Legal Addictions: May 2012

May 24, 2012

Tour de Colorado - Segment #2

Segment #2 — South Platte Canyon to Little Scraggy Trail-head
Riders: Chuck, Kristin

The CoT

Date: May 24, 2012
Ride Type: out and back
Chosen Direction: South Platte Canyon trail-head to Little Scraggy trail-head
Mileage: 23 miles (11.5 each way)
Elevation Gain: 1702'
Average Pace: 13 min/mile
Total time includes breaks: 4.5 hours

Trail description: Stays within the Buffalo Creek Fire area for 80% of the ride and is mostly flat, gravelly and flows well.

Interactive GPS track recording:

View Sec. #2: South Platte Canyon to Little ScraggyUntitled in a larger map

Buffalo Creek Fire (1996): Burned for 1 week, scorching 10,000 acres of forest covering a distance of over 10 miles with a 2 mile width. The fire also destroyed 18 homes. More details here

Section 2 Trail-head

A partial survivor - Raleigh Peak (far background)
its summit is actually part of the burn line
The CoT loops just behind the peak among the unburned terrain (see next image)

Scorched Earth
Our GPS tracks overlaid onto Google Earth
Note the fires damage as captured by satellite

Elevation with corresponding speed profile

New growth

Lunch break

The Remains

Drive-by

Historical Hotel
passed on the drive to the South Platte Trail-head

Our first section of the CoT in the books!

May 22, 2012

Going Back to Kaly Kaly Kaly

Just as Notorious B.I.G had once said we are "going back to Kaly Kaly Kaly"

I often find myself thinking about our trip to the Greek Islands, ok ok and of course the more vivid thoughts pertain to tufa pulling mecca of Kalymnos. The trip was one of those "once in a lifetime" adventures. Despite the once in a lifetime tag, I'm pretty sure the day we left the islands we started planning our next visit. Now if only we could devise a way to make a living as both a pharmacist and a nurse in Kalymnos. Might be a little tough as sport climbers tend to take pretty good care of themselves. But wait, the Europeans, lets just focus on hoards of chain smoking Europeans that tend to frequent Kalymnos. Ahh those Europeans; some climbers prefer the post send high five, some feel the need to give a play-by-play rerun of the send, but man those euros they run straight to the pack to light up their celebratory cig. They did however come up with belay glasses...genius! Or click here for the US site.

Plane tickets and and lodging are in the books.

Seen you in October, Kalymnos. The awesomeness will begin as we arrive in Athens for Kristin's Birthday:)

New Kalymnos Guidebook to the planets best Tufa Wrestling

May 15, 2012

Old Climbering Grounds & Brotherly / Motherly Surprises

Yup that's right, old stomping grounds: the crazy conglomerate of El Rito, New Mexico. Little ol El Rito was anything but quiet this past week. I remember coming here to climb on weekends and nearly having the whole crag to ourselves, perhaps it was the recent feature in Climbing magazine. Kinda cool to see the area getting some recognition. El Rito rocks! and don't forget to visit the nearby Ojo Caliente mineral springs and spa on that rest day:)

In between climbing / camping stints at El Rito Kristin and I traveled a little further south on 5/13 to Santa Fe for a special surprise. We orchestrated a perfect UN-discoverable surprise...or we thought:) See, May 13 is my brothers birthday, which also happened to be Mother's day this year:) Dad was to convince the two of them it was a simple trip to Santa Fe to celebrate the joint b-day / m-day. It almost worked. It turned out mom had a slight tip off to the surprise (Dad discussing the surprise with me over the tele....with mom sitting right next to him) Sean had no idea so we batted a 0.500 on 5/13.

Dad took them both to the Marble brewery taproom overlooking the Santa Fe plaza for a midday brew-ski. At this time we called them on their cell phones to wish them a happy days, after a few words we then walked into room to two really BIG smiles:)