Week Summary: Oct 24 - 30

10-24-2011
Mon-AM: 1:15, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Moving well this morning. 33:40 ascent, still hiking the descents too.
PM: 1:34, 2600' ~ Green Mt.
Up 3rd access down 1st access. Lingered too long on the summit and ended up stumbling through darkness on the bottom half of the mountain.

10-25-2011
Tue-AM: 3:16, 4300' ~ Cameron Cone
First time I've been up and down what should be an absolutely classic peak in Manitou Springs.  Went with former CCXC teammate Martin Mudry.

10-26-2011
Wed-AM: 1:28, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front (w/ usual NE ridge variation). Slogging ascent through ever-deepening snow. Maybe a foot or so on the summit. No views of any kind today but tomorrow should be fantastic. Ran most of the downhill because the pillowy snow offers enough cushion to make my shin feel usable.

10-27-2011
Thu-AM: 1:27, 2600' ~ Green Mt.
Up front and down Greenman-Gregory. Simply incredible morning with the rising sun shining brilliantly on the newly-gilded landscape. Ran every step of the way down and it was the most fun I've had in months--floating through powder and visiting trails that I haven't seen since before I broke my leg.
PM: 1:10, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Trails were a bit stickier than this morning after some day-time warming. Ran the entire downhill again.

10-28-2011
Fri-AM: 1:09, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Broke out the Microspikes this morning for the first time this season as the trail has largely become frozen slush and packed snow. Quick descent, but the disappearing/consolidating snow means I might have to go back to hiking the downhills. Massage with Jeff Staron afterwards.
PM: 1:07, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Ran the downhill again, but the shin was a bit sore after Jeff hammered it this morning. Should've worn Microspikes as the ice/snow in the shade hadn't melted as much as I thought it would.

10-29-2011
Sat-AM: 1:32, 3100' ~ Flag Mt. + Green Mt. (Boulder Basic)
After a really late night at a Phantogram concert, hurriedly biked up 6th street and joined a bunch of other festive souls (/soles) for a communal and celebratory tour of the Boulder peaks. I took it cautiously, but ran/hiked up Flagstaff w/ Jeff and too many other familiar faces to name. At the top we all stopped to don Microspikes for the snowy/icy conditions before heading down to the Ranger trail to head up the backside of Green Mountain. Running up the hill at a casual pace w/ Geoff, Scott and Dakota meant I was able to mix in quite a bit of hiking and take some stress off my shin. After the others left to tag a couple more peaks, I reluctantly limited myself to just Green and ran down the frontside back to Baseline and my bike. I don't think I did any undue damage to my shin this morning, but it was a real bummer to not join in the rest of the morning's fun. A big part of being a runner is the shared identity that it gives you with other runners and my lack of racing and general lack of running this year has really left me kind of starved in that regard. Really great to get out for a bit with other like-minded folks this morning, even if just for a bit.

10-30-2011
Sun-AM: 1:21, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Awkward mix of bullet-proof ice and exposed rock and dirt made Microspikes necessary but not ideal. Some really great packed snow higher up on the mountain.
PM: 1:17, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Legs felt really good tonight and the ice had softened enough to make spikes unnecessary.

Hours: 16h36
Vert: 30,000'

I really enjoyed the intro to winter this week.  Obviously, hiking is even more appropriate when you're plowing uphill through a foot of fresh snow, so it fits my current limitations nicely.  I'm going to be out of town for the next 10 days or so, and I'm hoping that the enforced semi-inactivity will provide some new stimulus (or lack thereof) to my shin, maybe nudging it towards health.  It's really getting ridiculous.  My mind is already consistently wandering towards thoughts of the 2012 racing season (put my name on the Hardrock list last week), but whereas not too long ago 2012 seemed impossibly far in the future it now seems to be approaching almost too rapidly.  Things have to turn around at some point.

Middle Greenman trail.

Thursday evening: #477

The mighty Third.

Shia LaBeouf 29-10-2011

Últimas imágenes de Shia en Vancouver el pasado 29 de Octubre. Por otro lado, en Just Jared comentan que Shia y sus vecinos han organizado una campaña y firmas para el ayuntamiento de Los Angeles porque quieren construir una valla alrededor de la casa de Shia y sus vecinos (alrededor de la urbanización en Sherman Oaks) con el fin de protegerse de ladrones y, por supuesto, de los paparazzi. Ya veremos si la petición es aprobada.

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com

Megan Fox 27-10-2011

Foxy en Beverly Hills el pasado 27 de Octubre:

Vía EyePrime.com

Shia LaBeouf 27-10-2011

Imágenes de Shia en el set de "The Company You Keep" en Vancouver el pasado día 27 de Octubre. Como vemos, la escena en cuestión era la graduación en la Universidad del personaje de Shia:

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com

Cameron Cone & Snowy Green Mt.

The route on Cameron Cone.

Yesterday I finally made it up one of the more prominent peaks in the Colorado/Manitou Springs area.  One of the things I really enjoy about Boulder is its triumvirate of legitimate backyard summits.  Green Mountain, Bear Peak and South Boulder Peak all rise authoritatively and abruptly from the edge of town for close to three thousand vertical feet and each has an appropriately direct route up its eastern aspect.

On the other hand, in Colorado Springs, although there is the staggeringly obvious and commanding summit of Pikes Peak, it's not exactly a run-up-it-before-work type of mountain (because I enjoy sleeping, 2-2h30 outings are the longest I will consistently log before 9am on a weekday).  There are several 2000'-3000' climbs to be enjoyed in the area, but none of them have the obvious destination of a true mountain summit at the top: the top of the Incline is still about 700 vertical feet below the awkward and seldom-visited summit of 9250' Rocky Mountain; Barr Trail offers the logical turn-around points of either No Name Creek (8800') or Barr Camp (10,200'), but neither have expansive 360 degree views; Longs Ranch Road does no more than crest the saddle between the uninspiring Mount Manitou and the aforementioned Rocky Mountain; Jones Park (9100') is stuck in an aspen grove with higher peaks rising all around; finally, one can climb High Drive to 8300' Buckhorn Mountain (as I have done hundreds of times), and while the views are great, it hardly feels like a real summit as the Captain Jacks trail continues climbing far above this ridge.

Cameron Cone, however, breaks all aspects of this frustrating local pattern.  At 10,707' it towers nearly 4500' above downtown Manitou Springs and the standard route takes less than five miles to ascend that vert (to get from a ~6500' trailhead to 10,700' anywhere else in the region requires almost eight miles of trail).  The main problems are that this "standard route"-- despite being surprisingly well-developed with remarkably nice tread at least 80% of the way -- is not a Forest Service-sanctioned trail and the very beginning of the route is rather inconveniently blocked by the Cog Railway tracks at the base of Englemann Canyon (the same canyon from where the Barr Trail embarks). Nevertheless, my trip up the Cone yesterday revealed it to be just about everything I could want in a daily summit type of mountain.  I can guarantee that its path sees little to no traffic at all in the winter, though, so there would almost certainly be a ton of trail-breaking if one were to turn this peak into his or her daily vigil, but I think it would be worth it.

Typical tread below 8200' Gog/Magog Ridge.

Gog.

The Cone with 2000' down and 2500' of vert still to go.

Trail becomes rougher closer to the summit, but marked by ribbon.

Martin on Cam's summit.

And then, of course, it snowed last night.  Quite a lot.  This morning's trip up and down Green Mountain was particularly enjoyable as a result.  There seemed to be almost three times as much snow on the summit as what was on Boulder's streets, but this just made the downhill that much more enjoyable, and maybe my first completely pain-free running descent in the last nine months.  Of course, biking back home with slush spraying everywhere was a little less euphoric.

El oscuro pasado del padre de Shia sale a la luz

No salimos de una polémica y ya estamos en otra. Todos conocíamos el pasado de drogas que vivió el padre de Shia pero ahora la cosa va más allá. RadarOnline.com y Ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com están sacando más mierda y se trata, nada más y nada menos, que de drogas e intentos de violación. Al parecer el padre de Shia estuvo en la cárcel entre 1981 y 1983 por estos motivos.

Además, fue acusado de agresión sexual por una de las actrices de la serie que hizo a Shia famoso, Even Stevens, y atacó a un directivo gay de Disney por darle un abrazo. Teneis toda la información en Oh No They Didn't

Como vemos, una joyita de hombre. Todo esto no hace más que fastidiar aún más a Shia que entre sus propios problemas y los de su padre va listo últimamente.

Vía Star Magazine RadarOnline.com y Oh No TheyDidn't

Shia LaBeouf 24-10-2011

Shia LaBeouf sigue con su bicicleta en Vancouver mientras los rumores apuntan que Jason Statham (novio en la vida real de la sustituta) será el protagonista de "Transformers 4".

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com

Megan Fox 23-10-2001

Megan (junto a su moño), Brian y Kassius (que aunque no se le ve estaba ahí) yendo al cine a ver la película de "El Gato con Botas" el pasado 23 de Octubre :)

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com

Week Summary: Oct 17 - 23

10-17-2011
Mon-AM: 1:36, 2800' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Cloudy morning meant it was dark until I was half-way up the mountain. Ran to and from Gregory again for a total of 29min of running.
PM: 1:51, 3300' ~ Green Mt. + 2nd Flatiron
Biked to Chat, up and down Green via 3rd access and then a quick scramble lap on the 2nd Flatiron, which added ~700' of vert. Even though it was only partly cloudy and the sun was shining through on the horizon, there were a few flakes of snow falling on the summit of Green.

10-18-2011
Tue-AM: 1:38, 2800' ~ Green Mt.
Up 3rd access and down the front. This involved 27+ min of running from my door to the base of the 2nd Flatiron (trail really kicks up after that) and then another 13min of running home from the base of Amphitheater. More spectacular than usual sunrise.
PM:  1:19, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down the front. Shin tightened up a bit on the hike up, so I took it pretty casually. Shouldn't have done that extra 10min of steeper running this morning.

10-19-2011
Wed-AM: 1:19, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Exact same outing as last night, but maybe 30sec faster on the way up. All hiking. Shin is tight. Cold morning in the lower 30s!
PM: 1:24, 2600' ~ Green Mt.
Up 3rd access and down 1st/2nd with Jeff and Aron. All hiking. On the way down we hung out at the base of the First Flatiron for a bit watching the scramblers rip up the East Face. Pretty inspiring watching Stefan and others literally run up the first thin 5.6 pitch in a pair of Crosslites like it was a 3rd Class slab. Stefan completed the Chat-to-Chat roundtrip (including the downclimb, eschewing the 100ft rappel) in an impressive 34:02, less than a minute off the FKT (which he holds).

10-20-2011
Thu-AM: 1:14, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front. Kinda broke out of my lethargic funk of the last few days with a 33:23 ascent, but my shin was still tight, so all hiking.
PM: Appt w/ Mark Plaatjes.

10-21-2011
Fri-AM: 1:19, 2500' ~ Green Mt.
Up and down front.  Tired again this morning with little motivation.

10-22-2011
Sat- 5:29, 7000' ~ Almagre Mt. + Incline
Went down to Colorado Springs this morning to take advantage of the late-season snow-free-ness that the Pikes Peak region still offers at high altitudes. Parked at the upper Gold Camp lot (top of Cheyenne Canyon Dr, 7500') and hiked up 7 Bridges to Jones Park and then kept going up Bear Creek to the base of Almagre's north ridge at 10,100'.  Left the trail here at 1:31 and fought through the loose gravel to gain the ridge at ~11,200'.  Stayed right on the ridge all the way to the summit, mostly boulder-hopping and scrambling with enough snow to spice things up and keep it interesting. From the summit I went south to Stratton Reservoir and the headwaters of North Cheyenne Creek where I took the goat path down the canyon and essentially followed the creek drainage all the way back to the car (on trails), some official, some not. Upon finishing I immediately drove the ~15min over to Ruxton Ave in Manitou and ground up the Incline in 22:48, descending Barr Trail.

10-23-2011
Sun-AM: 1:30, 2600' ~ Green Mt.
Up 3rd access and down 1st/2nd access. Tired this morning, could really feel yesterday's long outing in my legs.

Hours: 18h35m
Vert: 31,100'

I started out the week quite optimistic about my shin, but a slight transgression on Tuesday morning put it just a little back over the edge and I was stuck with hiking the rest of the week.  On top of that, I was just plain tired this week.  I guess vert takes its toll, even if it's not technically running.  The week ended on a highlight, though, with my day-trip to the Springs on Saturday.

Pikes Peak has a unique climate all its own that usually means it's the state's 14er that stays snow-free(ish) the latest in the fall and becomes comfortably(ish) foot-traffic accessible the earliest in the spring.  Each year I try to take advantage of this by making my way up into the alpine down there one last time, usually around Halloween.  This year, I was interested in a trip up and over Almagre Mountain (Pikes' 12,400' little brother to the south) because the trails down there are steeper and more direct than the heavily-switchbacked and gradual Barr Trail on Pikes Peak.  Indeed, by taking the Seven Bridges Trail up North Cheyenne Canyon and then continuing on other less-traveled (but easily followed) paths further up the drainage, one can gain nearly 5000' in little more than six miles.  Not bad.

My ascent of the north ridge of Almagre, though, turned out to be a bit less ideal than I'd hoped.  This ridge looks like a fabulous and logical line on maps and from a distance, and in reality the ridge itself was quite a lot of fun--airy but nowhere-near-fatal exposure on both sides with solid tundra and boulder fields on its upper reaches--but the first 1000' required to gain that ridge was a giant pain in the ass.

Geologically, the Pikes Peak Massif is an enormous igneous intrusion of Pikes Peak Granite, which exists in various stages of decomposition.  This granite starts out as a suitably solid material (the mountain exists, afterall) but over time (and at varying rates) weathers first to chossy rock, then a relatively unstable rock-like matrix, and finally the ubiquitous Pikes Peak gravel that is the defining characteristic of the region's trails.  The lower reaches of Almagre's north ridge is dominated by this gravel, giving it all the shiftiness and solidity of a sand dune.  It took me 50min to go maybe a mile and a half (granted, this included over 2k' of vertical, but with better footing I could've easily dispatched of this in less than 30min), and left me with little desire to ever struggle through this line again, let alone establish it as a regular part of my outings in the region.  Other than for some very short-lived sockless postholing in a shaded canyon, the rest of the loop was fantastic.

I punctuated the day with a quick lap on Manitou's Incline.  This hugely popular staircase of railroad ties offers up 2000' of vert in one mile, about as stout and constant a climb as you'll be able to find anywhere without venturing into consistent 4th or 5th Class territory.  Despite living in the Springs for seven years, Saturday was only the third or fourth time I've ever climbed the Incline, and the first time since my freshman year of college 10 years ago (due to my before-now largely anti-hiking bias, I suppose).  Even with all of the very specific hiking I've been doing lately, it was really tough.  Part of that was the fact that it came at the end of an already big day with way too few calories, but by time I'd crawled my way to the top I realized that this particular climb has a lot to teach me--I hope to get back on it sometime soon, and often. Sub-20min feels like a good goal.

Saturday's route.

Seven Bridges Trail, North Cheyenne Creek Canyon.

North ridge of 12,400' Almagre Mt.

Summit, with Pikes.

Headwaters of North Cheyenne Creek at 12,000'.

Incline summit.

Posing on the Incline a couple years ago for a magazine article. Photo: Dave Philipps.

Nuevo video de la pelea en Vancouver

Treinta segundos más de video, lo que veis es lo que hay. Además hay nuevos comentarios sobre lo que ocurrió y el chico que sujeta a Shia asegura que lo echaron por ir muy borracho pero el actor se negó y por amenazar a otros le pegaron... unas cosas (con cuchillo de por medio y todo) que yo no se si son de un surrealismo extremo o qué pasa aquí. Lo que está claro es que entre el lío en la fiesta de Marilyn Manson y esto mal vamos:



Vía TMZ.com

Shia LaBeouf 18-10-2011

Ya sabéis, Shia, la bicicleta... lo de siempre :)

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com

Shia LaBeouf borracho y peleándose en Vancouver

Estas cosas no me gustan nada de nada. RadarOnline.com ya comentaba que Shia LaBeouf se había peleado en un bar en Vancouver y que todo había acabado con el actor en la calle, por los suelos y recibiendo hostias. Era un rumor pero ahora TMZ tiene el documento gráfico, es decir, el video de arriba. Lo único que puedo decir es que da una vergüenza ajena impresionante y que la cosa es aún peor si pensamos que no está en Vancouver de vacaciones sino para rodar una película. Yo no se que le pasa a este hombre últimamente por la cabeza...


Vía RadarOnline.com y TMZ.com

Shia LaBeouf 17-10-2011

 Shia LaBeouf sigue con su vida en Vancouver. Imágenes del pasado día 17 de Octubre:

Vía JustJared.Buzznet.com