Front Range SnickSnack

JANUARY-FEBRUARY--2013

We left Arkansas for North Carolina at the beginning of January after having just travelled to Arkansas a couple weeks prior for the X-mas holiday season. 

TWO MINUTES after arriving at our home in western NC, B-rad received a call for a job in northern Colorado.  Holy what.  We packed our belongings up that night and left for Colorado the next day, after having just arrived on the east coast.  Sigh. ..but what a great opportunity this was going to be to check out a new place and chart some new territory. 

A short stint in Loveland, Colorado presented itself when B was offered a new contract opportunity.  Fortunately, these days my job allows me to travel and work (with the internet).  Immediately upon arriving in Loveland, CO we headed out to find the closest trails to town.  Quickly, I found the Round Mountain Trail located in the Big Thompson Canyon (Big Thompson River) that lifted ~1800 feet in 4.5 miles. The reward is not a view at the summit, but the relentless steepness in the last .5 miles that makes the heart pound.  I love moving in the uphill direction on foot as fast as possible.  Fortunately, in my world of trail running, the front range of eastern Colorado did not receive a ton of snow over the past two months and even the mid elevations were easily run-able.   

Loveland turned out to be a slow, sleepy, family town with excellent access to a handful of things that kept me very busy. In the evenings we would hit up the ‘rock’ climbing gym called Inner Strength and wear the body out.

One day I decided to hike up to Chasm Lake.  Chasm Lake is below The Diamond on Long’s Peak.  I drove up to the trail head via the Big Thompson Canyon and Estes Park.  After about two and a half miles of snow-packed, uphill movement I was completely knocked down off my feet in a gust above tree line.  The gust front was pushing 40-60 mph wind gusts above tree line and I became adrenalized.  The beautiful halo of misty clouds over Longs Peak in this photo above (about two hours later) would never have lead me to believe that I couldn’t stand on my own feet up there. 

In the first few days in Loveland I found the Devil’s Backbone Open Space.  The Devil’s Backbone is simply a spine of rock outcroppings stretching a mile or so.  This trail actually traverses across the buttes and hills that stretch from Loveland north to Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins (~15 miles).  On this first day out at the Devil’s Backbone I realized I wasn’t able to run a particular hill that was steep, but not too long.  BAM! I had my first goal.  Perhaps coming from sea-level was going against me, the fact that I had been resting and not running much, or maybe the nice cushion I packed on during the holidays was dragging me down a bit.  All the same, I accomplished the goal of running up the damn thing with ease.  I know that I have to attribute al ot of my ‘running up hills with ease’ to a machine.  Never in my life had I trained on a treadmill.  I had access to a treadmill located in our HOA (neighborhood) that I could freely use anytime.  First, I discovered that no matter WHAT, the treadmill is extremely boring.  So, I went for the best workout I could get – I set the vertical gain to the highest setting and cranked out up to 5000 ft of vertical gain per session.  Even with this horrendously monotonous resource under my thumb I still wanted new trails outside.  I found a trailhead near the Glen Haven/Drake, CO area and found an equally amazing trail that meandered ~2000 ft vertically in ~5 miles.  I became extremely adrenalized out on this trail because of the remoteness and the feeling of being stalked by a mountain lion.  I know it sounds ridiculous to be ‘afraid’ and that the actual chances of even seeing a mountain lion are extremely low.  I took it upon myself to read the most recent reports published by the local governing agencies...hunting mountain lion regulations, population densities, geographic range in the winter, and human-lion incident reports.  I was doing every unadvisable recommendation perfectly.  I am a small human, running alone, running in their lower elevation winter range/habitat, and running really fast when I thought about being chased.  I did not become a snick snack.