June 7 - June 14

6/7, Sunday - Bike - 29 miles, 3000', 2:05
From home up Old Stage to Lefthand Canyon, then up Lee Hill and back home.

6/8, Monday - Mt Ida (12,880') - 9 miles, 2800', 3:20
Fun day with Yves and Victor in RMNP. Lots and lots of snow in the trees made for a non-ideal descent, but we got in some fantastic ridge running at 12,000ft on reasonably clear trails.

Victor & Yves trotting across some snow just below the summit.

6/9, Tuesday - AM: Locomotion Lab - 5 miles, 0', 0:45 - PM: Mt Sanitas - 3 miles, 1300', 1:15
20 minute warm-up, 3km time trial, run home. I always forget how fun it is to move that fast. Easy hike/run with Daniel in the afternoon.

6/10, Wednesday - Freeway, 2 x 1st Flatiron - 5 miles, 2,800', 2:32
Started off with tagging the Freeway with a big RMR group, some people new to scrambling so it was a relaxed pace. Afterwards, Logan and I went and did a lap on 1st. At this point I was well warmed up (or tired, who knows) so I went for an all out ascent which I completed in 12:59. I really didn't feel that fast aside from nailing the first pitch in ~1:30. Given I normally do that pitch in 4:00, the few minutes I took off my previous PR of 15:40 probably came all from that. I think sub-12 is doable.

6/11, Thursday - Brainard Lake Bike - 59 miles, 5800', 4:16
From home, I started off with the relatively short but far more steep Lee Hill. Grinding up this sharp incline makes the subsequent ascent of Lefthand Canyon feel far less steep. I felt terrific on the final climb to Ward but started to feel heavy legs on the final stretch to Brainard Lake. I had thought about going around to Nederland and Coal Creek Canyon for the way back, but the sky looked overwhelmingly threatening. I was able to outrace most of the storms back, but did get rained on a few times.

Not sure why I brought 2 bottles, guess I haven't figured out what I need for biking yet.

6/12, Friday - Bear Pk - 6 miles, 2800', 2:00
Easy up and down Fern Canyon with Andrea.

6/13, Saturday - Mt Elbert (14,433') - 12 miles, 4900, 3:43
Spent the night at the trailhead to acclimate. I started a little farther back since I didn't want to deal with the super narrow 4x4 road and the annoyances it would entail which gave my a couple miles on the Colorado trail to warm up. From there I took the East ridge where snow started about 300ft after treeline. Only a few soft patches and the rest was solid. Brilliant sky and weather.

On top of Elbert looking towards the technically less massive Mt Massive

6/14, Sunday - Bull Hill (13,761') - 7 miles, 4000', 3:47
What a disaster. I had planned on taking the less used Black Cloud Creek trail up to Elbert and its unranked brother to the south, but I ended up taking a social trail for some sport climbing on Monitor Rock by mistake. This trail ended way below treeline and I was marching off-trail up unreasonably steep mud and thick foliage until I hit treeline where it was post-holing to Bull Hill. With the undoubted knee deep snow that would accompany the extra 1.5 miles over to Elbert I turned back for an equally miserable descent. The whole thing was probably closer to 6 miles since the GPS considered my meandering about on top as honest progress. On the bright side were some good views, a goat (I think goat) skeleton, mining ruins and a massive bighorn sheep.

The rest of the bones were scattered over a few hundred feet in the center of Monitor Gulch.

Mt Massive (left) and Mt Elbert (right) from Bull Hill. Summer down low, winter up high.