Vacation post

Vacation was a few weeks ago but I really had to think about the climbs before posting.

Here goes..

The first stop of vacation was Arches national park and my prime target was Delicate Arch. I've always wanted to see this famous arch up close and doing it proved slightly more difficult than I thought it would be. You don't just drive up, jump out of the car and stand next to it. There is a hike involved and warnings about bringing enough water. We were ill prepared and had to go back to the gift shop and buy a nalgene bottle to be on the safe side.

It was a hot climb and a lot of it was on bizarre tilted rock at a nice incline. Really gives you a strange visual perspective against the sky. Anyhow you hustle up there and this is my shaky vid of how Delicate Arch looks up close. It's humbling to stand next to and I'm glad I got the chance.

 


Next up was Angel's Landing in Zion park. I thought about this climb for a couple of years. I read about it, imagined it, and after a lot of waiting got a chance to step up to the trail head to make a summit bid.

The first 80% of this hike is more or less on a paved trail. There is elevation gain but zero scree or anything so you can pretty much cruise right on up to point where it's "decision time". We started hiking with a 3 group party I called the Sweeds. They blew past us early and I didn't think we would see them again. Later on we caught up and the leapfrog game was on up until the chain section where a decision has to be made by all who go any further. More on that in a second but here is a look at the start of the chain section.

Well, I mentioned that I'd thought about this for a couple years so I knew all about the chains, made the decision months before this day so I hit it full force and left the Sweeds trying to decide on a game plan. I didn't think to take any more vids between here and the summit because I had my head totally into the climb. I would NOT recommend this hike for anybody with a fear of heights. There is some serious exposure on this climb. People do die out here and I can see if fear set in how people could get stuck out here. I got in the zone and made the climb. Speaking personally the climb up was the point for me. Next is the obligatory summit vid and while it is super cool up there my reason to do this one was more about putting myself into more exposure than I am used to and seeing how I would react. Here we are topside.

 

After soaking it up for a while it was time to go back down. When I was almost back to the start of the chain section I found the Sweeds. They were clinging to the side of a rock down very low and desperately hanging on to each other. The bad part is that they could not have known what was coming next and if they were rattled here the intense exposure ahead would be sure to provide them total panic very soon. I mention it because in climbs there are always things to learn about yourself. On first glance and watching earlier in the day it is unlikely I'd be passing them on the way down and knowing they were not going to summit this day. Yet there I was and there they were on the verge of pee meeting pants at any moment. You just never know how things work out...

I could post a bunch of beer pics now but suffice to say we hit many, many breweries after this point and the highlights were Ska in Durango, Dolores River Brewing in Dolores Co, and Mr Grumpy Pants Brewing in Ouray Co. Ouray was a super cool town and I'm sure we will go back. The "Million Dollar Highway" between Durango and Ouray is an outstanding drive and we just love that south west corner of the state.

Also Vegas! We decided to make a trip down to the Fremont section of Vegas this time. We have always stayed on the strip and in all our trips have never even seen Fremont. Old Vegas does not command the same hotel rates as the strip so for the same price as a normal room we were able to score a corner suite and Rush Tower. The room was phenomenal! Two big flat screens, a giant couch, king bed decked out in incredible plushness, MASSIVE soaking tub, really really nice room. The street is loud until about 2am and maybe that also makes the price nice but these corner suites are killer. I would not hesitate to stay here again again and we get a free upgrade next time so no telling was a full on baller suite is going to look like but I look forward to it. Turns out we like old Vegas. We like it a lot. It's much more party where the strip is more upscale shopping now.

We did have one nice meal on the strip at Spago. The food was crazy high quality and the ambience is only as it can be while sitting at Spago looking up at the Cesar's  sky...

All in all we had an amazing time and there are tons of things I've left out like learning about a new favorite Hawaiian dish called Loco Moco, to the world class brick oven pizza they make in the tiny town of Dolores, to discovering the Meadery in Palisades Colorado....many fun things that make up a catch as catch can road trip the way we do it.

It was hard to come down off this cloud.

GABF 2011

As I sit here with coffee and start to piece together the event from last night I find that there is only one way to describe it......awesome!

The GABF is simply awesome and I'm probably going to start thinking about tickets for next year just as soon as I'm done with this blog post. ;)

If you know me you know my favorite beer style (far and away) is a well crafted IPA. I expected to find a lot of good examples at the fest and there were several. I also expected to have my top 3 beers of the event be IPA's but I was wrong.

Best beer of the night for me was easily Firestone Walker's barrel aged Russian Imperial Stout Parabola. 

This beer is glorious. Upon tasting it you will say "Damn!" pause for a second and then say"That's good". You won't say much else for a while and others drinking it will understand why you can't add much more than 3 words to describe the amazing beer you are drinking because it has 37,000 miles of depth to explore and you only have so much time to explore them.. It's a stellar beer deserving of as much praise as I could give it and the $25 per bottle you might pay should you ever see this beer out in the wild. Killer stuff!

Second best beer of the night Avery's barrel aged sour ale Immitis.

 Maybe this is a difficult style to get into because the guys I was with both hated it but this was an easy walk away second best beer for me. It would have been #1 had we not discovered the Parabola. The RIS was simply world class beer and demanded the #1 slot. This Sour was amazing and for me it grabs the second place of the evening. Super complicated ale with green apple and cider explosiveness to lead in and a finish that grabs your attention as if it's saying "Look at me when I'm talking to you"...like the Parabola this is also a limited release that is difficult to buy. A guy was telling me you have to go to the tap room and enter into a lottery system to get a chance at it. Later on when I came back for more it was gone and one of the Pouring guys told me he didn't get a chance to taste it. I feel lucky that I did get a chance.

And 3rd place for the night an IPA...finally! ;)

Bear Republic's Cafe Racer 15

Ah yes....what's better than Racer 5? Racer 15 of course. Can you run down to your corner store and grab some unlike the limited release rare brews listed above? Nope..of course not. This is the beauty and the curse of the GABF. You get to taste awesome beers you will likely never get to taste again. I didn't grab a pic of the Racer 15 but what I can say is that it was fantastic. We had many, many, IPA's and some were rather simple, some were not quite up to snuff, most of them were good-great but this one knocked it out of the park. Very nice beer.

In case you wonder what it's like wandering into a room with more craft beer than you can possibly drink, like I started with..It's awesome! I had a freaking blast. Aside from the beer the crowd was all having fun and there are some things I didn't know about that experience will help with on future visits to the GABF. 1
1) Pretzel necklaces. Whoever came up with this idea was a genius. 
2) Crowd participation. I kept hearing people start yelling at random moments. Eventually it happened close enough to me to figure out but when somebody drops a cup you yell AHHhhhhh! at them. not just you but everybody within 80' as to let them know the world saw what they did and we are not letting it slide. All in fun and why not? There is a huge "we are all in this together" vibe and it's a load of fun. Somebody spilled beer on me, I threw beer all over some girl, I tried to get Luke to shoot a pretend gun made with his own index finger and thumb at somebody and he wouldn't do it (man that was funny). At some point we were asked to take a pic of a group of friends and I told them we would not do it unless I could also have a picture of them and apparently they agreed because here they are and I'd say if a picture is worth a thousand words I feel confident in closing this post right here.

Let the brewing begin!

I've missed brewing beer.





When I sold my last set up I had amassed (what was for me) a pretty spectacular all grain set up. I had everything I needed to brew anything I wanted and I did! :)

Life brings changes and these days small space apartment living looks like it's going to be our standard operating procedure for the foreseeable future. This lifestyle is good for a lot of things but not so good for the type of brewing I was doing in Texas.

With no yard, garage, garden hoses, outside space and considering the much different weather changes from Sugar Land, TX to Littleton CO if I wanted to brew here I'd need to do a total system revamp.

After a lot of silent contemplation on my part we were sitting in the Avery Brewing tap room about 3 weeks ago next to the coffee roaster that provides coffee for their coffee stout and Angie says something like;
 
"Ya know, this beer tastes pretty good. You roast coffee and brewed beer, you should make something like this".

:o

I needed no further encouragement! After scouring the various brew forums for info on "apartment brewing", "all grain counter top brewing", and so on find myself these few weeks later looking at this glorious sight this fine Sunday morning.

Airlock activity.....let the brewing begin!

Quandary

We got a chance to climb Quandary with our friends Luke and Prudence yesterday.


The weather was about the best I've ever seen when climbing and not to spoil the story but we were able to hang out on the summit for a long time (a couple of us longer than the other two but I'll get to that in a bit). Yeah, normally afternoon storms are building when we summit and after just a few moments to soak in the accomplishment and snap a few pic it's time to get moving. Not the case this day...we lounged around the summit for a good long time enjoying it all, watching a mountain goat and dog get to know each other, and just taking in this summit that offers a really nice 360 degree panorama of views.

Unlike some hikes this one gives you great views as soon as you break the tree line and it just never stops getting better.


There was one thing everybody was talking about and it was rocks...the trip reports we read did not mention how much loose rock was on this hike. If I do a report for 14ers.com I'm going to mention the loose rock is brutal on the way down and just about ever person you meet on this fairly crowded hike will be talking about it.

Between the rocks, the sun, and negotiating with mountain goats for trail space like with this guy right here...

We were wiped out at lunch. All the spots we missed with sunscreen were blasted, we were drained and banged up pretty good from dealing with the rocks but it really was a beautiful hike and up top you don't care about the beating you are about to take to get down.

Ok..back to the thing about some of us gaining the summit first. My cardio was horrible yesterday. I'm not sure why some days it's better and some days it's worse but my goal for next year is cardio. My legs are fine and I'm good to climb again (maybe not today) but next weekend no problem...but the cardio, it was weak yesterday so we took some breaks so Luke and Prudence went on ahead to scout the summit for us. In the vid I had to poke a little fun at it. Prudence was not within earshot yet so.....here is how it went.

 

At lunch we were zombies...we ate some food and drank some beers but honestly I didn't taste much of it. We were simply toast.

An awesome day like this one sometimes saps your energy and I'd say we had an awesome time because we were all sapped.

Great day up on Quandary!

Lucky 13 alt

Well...one thing is obvious, this isn't an altbier. I think this is just a brewers beer. One that fails to fall into any style (at least by my taste).

In the glass this beer is very interesting. I was recently complaining about an experimental IPA that was overly sweet but the sweetness in this beer is welcome..very welcome. It's not sugar sweetness or residual sweetness. I've got it figured but hold up a second..

Aroma is light grapefruit, taste is also light grapefruit on the front that morphs into a middle of tangerine and finishes on that sweetness that is a nice pineapple. Malt weight is hanging in there pretty nicely giving a good body to this beer. I would not call it balanced exactly as it sort of moves around a bit but the effort is there and it's very pleasing.

I've got to say that Lagunitas hits at a very high %on their limited release beers. The bad part is that they are scarce. I really wish I'd bought 10 cases of that Imperial Red a few years back as it was amazing but yeah...they really crank it on they limited brews in my opinion.

No exception here, I like Lucky 13 Alt. It's sweeter than I like in my IPA's and it's lighter than I like in my maltier styles but the pinch of this and dash of that really works for me in this glass whatever style it's supposed to be or gets identified as.

I like it!

Flat Iron I

This is a hike of Flat Iron I in the Flat Irons in Boulder.

Once again Boulder delivers the goods!

In the last vid I think I've incorrectly identified the rock right over my head as Flat Iron I but once we climbed out and looked back up I was able to get a better perspective of the range. We were very close to the actual peak of FI1(and above 2 & 3)  but you would have to rock climb to get there....still, the rock over my head is still freaking cool! ;)

But before we got topside there was this surprise boulder field to discover. It is literally hidden around a corner and you have no idea it's there. It wasn't too bad really but it is a bit shocking when you first see it. There is also a small section where you need to do some hands on rocks scramble and there are actually plenty of places on this hike were you could fall far enough to get a bad boo boo.

And again the trail data was impossibly wrong. But if this was actually the 1.5 mile hike we thought it was going to be it would not have been nearly as much fun.

Short vids of the boulder field from bottom, top, and the spot where the trail ends somewhere between FI1 and 2.

 

Eelment of suspicion

What do you do when faced with something confusing enough that it makes you question yourself?

Do you figure you could be wrong....something hinky is going on....maybe you should reconsider....

Well.... Here is such a case and it's no to hard to make the call, it's just weird is all but I've got to go with what I'm getting even if it doesn't make sense.

Left Coast Brewing Hop Juice.

What is confusing me about this beer is everything written on the bottle about what this beer is supposed to be... I hardly find any of what the brewer claims to be showing up in my glass. This beer drinks like an English Ordinary Bitter to me except that it's over twice the Alcohol content of that style. As the beer warms I get some pine but cold....and I drank 80% of it cold the pine was washed out for me and I was getting was nondescript bittering hops. Maybe English hops... a little earthy.

Anyhow, the brewer says it's an IBU monster and unless I have a cold nobody told me about it's just not as aggressive as I'd expect a double IPA to be and it's not west coast style for me at all in this bottle.

It's really like an ordinary bitter that somebody screwed up by adding extra bittering hops and dumping some Sugar in to boost the Alc content. Making it a  hot/alc extra hopped bitter.

On a positive note I sort of like it but it's an odd duck. This would make a good party beer where getting trashed was in the plans. It's like a session beer way to hot for session drinking.

I can't help but wonder what adding some darker "bready" malt into this beer would do for it.

Anyhow, I think it's a decent beer. It does not fill any slot or rise above enough other beers to make it into my normal rotation but it's not bad. It's out of style to my taste but hey, who's fault is that?  ;)

This is where we breaker up...

First climb of this season was a grudge match against Bierstadt.

Last year I was sick on this climb, not in peak shape and suffered the entire climb. The mountain took a lot out of me and although I did gain the summit that day it was not as enjoyable as it should have been. This experience put a powerful thought in my mind that shaped my preparation for this year.

I'm happy to say that I did keep what I learned last year and executed my plan to a fairly high level of success. Yesterdays climb was right at about double the speed of any other 14er to date. I wanted to take this summit, look at my watch, and see a time under noon.....So when I looked at the time yesterday and it was 9:33 am it was a great feeling to see the work of the last few months pay off. The stage was set for this earlier in the year when we also smashed our time at Green mnt. So obviously I am happy but I also know this is not my limit. Not at all really and I could have done more this year...I will do more next year and already have a gameplan that will be finalized soon.

Anyhow, before the vids an interesting note is that this mountain brought me another powerful lesson from this climb. I might have to climb this one every year in order to learn the lessons for the next season if this keeps up.

Getting close to the final approach the wind started getting brutally cold. I had stopped to do something learned from watching more experienced climbers and that is to take 5 before the final approach just to relax, eat some food, and enjoy the moment. As I was eating half a bar I heard a guy say to his climbing partner "Man this wind is crazy" his partner says to him "Yeah.....this is where we breaker up". I was reaching into my pack right then to grab my hat and gloves and could feel the windbreaker touching the back of my hand. I thought....yeah, this is where we breaker up isn't it? As it went I wound up using my gear to a much higher degree than before. It's easy to just get in the zone and get to the business at hand when climbing. Well, it got me to thinking about suffering. Suffering is inevitable but there is stupid/unnecessary suffering and strategic/planned suffering. The take away for me is to tune into the experience more and not suffer stupidly. I could have easily continued up the final approach without my wind layer and just been more uncomfortable. Maybe I am doping a lousy job of explaining something that sounds as simple as this sounds but nevertheless, I'm continuing to learn from the trail lessons that carry further than they first appear.

First vid is a shaky panorama from the summit. It was very cold and windy (sorry about the sound quality) and apparently I was a little out of breath. ;)

The second vid is my attempt to illustrate the idea of "easy" 14ers. The idea came to me last year on Grays when I heard a first time climber complaining loudly that the description of it being an easier climb was misleading. Pretty soon his group gave up the fight and headed back to the trailhead angry with the idea they had been mislead. Well, they were not mislead. If you don't need ropes and helmets for instance it is an easier 14er.... But that don't make it a casual stroll.

 

Hop Rod Rye, Red Rocks, and Carpenter peak.

Today the beer review comes first and then the hikes...

Why? Because this beer deserves immediate attention.

The first thing I'll say about this beer is that if I ever win the lotto, become a king, or otherwise had the chance to rock and roll all night and party every day this might likely be what I eat for breakfast most days. :o

The second thing I'll say is that I can not think of any other commercial beer off the top of my head that tastes as close to homebrew as this. To avoid any confusion that is a massive complement on my part as I've had the good fortune to sample many an award winning homebrew made by some amazing brewers. I'm not sure yet why I'm getting this vibe from Hop Rod but because I KNOW I'll be drinking this one several times again in the future perhaps I'll track it down.

Deep amber color in the glass and big citrus hops as you should expect from a DIPA / Imperial IPA but the rye and malt bill are probably what makes this beer genius. The balance is perfect for me in a beer crafted in this direction. It's not really a hop giant or anything but with the body it's sort of hard to say how hoppy it really is. All in all I'm loving this beer! I give it a rating of must buy if you have not tried it. My short list of must buys also include Pliny The Elder, the limited addition red ale from Lagunitias, and maybe Czar from Avery or Espresso Oak Aged Yeti on the darker side of the fence. Also my absolute favorite PA New Dogtown but I digress...


Great beer, I'm a huge fan with my first 22 ozer.

Hiking this weekend served for us to continue winding down just a bit because our official 14er season is now ON!! We are in a ready to launch pattern and the hot temps next week are going to get us where we need to get I hope. We need some more snow to melt up there asap. Last year our first climb was the 4th of July but this year we are going to have to wait for until the weather permits. We are ready right now!

Sat we hit Red Rocks and today was Carpenter Peak. Obligatory summit vids below.

Evergreen mnt, pasta, and Hop Stoopid

Today we got out to Three Sisters and scurried up Evergreen Mountain. This is an inviting hike that isn't too tough (even when you do like we did and park in the wrong lot and add extra distance hiking to/fro).

This trail has super wide and gentle switchbacks that I think offer a better summit view than most hikes of this length and difficulty level that I'm aware of. We had a lot of fun with it.

We also wandered into an artisan pasta booth today at a farmers market and it was all I could do to get out with only 3 selections. Everything in here looked good and just the dried pasta section had 20+ selections with everything from Thai orzo to chocolate linguine.. The website says all the right things and I'm excited to see if we might have found a real score on the high quality pasta front.

And to finish off the day I decided to give Lagunitas Hop Stoopid a try.
I've put off trying this beer for a long time mainly because the name makes me think of big wonk hop crazy beers that might have names like the Hop-ness Monster or Hop Cannon. As much as I love hops I don't care for screamingly "stoopid" brews that offer nothing but IBU's.

My appreciation for some of their limited release beers and the New Dogtown finally pushed me to try this offering.

Color: looks like a deep honey to almost amber color. Very Maris Otter looking to me, kinda maibock-ish or something..anyhow.

It's got tight and light carbonation..


Taste: Hmmmm.... Unexpected. My very first impression is that this beer if horribly named. To my taste this beer is not even aggressively hopped forward. I get a humongous blast of orange citrus hops and orange just isn't aggressive like pine or grapefruit can be. Construction wise it's solid as should be expected from Lagunitas.

As I try this beer at different temps and work my way to the end I'm left thinking two things.

1) This beer is much different than I imagined it might be and the name put me off for far to long.

2) This is not the type of beer I like to have on hand because it falls into the class that I call "danger beer". The lighter carbonation, smooth bitterness (they say it's 102 IBU's), and the balance of this beer make it very easy to drink. Off hand I'm not sure if this is a double IPA or not but either way it drinks like a pils to me. That might be a slight exaggeration but the point is it's a way easy fast drinking beer to my taste..too fast/easy.

I'd say if anybody has been put off by the name like I was don't be. It's not aggressive at all to my taste. Give it a shot.

Deer Creek, Parmalee, and art

After 4 weeks of bigger hikes we scaled it back this weekend and hit Deer Creek and Pamalee trail out at Mt. Falcon.

I'll post a couple quick vids of those spots right after an art update.....

After some time I'm finally seeing progress on my latte art. One thing that has taken me time is pouring just one drink most days. Between my set up, caffeine intake, my diet, time, and so on....actually if I had a different machine I'd forget about those other excuses. :)  But nevertheless I just pour one drink per day in most cases. Finally I'm getting consistently good milk and have turned the corner on stacking it up (marking). Now it's a matter of learning to control things. I'm very happy to have reached this point and the journey from here to there promises to be more fun than the one from back there to right here. Obviously all of it was necessary and the consolation prize for all those learning pours was still drinking solid small milk drinks...not bad in a days work. I still feel like a Czar or a Sultan sometimes when the shots are right, the milk is right, and the cup rewards beyond what a few ounces of milk, water, and coffee ought be capable.

Maybe art is (in small way) to show some respect and appreciation back to the coffee for what it is to us... just a thought.  

Some recent pours:

Now the hikes.. Deer Creek was interesting because it was a conditioning test coming from a place I've never been before. Perspective is everything and coming off much harder hikes this summit was gained in 70 min. descent in 50 min. Pretty fast for me.. Can't wait to see what times I can pull in 2012. :)

Parmalee / Falcon is just a place we like to be. The vid below shows my fav part of this hike. The very start with the picture frame mnts behind the hitching posts.... nice!

Bear / Beer

For our 4th mountain in 4 weeks we came back and grabbed Bear. The weather last week might have pushed us off on that day but today was a new day and we came a' calling.

The hike in was great again and from the places we have been in the area I've got to say Boulder is a great place to find challenging/training hikes. Lunch at the Whole Foods on Pearl is also an adventure....the place is like a normal WF but amped up a few notches (because it's Boulder).

Nice views from Bear and about 5 min before you get to where these vids are shot you get a huge view of the continental divide. It was pretty stellar out there today. I'm not sure when we have to taper down for our first 14er this year but after all the bigger hikes of the last month I'm ready to scale back a tiny bit and come in on strong/fresh legs. In a strange way I'm already thinking about next season now BEFORE we even have this one in the fully locked and loaded position. We upped our game so much it's impossible not to imagine upping another level next year.....but that is getting ahead of things.

Here are two vids from up high this am.

After this much climbing I took a look at my watch and sure enough it was BIG IPA time.

When I spotted the Avery Maharaja Imperial IPA I knew it was my destiny to ride with the Maharaja. In fact when paying the shop keep he says to me "oh the Maharaja....it's a good one".

In my glass I find massive citrus and maybe even tropical hops. Dominant tangerine assertive hopping here. This beer is aggressively enough hoppped that it's dancing on the line of soapy but damn is it good!  This beer makes me desperately desire some very spicy queso and chips. In fact I'm making a mental note of that and WILL revisit the idea at some point in time. But sadly it can't be today, damn!

Anyhow, this is a hop lovers beer and worth a try whenever you see it sitting on the shelf.

Boulder Peak

What an awesome hike!

I'd say it's the best non 14er hike we have made so far. Boulder really has some good hiking as Green is also cool and I expect Bear....that we ALMOST..made today is also nice.

I say almost and the vid should show why it was a no go for us today even though we were less than a mile away and under 30-40 min of making our fist 2 peak bag day.

The forest sections of this hike about half way in are insane. Real Land Of The Lost type stuff. Massive boulders, rock caves, downed trees, crazy green ferns and things growing all around, eagles screeching overhead....I was expecting a dino to pop out around the corner any second. ;)

Very nice hike, I highly recommend it.

Bergen Peak 2011

I'll try to post up some of the interesting hikes of this season.

Last week at Green Mnt. was epic but the weather made it impossible to get any pics.

The hike today had a bit of misinformation involved... we expected a 1K elevation gain over a 10 mile hike. The idea here would have been a gradual gain over a longer hike. The best way to make sure you are prepared for an 8 mile loop is to do a 10 mile right?

However it turned out to be a 2,100' elevation gain and approx 12 miles.

The weather was very accommodating, we felt strong, and were able to inflict seriously sinister trail psychology on a few groups of hikers. ;)  One of them was able to take us about a half a mile from the summit but we made them suffer for it hahaha!  It's a totally different ballgame when you start getting into peoples heads, pushing them harder than they want and making them earn the right to pass you. Funny thing is that all of this goes on and you are oblivious to it until you are aware of it. Different ballgame right at the same field. Fun stuff!

Anyhow, this is a long hike. I was game for the approach all the way until the final summit push...It was getting pretty old weaving these loooooong switchbacks. But the trail gives you what it gives you and that is the way it is.

The summit was a good pay off for the long hike in and the super long walk out gives you a super cool green meadow view and a look at the peak you just climbed. I'll add some of Angie's pics of a few interesting sections in a follow up post but will include a short vid of the summit I grabbed with my phone.

With the 11+ miles and over 2K elevation we got a little beat up out there today. We had to slam protein at the trailhead, L Glutamine, Advil as soon as we got home, and I'm about to go for the Arnica. After we eat it's Tumeric, fish oil, Zyflemend, and ZMA later tonight. I made myself laugh by noticing on the drive home that my torso felt pretty good. Thats all...just the torso. Legs - trashed. Back - demolished.Neck, feet, shoulders/arms....forget it. All thrashed. Torso.....felling pretty good right now. ;) We are officially sick in the head. Absolutely no signs of sanity returning any time soon. We saw some late 50 - early 60's out there tearing up the trail.... Oh yeah that reminds me Glucosamine.

I'm going to pour a small milk latte in about 15 min....yep, livin the dream. 

A whole nother level...

It became obvious yesterday that things had changed for us. We are simply not on the same level with our hiking as we were last year.

The peak we use to make sure we are prepared for the 14 season is Green Mountain in Boulder. It's got similar stats as 14ers only it tops out at a lower elevation, maybe 9ish. This allows you to get up as soon as that snow melts enough and get in a good simulation on elevation gain, terrain, distance, and so on.

Angie and I have spent the last 2 months working on cleaning up our diet and making moves that bring us just a little closer to athletes than hobbyists. Granted we are never going to be professional climbers but we are doing things that have pushed us to another level. We have a recovery strategy, training plans, constantly examine our fuel options while climbing, gear, supplements, diet, and we have already started talking about our off season training plans for later in this year after we are done climbing the peaks we have not even climbed yet.

These things happen gradually and it's not like a head slapping moment to point at and say "wow, we are pretty serious". But the fact remains we are fairly serious. Somebody asked me to try a cake or something at a restaurant in April and I remember saying it sounds good, I'll go try it in October. The reply was "October?"... And it's funny when you realize that your thinking has changed. How it's totally normal to say something sounds good and you will eat it in 6 months because right now it doesn't fit into your training schedule.

Anyhow none of this is what turned on the light switch for me this is:

Last year we climbed Green in 6 hours. The suggested time to do it is 5 hours. We didn't think much of that because Angie got a little irked by the exposure early on in that hike and we had to stop a few times until she got that worked out. So we were keen to see what kind of time we would turn out this year. The weather was rough yesterday. Very misty and foggy. About 3/4 of the way up it started to sprinkle on us and it got cold. Conditions were bleak and the discomfort level was elevated. At some point I could not see anything and had to take off my glasses...then I couldn't see anything. :)

At a point around 30 min from the summit we started asking the "how much longer" question, normal for these things and also normal we pushed on past the complaining and made the summit. Visibility was nil..like 20' before total fog clouds so there are no pics of this summit.

After a slow and cautious descent due to slippery wet rock we made it back to the car and the moment of truth was here. I took a look at the time...


If we made another 6 hour trip (and it felt like 10) the time would be 4:15.
If we had made the 5 hour suggested time would be 3:15.

I was hoping we made under 3pm to beat the suggested time so with that I hit the button on my phone to check the time....

1:45 ....    A little less than 3.5 hours...

Uhmmm yeah, we are not the same hikers we were last year. Chopping our time by almost 50% in bad conditions.

This year should be interesting....very interesting.

Art less

I've simply not spent the time to pour good art.

I was getting close a few months ago but when you have the type of attention span that I do shiny things on the horizon sometimes cause distractions. :(

Nevertheless, I got a sudden urge to a few days ago to revisit small milk lattes and gave it a go.

Poured a swan. Hahahahaha!

Red Rocks

Here a a quick look at one trip up from the stage to the top row at Red Rocks.

You will notice that I start out quick but slow down to a creep....

You will notice I am sucking wind....

You might think it looks easier than all that.

Come get some is all I can say.

This is a baseline pass and as the year goes on and my cardio improves I'll post up with better times but my gps was telling me RR is around 6K elevation and yeah, if you think you know but have not tried it....come and get it.

Random items of randomness

A few days ago....maybe it was a week, I broke out the matcha and took some time to reflect.

I can't say enough good things about waking up, having a coffee with a matcha back and reflecting for a bit.

And a smooth transition from matcha is obviously base layers. I've been wanting some good base layers for a while now and when we went to the big ski sale "snigrab" I didn't really see much by the way of deals. A few days ago one of the email alerts brought a deal too good to pass up and Angie and I grabbed a set of poly base layers that get good reviews. I tried them on and aside from looking like an overweight ninja or perhaps a pervy jewelry thief after the Pink Panther I'm looking forward to getting some in the field testing done on these bad boys...

Now the overly obvious segway is the ad lib smoothie I just made. I normally have a big bunch of kale and do green smoothies but akin to finding clothes to wear on laundry day when you realize all your normal cloths need to be washed I found myself ill prepared for one of my go to smoothie options/concoctions. I had to go with whey, pumpkin, yogurt, a few dark cherries and nothing more. I think I'll call it the pumpkin uppercut.

And this brings us to the tale of $2 beers.....

Out at the movies with friends last night and almost beyond belief they have a list of almost micros for $2 on tap. A quick glance shows they have Great Divide Titan IPA on tap....I'm not sure what else was on the list cuz I stopped right there.

With only 10 min before showtime and an obnoxious rule that said we could not bring alcohol down stairs...

A decision had to be made on how to proceed from here.

The clock was ticking and the pressure was on..............

Luke crafted a plan, relayed the info to our waitress, and pulled the trigger on the only reasonable solution at the time. ;)

I could go on with this random outburst but I'll stop for now.

To be continued I'm sure.......