Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Buena Vista remains as one of my all-time favorite orienteering venues. Super good terrain in all the best ways. Too bad that low clouds meant we missed on the views of the peaks across the Arkansas Valley, but there will be other times in the future.

Light warm-up as prep for the Night-O at Buena Vista. The warm-up went so well I decided to quit while I was ahead and passed on the Night-O. Felt like one of the best decisions of the decade at the time, but one day later I am upgrading it to one of the outstanding decisions of the millennium.

C • snow night-o 6

Red - Splits

Getting down to Denver per plan was not as easy as it should have been--largely because the interstate was closed again this morning, due to snow, of course.

The landscape was back to a snowy white. Funny to see how the meltwater coursing over the slickrock and pooling in places reminds me somehow of tidal pools--even though the setting could hardly be more different.

The snow was coming down with decent amounts of horizontal energy on the way back home.

Legs a little sorer this morning, but not bad.

2 more hedge plants bite the dust. I am trying to avoid even estimating--much less performing an accurate census--how many hedge plants there are left to go, on grounds that it could possibly be momentarily demoralizing.

Still winter in places.

From publiken

It might just look like some random snow to you, but actually this is a new glacier that moved across the road just in the past few weeks. It's about 15' deep where it sits over the road.

There's a glaciologist over at UW who is flat out stunned. He has traveled all over the world and even in Texas, and says he has never seen something as unexpected as this.

The Forest Service isn't sure what to do. They would like to be able to use the road, but on the other hand glaciers are pretty threatened world wide these days, and locally extremely rare.

Misc. morning run. Compared to yesterday, a lot of snow that was visible to the east on the west slope of the Laramie Range has disappeared. There's still a good bit left, but mostly just within a few hundred vertical feet of the top of the ridge, and almost is nothing left that you can notice north of Pilot Hill. Good job, sun!

Myriad small white phlox are blooming down in the Flats. It's not exactly like the vitsippa in bloom around the IKHP clubhouse, but it's still pretty nice.

Legs not as sore one day later after a hard run as last time out. Ran a course at an easy pace at Diamond Bay; still a fair amount of snow in parts even at that relatively low altitude (8000', or whatever it is.)

It was mild most of the day until shortly before I headed up, when a could front blew through, and temps dropped almost immediately--maybe 20 degrees, maybe more. Big difference between sun and mid 60s compared to low 40s and no sun plus some decent wind!