I arrived in Leadville around 5PM. I met Amy and Mike at Amy’s new apartment. I had never visited Leadville, and was looking forward to my visit and meeting Amy. Leadville is famous for the Leadville 100, an Ultra marathon race in August each. The race is 100 miles of trail running, there is also a 100 mile mountain bike run in Leadville too. Leadville is the highest incorporated city in United States, sitting at 10200 ft above sea level adds a whole new dimension to any distance race. Amy is currently training to run the race this year. It will be her first time competing. She has never even run a marathon, 26.2 miles, much less a 100 mile race. We had a lot of conversations about running, travel and mountaineering. It was great to catch up with Mike Mays as well. Mike is always full of great stories, good information and insight on mountaineering. He has years and years worth of experience, and is a great person to learn from. I wanted to get one more climb in with him before I left Colorado, so we made plans to climb Mt. Harvard.
We left early the next morning and headed for the trail head just west of Buena Vista. Mike did his best and got us within a ¼ mile of the trail head, but the snow got too deep to go any further, so we proceeded on foot. We started our climb around 8AM. We immediately noticed how deep and heavy the snow was, this made progress slow, and we constantly had to look for the trail as it was very easy to get off trail. Luckily Mike had climbed Harvard at least 5 times before and knew the route quite well. After a couple hours we took a break a discussed how things were going. We decided that we would keep snowshoeing to near the tree line, but would not attempt the summit. The large amount of new snow on top of old snow, and the warm temperatures made for prime avalanche conditions. It was not worth the risk. Ideally if we had known there would be that much snow (this is rare for May 12th even in Colorado), we would have planned to camp near tree line and then, made a summit attempt the next day. So we made the most of the day and got a great work out from snowshoeing. I spent the night talking mountains and future plans with Mike and Amy, and enjoying some of Leadville’s finest pizza. Mike has asked me to join Steve and him in Peru on an expedition to climb Huascarán Sur and Norte Peru’s two highest mountains (6746m and 6655m) or (22132ft and 21833.ft). I am tempted to join, them but it would derail my plans for Alaska, as I would be gone about a month. I have not completely ruled it out but will have to decide soon, if I am to join them. I left the next day and headed for Fort Collins.
No comments:
Post a Comment