Campus loop in the morning. Green ended up being quite the blizzard and I was quite underdressed to be commuting there by bike. Thankfully I was able to get a friend with a truck to give me a ride to the bar then another to give me a ride back home.
2/23, Tuesday - AM: Treadmill - 7mi, 0:50 || PM: Bike Paths - 5.5mi, 0:35
In the morning I did a fartlek workout on the treadmill: 1mi (5:40), 1mi (5:30), 3x0.5mi (5:10 pace). In the evening I went out for another jaunt as I had to make a quick stop at the Engineering Center anyways.
2/24, Wednesday - Bike Paths - 8mi, 300', 1:03
Relaxed pace on the bike paths; saw Scott Jurek though (maybe, Tony says he'd be surprised if Scott was running so it could have been a false alarm)!
2/25, Thursday - Off
Sick (again!). Slept a ton and drank a ton of water, hopefully that helps.
2/26, Friday - 1st Flatiron & Green Mtn - 5 miles, 2700', 1:51
Biked to Chat and felt quite miserable running up so I resigned to just hike the dang thing; at least I was outside doing something today. The 1st was quite exciting with frequent ice fall on the upper reaches. Only the first pitch is in a gully which can be threatened so I made quick work of that. Pitches 3 through the end had a ton of running water which made hold selection a bit more judicious; the slot shortcut was absolutely soaking so I took the standard route. Hiked up to Green and descended very casually but it superb downhill conditions. Nice slow outing, I'm pretty sure I can run from home and do this route as fast or faster.
2/27, Saturday - Mt Meeker (13,911') - 11 miles, 4900', 5:21
Mt Meeker is a super rad mountain, but it gets almost zero attention since it falls 89ft short of the golden number; I'd been meaning to get up it all summer, but was always too lazy to add it to a Longs day. The winter short-cuts weren't quite all broken, so I ended up crawling a bit to avoid some heinous postholing. From Chasm Lake I cut straight south up the Iron Gates, a very loose gravel gully and gained the ridge to Meeker. It was mostly just boulder hopping until the final 100ft or so which had some fun, easy and somewhat exposed scrambling to the summit. Went down the Loft where I passed Bill and his son Derrick who are training for a bid on Denali (how's that for a graduation present!). Made a small detour to check out Chasm Lake and get a better view of some parties in Martha's before hiking back down.
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| Don't forget to turn around and check out Longs when you're heading up Meeker! That Ship's Prow ridge is just begging to be climbed, I'll have to look into that. |
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| On the way down after the clouds moved in. The Iron Gates are the second scree gully from the left which joins the ridge. Meeker has a pretty cool east face too! |
Jack is a finely tuned machine and I'm just up high trying to cheat my way to extra hemoglobin. More Longs today, planned going up and down the Keyhole but Cables looked too inviting to not at least check out. It ended up being a tricky climb as snow covers the good foot holds but with barely enough for crampons to really bite into. Anyways, I made it through that, summitted and descended the Keyhole. First time on that route in a long time, I always forget just how long the Trough is, even going down. I put crampons back on for the Ledges then went traction free back to the TH.
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| For all the great pics of Longs, the summit is actually quite boring. Its so big (like 3 football fields) you really can't see much beyond it. |
Week Totals:
57 miles
16,400ft
17:54
The week started off very poorly with more sickness mumbo-jumbo, but thankfully I was able to turn my health back around and polish off the weekend with two fantastic days in the alpine. Hopefully being at altitude for 10 hours this weekend will prop up my red blood cell count and I'll be able to keep Jack in sight. Mississippi 50 coming in hot next weekend!
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