Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Cimarron

The weekend started off with a disaster as we couldn't get the van to start.  Zero power.  Tried to jump the battery but that did nothing.  No idea what's going on, and if anyone has any ideas I'm listening.

But instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we threw all our stuff into the jeep, grabbed the tent, and took off.  Friday night was spent over near the Royal Gorge, chilling around a fire and drinking some cold beers.


On Saturday, after a nice hike on the great trails overlooking the Gorge, we left for Montrose.  Too early for Moonlight so we stopped at High Alpine Brewing in Gunnisson instead.  After beers and pizza we headed up to the Cerro Summit Rec Area to set up camp.  Hung out with Justin and a few other runners for a while, and even got to try the IPA from the yet-to-open Lost Friend Brewing Company.  It was really good and I can't wait to visit that place when they open this summer.



Saturday was the race and it was a pretty uneventful 50k.  Course is just 15.5 miles out a dirt road and back with minimal aid.  I ran 2:18ish out and finished in 4:57.  Nothing great but it does give me some more confidence that I'll be able to finish Lake City.  The biggest family news on the racing front is that $100 and the dog jumped into the five miler and won the damn thing!  We are still waiting on the huge check from Mad Moose Events for the win.

We hung around for a while, drinking some more beers, before heading back east for another night of tent camping.  $100 made me stop at the Blue Mesa Resevoir to jump in, apparently I stunk pretty good.  Then we drove straight to Salida and paid visits to three of our favorite places, Elevation, Moonlight and Woods.


Before we drank too much we set off to find one last camping site.  We drove east on highway 50 and ended up finding a killer site along the river.  Check out the fire pit we had:


Love that spot and we can't wait to get back.  Not sure if it was empty because it's a well kept secret (doubtful) or because we showed up on a Sunday evening.

We had lots of time on Monday so we headed back to hike the Columbine Trail out to where it hits the Rainbow Trail.  Four miles.  Got us thinking about a potential overnight hike to test out our gear and setup for the Colorado Trail.  Hopefully we can make that happen.

The weekend got me up to six nights outside for the year.

One last post-hike stop on Monday, we headed up to Eddyline for lunch.  The Crank Yanker doesn't get much love, but it's one of my favorites.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

try cleaning your battery cables and posts. If you charged it and heard nothing may just not be making contact. Wire brush the terminals and connections.