At 6am this morning the gun went off at the Golden Gate Dirty Thirty. The field took off, but there was one race bib left at the starting line. A couple of days ago I elected to drop out of the race to focus on getting my knee right. Over the last month, my left knee has been really unpredictable - a really awkward twinge fires above the patella at seemingly random moments. Some of these moments have left me hiking the rest of the way back to the car to avoid exacerbating it further (not so awesome on a 15-mile outing). So, in a rare move, I decided to play it safe and bow out of the race because the last thing I want to do is enter a race with little confidence that I could run hard and compete well. Also, I didn't want to run the risk of a real injury that takes months to heal, forcing me to drop out of the Silverton Alpine 50k in late August. In a way, it's nice because this meant that I could do what I tend to do best when I get hurt and blow an important running milestone - explore!
The last two weeks of long runs at Golden Gate Canyon have been a great preamble to higher altitude alpine training for Silverton, where most of the course is above 10,000'. Naturally, making a streak out of it sounded rather appealing and there was one destination that has been tickling my fancy for some time - Indian Peaks Wilderness. Specifically, Mt Audubon (13,223') and Pawnee Peak (12,943'). For today's adventure, I chose the latter since it provided a bit more of a technical ascent than the fairly straightforward approach up Audubon.
While the racers were beginning their climb up through Mountain Lion Trail, I was warming up my car with a tall mug of coffee between my legs - ditching out on race day may not be so bad after all.
Heading up Sunshine Canyon, I couldn't help but be reminded of how nice it is to have such trivial options in life and how equally trivial my knee setback is when compared to the remaining charred foundations of homes left from the Four Mile fire alongside the canyon road.
The gates to the Brainard Lake Recreation Area were closed, so I parked my car at the gate and shlepped the 2.5 mile run to the trailhead (this week has had it's fair share of road running - not so ideal). Upon entering the Pawnee Pass Trail, I quickly noticed just how much snow still remained. The trial was intermittently blocked by 3-4' tall glaciated snow mounds - often times leaving me second guessing as to the exact location of the trial. I proceeded to posthole my way up and over the snow, occasionally running on pure dirt trail for no more than 30' at a time. After about twenty minutes of this, I rationalized that the snow had probably mostly melted off the trail above treeline and all I needed to do was get through the muck in the trees.
I hit treeline, the muck remained! I was still about 1-1.5 miles to the pass, but the snowfields were so large and the area so unfamiliar that determining the best route (without ever traveling this way before) was deemed too precarious. I tried to follow some previous tracks, but those meandered around just as much as mine, which further bolstered my decision to call it a day. Figuring that there is still a guy missing up there from September, I didn't want to add another tally to that count.
In hindsight, Audubon's less exciting track seemed much more attractive after that little trek, but at least I'm not hiking my way to the nearest aid station to throw in a towel - I already did that.
As for Pawnee Peak and Mt. Audubon, I'll be back in a couple of months after some of the snow has melted receded.
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| Brainard Lake with Navajo and Apache Peaks |
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| Morning meditation |
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| A little bit of snow left on the trails, doh! |
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| Approach to Isabelle Glacier |
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| The marmot had the opportunity to watch an idiot toil around on snow |
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| The Idiot. Isabelle Glacier behind me. |
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| Mt Audubon - not much of a snow issue there |
