeway, and continue straight for one mile. At a split, go straight on road 9031 to the trailhead.

First mistake, I forgot my debit card and driver's license in my pack. As we decided on boots, I took her on an extended shopping spree where we picked up socks, poles, bras and water proofing gear. Though I had forgotten my debit card, I had decided to just put it on my Amex and pay it off later. I had a $10,750 credit limit and new I had a $0 balance since paying it off last October. Big mistake. At the register, I suffered my first humiliating credit card decline since college. Embarrassingly, I turned to Amy for help and she paid with her debit card. I immediately called Amex where I learned my account had been suspended and limit reduced to $100 (apparently paying off a balance of over $5,400 in one fell swoop is VERY, VERY bad) due to of a returned statement since I hadn't changed the address since I paid it off. I called, cleared it up and they wanted reply to reapply for any credit at all. "No thanks, I've been a customer for 11 years without paying late once so please close my account", I requested. They did without question. Lame. So I owe Amy $398.94. Who cares, I'm gonna have a kick-ass dividend this year!

Amy's new Zamberlan boots

Amy had asked for a relatively short, zero elevation gain hike to break in her boots and I scoured my monstrous stack of Western Washington hiking guides for such a hike that we hadn't already done. After hours of late night decision making, I decided on the trail that parallels the Taylor River in the Snoqaulmie Valley.

On a seemingly easy-ass trail, I broke down. i just couldn't make the pace Amy and Sally were keeping. I didn't feel well and sheepishly suggested that we should just turn around. I asked Amy to take Sally's leash and I instantly began to lag behind the pair. Way behind. Instead of being a hundred or so yards ahead, I began to devise about schemes to gain time and catch up to the hike leader. I tripped. For no reason at all, I thought about the date. June 10th. 0610. AHH, a component of so many passwords and the birthday of a really good friend.

I struggled to keep up in the heat and Amy probably regretted having me along. I know Sally did! Turns out, we did 6.57 miles with a whopping 257 feet of elevation gain (thank God for GPS).

The summit marker for West Tiger # 2

The summit marker for West Tiger # 1

Sweet Jebus that was a hard hike. Possibly the hardest 2 1/2 hours of my life. After work, I drove home, changed and headed to High Point Way for one last training hike up Tiger 3 before my Dad gets here on Thursday. West Tiger 3 is a doozie, especially the shorter but steeper unofficial "cable-line" trail.

Something possessed me tonight and I managed to make it to the summit of West Tiger 3 in 49 minutes. I wasn't in good shape though. I had caught two girls (much younger and at least 125 pounds lighter than myself) about half a mile from the top and went all out in a futile effort to pass them. When I got to the somewhat exposed East side near the top, I was spent. Sweat dripping in my eyes had made my vision blurry and my heart rate was in the 190's. One last push and I ashamedly beat them to the top by inches. Since I didn't want to act like I had given my all, I decided to go on to Tiger 2. Most hikers stop at the summit of 3 and I knew I'd have some peace and quiet to recuperate from my effort. When I got to the top of summit 2, I said, "hey, I haven't been over to summit # 1 (also the highest of the 3 elevation wise) and made a dash for it. While descending 2 on the way over to 1, some trail runners passed me. Not wanting to look like a loser, I (and again, ashamedly) started trotting along with them. Though they beat me to the stop of 1 (good lord, that's a long stretch to the hut!), I finished only seconds behind. And damn near lost consciousness. I had made it from outside the Tradition Lake trailhead to the summit of West Tiger 1 in 1:23:00 (3-2-1 in 1-2-3, lol). We chatted for a bit and I explored the "hiker's hut" at the summit while I pondered my trip back down in the dark.

The "Hiker's Hut" at the summit of West Tiger # 1

A good training hike, indeed. You can see more pictures in my Flickr Tiger 3-2-1 photoset.

Trail data:
Total distance: 7.6 miles
Elevation Gain: 3,930 feet
Time: 2 hours 39 minutes

Getting There:
I-90 exit 20, High Point Way. Turn right and follow this road until it dead ends at the Tradition Lake trailhead. Gate closes at dusk so if you're going to be on the mountain after dark, I recommend parking in front of the gate and walking the half mile to the trailhead.