Colorado: Arrival and Day 1

This trip has been a long time coming for me. After quite a stressful OB/Peds rotation, I was ready for a break and some time away. Colorado seemed like an obvious choice because I have good friends here, there are mountains, trails, and clean, crisp air.

I arrived Saturday afternoon, running on about an hour of sleep because of a late bar shift the night before and my decision to volunteer at a trail race that morning. Del picked me up and we grabbed some food and then headed to Nederland, CO where they were holding the annual Frozen Dead Guy Days. This is otherwise known as "the one day every year when Nederland, CO has more than 100 people in it". From a polar plunge with "costumes encouraged" to a hearse parade, to "coffin races", and frozen turkey ice bowling, this festival had "it all". I won't go into detail about what "it all" was, but I will mention that in the coffin races, they had very few criteria about what constituted a "coffin". It more or less had to be an open container of some kind with a person, representing the deceased, lying in it while their teammates negotiated a snowy obstacle course. The thin air up here(~9000-10,000 ft) certainly has a strange effect on what people deem to be entertainment.

That night we met up with some friends in Ft. Collins, had some food and beers, and then headed home for some well-deserved sleep.

Sunday morning I woke up just in time for some oooold climbing club friends from back in the day to show up. Chris and Michelle Brooks(The Brooki) were the climbing club officers when I first took up the sport back in 2000. In other words, they knew me back when I was Awkward Danny. After roughly an hour of talking about climbing, somebody suggested that we actually do some of it. So we did. We drove up to the Flatirons trailhead, guidebook in hand, and set out to free-solo the 2nd Flatiron. It was a 5.0 700 foot slab with tons of 4th class scrambling. It was my first climb in a year and a half as well as my first free-solo. Neither Jess nor Michelle had ever free-soloed either. I brought my camera and took some video which you can watch here.
It was nice to be climbing again, especially on such easy terrain that wouldn't aggravate my shoulders which are more or less useless for difficult climbing these days. I still had all the technique that I had back then, but my nerves were shot. Periodically, I would simply freeze and my mind wouldn't let me do the move. It was all super easy climbing, but it was hard to put certain thoughts out of my head in order to get through it. Thoughts of losing my footing, a hold breaking...tumbling down a slab for several hundred feet. Obviously, I'm writing this, so everybody knows that none of those things happened. I had my little moments and I got through them.

It was just surreal being back in that world after so long and finding myself moving over stone again. And without ropes. :-)

After climbing we ate lunch and sampled some delicious stouts at a local brewpub. The Brooki headed back to Ft. Collins and we headed home. Jess headed into the office to get a head start on work for the week and Del and I geared up for my first Colorado trail run, a 5 mile out-and-back.

Kansas City's elevation is roughly 1000 feet. Boulder, CO is around 5500 feet. Those two numbers, it should be noted, are not the same. It should also be noted that apparently there is a lower percentage of oxygen in the air at higher elevations. I was huffing air within the first quarter mile(which was actually quite a steep uphill), but nonetheless, I was at a breathing deficit compared to what I'm used to. Delaware had not been running all season and was easily outpacing me as I pitifully gasped for air. I wasn't able to catch my breath until we hit the turnaround and I stopped to relieve myself. Once we turned back towards the trailhead, I found I was breathing easier and able to keep up with Delaware much easier. Though that could also be due to the fact that he got a nasty stitch in his side and might have eased up on the pace. Either way, I was running comfortably and I beat him back to the car by maybe a minute. Great run, no pain, plenty of painfully obvious physiological responses to the altitude by my body. Among these are: "Dude, where's the oxygen?" and "Dear kidneys, we'd like some more red blood cells. We kan haz erythropoiesis?"

All in all, a fantastic first day! I hope to get in some more, longer trail runs and really explore what Boulder has to offer! Tomorrow's weather is expected to be sketchy, so we'll see what happens.