SBP: Free Again and hopefully for the next six months!
I wasn't surprised to see Hardly at the trailhead when I arrived, late, at 6:35 a.m. I also wasn't surprised that no one else showed up to fight the nearly foot of new snow that blanketed the Flatirons. It was incredibly beautiful. Everything was so soft, quiet, white. All the rocks and corners were now such seductive, smooth curves, like the body of a woman. I was surprised to see that Jeff McCoy was up the trail ahead of us. Dang, that Midwestern dude is really taking to Colorado.

It took Hardly and I fifty minutes or so to catch Jeff, low in Shadow Canyon. We were grateful for all the trail breaking, but now it was our turn. We switched the lead often. There wasn't any running now, as the snow was very deep - consistently to our knees, and the terrain was steep. But we could smell the summit now and would not be deterred. We clawed out way onto the summit after exactly 100 minutes of effort. My best to the summit is 53 minutes. Suffice to say conditions were tough today.

We ran down, passing Jeff who was only a few minutes from topping out. The snow was so deep that even this was quite a bit of work. The descent took 45 minutes of hard effort, but it was fun and satisfying. Hardly brought his camera and snapped some shots, but I don't have them yet. Anyway, there is a path to summit and SBP is once again secure for tourists.

More running on Wednesday, probably. Hopefully a rock will melt off and we can do some scrambling as well.

Bill
- posted by Bill Wright @ Monday, April 11, 2005