I've spent the past 4 days up at Mountain Command with a few of the fellas readying myself for the few remaining races of the season.
Here, Mr. Espy tries to identify some of the local subalpine flora...
And believe me - he's just as dangerous riding home in the dark after a few beers. And he'd prove it by wadding it up in the parking lot on the way home one night........
.............................
......You know you've lost your way when you start to use the sun as a navigation tool.
It all seemed so simple on paper...
We'd ride north on a known route towards Lake Granby, then connect to "High Lonesome" trail and skirt the Indian Peaks Wilderness, and make our way south through Arapahoe Nat'l Recreation Area; all on a trail network very clearly marked on my free map...
Things started off so well....
But by mid-afternoon we'd be 4 hours in, hiking through thick willows with a thousand feet of forest above us on either side. Barely the shred of a discernable trail would deteriorate to what your
mind tells you is still a barely discernable trail; which then deteriorated to nothing but forest. Yet we continued...
I hesitate to use the phrase "trudging aimlessly," but it was mighty close. You gotta understand the guys I was with, though; and I've mentioned them here before. They get put in motion towards a certain location and they'll stop at
nothing, except to stop and put on their space blanket...
My mind, brimming with nervous uncertainty was desperately trying to distinguish the difference between being lost and losing your way. We'd test that edge a half-dozen times as the sun began its downward trend......
In the end we'd never find the route but would stumble upon an obscure, but cut-in trail, followed by a 10 mile slog back to Winter Park. Then, it was all carnitas, tequila, and yet another story added to the ever expanding quiver.
....................Every so often we need to lose our way - to get out of our comfort zone enough to flirt with the fringes of panic. Cause if you can emerge, it makes telling the story later that much more meaningful...
And to cap off the weekend I'd FINALLY make it to the podium by taking 2nd place in the weekend's Pro Men Super-D; despite crashing in the last quarter of the descent. This means one of two things:
- Me and the guy in front were fast enough to gap the field, for me to crash, and still take 2nd, or;
- The rest of the field was slow enough to allow us to get sooo far ahead where I could crash, and still take 2nd.
I like to think it's number 1, but we'll never know...
