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 Is the "tough" part of the slogan meant to describe the lottery? The lottery for the 2012 Hardrock 100 was on Sunday, and I’m thrilled to report that I got in again.
Some say the lottery process is the hardest part of the race. While that’s definitely an exaggeration, if you’re not given a chance to run because you can’t get a number, well then it’s sort of true. This year, there were 658 people vying for 140 slots, so some 79% of applicants didn’t get in. That’s pretty tough odds.
I can’t help but feel kind of lucky, not just for Sunday’s good draw, but for my luck and timing over the past few years.
When the race was first held in 1992, and for the first ten years that followed, it never even filled up. When I arrived to the scene in 2007, there was a waitlist, but if you qualified and applied for entry, your chances of running were pretty reasonable. In the years since then, its popularity surged, but with a bit of lottery luck, I managed to get in and finish every year, with the exception of 2008 when I was waitlisted. (My 2008 number was actually called on race day, and had I been there and ready, I could have run, so I’ve actually made it in every year.) read more>>>
 Approaching the cairn atop Organ. It's not always about the challenge of the peak. We climbed Organ Mountain this past weekend, which at 13,801 feet, is the 106th tallest peak in Colorado. We chose Organ not because Christy and I are now setting out to climb all the top 200 Colorado summits (or Bicentennials), we were just looking for a new place to go, and to come up with ideas we often take a look at the list of Colorado peaks and pick one we haven’t yet climbed. So to Organ we went.
Some discredit the notion of ticking summits off the peak list as lacking creativity. Sure, there are some less-than-interesting peaks that get done mostly because they are on the list. But through the years, we’ve found ourselves in countless cool places we may have otherwise never known about, often arriving there because there was a nearby summit we wanted to climb that we learned of from the list. In fact, in just the past few months, Tijeras, Rito Alto, Buckskin Benchmark and Lightning Peak all come to mind as climbs that were pretty memorable outings, and all four peaks happen to reside on the list of Bicentennials. read more>>>
 The final steps. Click any pics to enlarge. This just doesn’t seem to get any easier.
When it was all said and done, I kissed the Hardrock on Saturday, 31 hours and 55 minutes after starting the morning before, for 9th place. It was the 4th time in as many attempts to do so, yet despite the experience I’ve accumulated through those years, this time around seemed harder than usual.
I think it goes without saying it’s never easy. With all the time it takes to cover so many miles across such challenging terrain, there are countless things that can go wrong. It’s not just a test of who’s fastest on their feet through the mountains, but also, who can best manage all the issues that arise, because it throws a lot at you.
A couple days after it was done, while I was letting the post-run soreness and swelling run its course, I did an interview with Jon Maletz which I thought summed up the day well, so I figured I’d share it here. read more>>>
 Well, it's not my lucky number, but it'll do. It’s time for another lap. Hardrock starts tomorrow at six.
It’ll be my 4th time participating, and my 3rd trip in the counter-clockwise direction. That is, the race heads towards Lake City, then over Handies Peak, to Ouray, then Telluride, Ophir, and back to Silverton. Familiar as it has become, like a lot of Colorado, the San Juans are still buried in snow up high, so it makes it tough to predict how things will go. Snowy passes can be slow post-holing in the daytime heat, yet those same passes might be firm, slippery, and dangerous in the middle of the night. Of course it can also makes things faster.
Also on the “news” front, a reroute out of Telluride is reportedly adding a few miles to the course, and apparently they aren’t compensating for it by shortening the course elsewhere. I guess the thinking is that after 100 miles, what’s another three? read more>>>
 From the summit of Storm King Peak. It's wild back here. Last weekend, Christy and I went down to the Weminuche, in the heart of the San Juans. It’s an incredible place, one of our favorite spots in the state.
The Weminuche Wilderness handily takes the award as Colorado’s largest wilderness area. At nearly 500,000 acres in size (Maroon Bells/Snowmass is 181,000 acres by comparison) it is so vast, with so many impressive peaks, lakes and valleys, that a single trip can’t do it justice. It’s something you just have to visit and revisit, exploring different sections on different trips, and if you’re lucky, after a good half-dozen forays into its depths, you might just cover enough ground to get a basic sense of what it’s all about. Christy and I– having hiked the trails and climbed the surrounding peaks of Ruby, No Name, Vestal and Weminuche Creek(s), and after making several trips to Chicago Basin and the Needle Creek 14ers, with a combined 14 backpacks to various areas here– feel as though we’ve barely scratched the surface. read more>>>
 Just the three of us on top of #100-- Ted, Christy and our good friend Nicholas Feuillatte. Christy and I climbed Gladstone Peak on Saturday, a 13,913 ft. scree covered mountain in the San Juans, and with that summit, Christy has stood atop the 100 tallest mountains in Colorado. So I will say once again (and for the umpteenth time this year), congratulations Christy.
For some background on the 100 tallest mountains in Colorado, or Centennial Peaks as they’re officially known, see an earlier post from Clinton Peak here. Looking back, we figured it was in 2001 that Christy unknowingly started working on her “100″ list. While accompanying me to climb the 14er Mount Lindsey, we scampered over to the nearby Centennial peak, UN13,828, a.k.a.”Huerfano Peak” because the “100″ was something I was shooting for. Finishing my Centennial list with Jagged Peak in July 2006, Christy, who had partnered with me for most of my summits, was only 20 or so peaks shy of being done herself, and had nearly all of the hard ones behind her. read more>>>
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