Welcome Winter

i had a couple short higher effort runs on monday and tuesday, neither was fantastic, both were pretty much on roads, and just to try to satisfy my desire to be out and running again.  then work and life (the temperatures are really starting to drop, 20's at night and 50's during the day, so getting a furnace and some form of heat took priority over running).  The good news, i have a gas fireplace, which is now working, and does a good job of keeping the house around 60 degrees.

Saturday was time for the welcome winter run, apparently an annual event in the making, started last year, and continued this year.  The group began to assemble at City on a Hill Coffee shop at a little after 6 am.  It was a bit cold (around 20), but spirits where high.  Due to the previous nights snow the original route was abandoned for what turned out to be a really fun loop from the fish hatchery over to hagerman pass via mt massive, and back.   John promised to run faster than everyone and flag the non obvious turns.

After a little food and drink, everyone began piling into cars, and off we went to begin our adventure. it was a little beyond brisk at the start, a small amount of fresh snow covered the ground as we began up the fire road our of the fish hatchery.  We carried on, Mike performing heel clicks and spinning off rocks.  we carried on up the initial climb into the mt massive wilderness area, periodically regrouping.

we took a couple wrong turns and lost on several occasions, but managed to find it again and continue on our way.  there were a couple creek crossings, one of which warranted balancing on a log, and resulted in milo (Ryan? and Leah's dog) over the creek:

and we were off once again.  after a couple more crossings of this creek, we were climbing up through the far sides of mt massive, and had some great views of mt massive as well as a group photo op, as everyone was once again together:

As we were cresting the ridge to head down into hagerman pass, we were above tree line, and greeted with a good bit of wind and rocky trail.  It was pretty fun to watch the snake of color ahead of me:

A little shaky, and blurry in the beginning, but it gives an idea of the wind and train of color.

After that there was another fun little descent and some deep snow sections:

 taking us down to the Hagerman tunnel, which once connected leadville and basalt via the midland railroad.

We again regrouped here and ate a bit enjoying the warmth of the sun, and discussing the remaining route:  we'd continue down hagerman pass, then start up towards sugarloaf on the leadville 100 course, hopping back on the colorado trail around the top of sugarloaf and following that to highline and rock creek trails back to the fish hatchery.

The group began to stretch out again here.  once we started up towards sugarloaf, most chose to hike up and enjoy the views of turquoise lake and the surrounding area:

Once on the colorado trail we were greeted with some fun little rolling sections.

All in all it was a great little adventure, and warmed up nicely.  The route was excellent, and the fact that there were so many great people and we all stayed pretty close together once we finished the initial climb made it all the better.

This year's route brought to you by John, Mike and Garmin:


Welcome Winter!

Some more photos can be found here: