CSU Changes Tune on South Slope Access

February 24th, 2007

Thursday night was the 2nd Colorado Springs Watershed Access Meeting. At the first meeting on February 6th, Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) had said there would be no access to the South Slope of Pikes Peak which has been off-limits since 1913. Several groups had been working with CSU to be able to complete the last section of the 60-mile Ring the Peak Trail and one other trail through that area.

I had planned on going to Thursday’s meeting but I’ve been sick this week. Wednesday I came home from work early and slept for over 4 hours. I crawled out of bed and lay on the couch for a little over an hour before going back to bed for the night.

City Council members and the mayor and have had discussions with CSU officials and they now have promised to allow “accommodating recreational activity”. They outlined a process for creating trails in areas that have long been off limits with trail planning starting this spring. I think this is good news although there weren’t many details. Fishermen weren’t happy since they’ve been wanting the reservoirs opened to fishing and that doesn’t seem part of the plan. I think there should be trail access through the area away from reservoirs but I don’t want vehicle access to the area. The easier the access the more people that will go. The biggest thing though is people that will hike 5 miles to get somewhere generally leave less trash and take better care of an area than those that will only walk a 100 yards.

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12/24 Hours of Sebring

February 20th, 2007

While mountain bikers, skiers, and runners were conquering 100 miles of snow in Alaska, ultra road cyclists where competing in the first RAAM qualifier of the year at Sebring, FL. The reports are that it was cold for Florida but I’m sure it was nothing like it was in Alaska. There are actually several different divisions and only the 24 hour non-drafting event is a RAAM qualifier.

John Schlitter put in the most miles at the event with 479.5 miles on a recumbent. He’ll be racing RAAM on a 2 man team. Brett Walker who is training for solo RAAM this year won the 24 hour race with 467.5 miles. John Jurczynski who is also training for RAAM won the 12 hour division with 245.5 miles. Nancy Guth won the women’s drafting 24 hour race with 309.4 miles. Complete results for the 24 hours are posted here and the 12 hours results are here.

Bloggers JB and Transplant Athlete (Lou) were there. JB put in 353.8 miles. He was written a preliminary race report. Lou did RAAM last year. He’s doing RAAM again this year. He didn’t feel good and ended up bailing after 14:45 with 222.5 miles in. He was quite disappointed with that but it’s a long time until RAAM.

Susitna 100 Results

February 20th, 2007

The Susitna 100 standings were updated regularly during the race. Now they are ordered by finish with the winners of each division highlighted. Pete Basinger won the overall. I raced with him in the 2003 Fireweed 400. He was ahead of me for the first half but I caught him soon after the turn around in Valdez. We were back in forth in Keystone Canyon. I passed him one last time as we started up Thompson Pass. His crew of 2 young women kept leap frogging ahead and flirting with me. It kept me pushing hard because I figured Pete wasn’t far behind. It took several hours before I didn’t see them anymore. Pete finished 33 minutes behind me.

Jill finished in 20 hours and 50 minutes to be the 3rd woman finisher. She’s already written 3 posts about the experience and plans to write more. First post, 2nd post and 3rd post.

Since John Stamstad was entered, I assumed he would be on a bike. Instead he was on foot. He finished 2nd in the foot division. Jill’s boyfriend Geoff won and set a new course record. It’s pretty amazing because 2 weeks before he was sure he had a stress fracture in his foot and didn’t think he’d even be able to do the race. I guess it just forced him to be well rested for the race.

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Susitna 100 Starts Tomorrow

February 16th, 2007

The Susitna 100 starts tomorrow. It’s a 100 mile race on the snow in Alaska. You can choose to mountain bike, ski, or travel by foot. You have until the morning check in to decide based on conditions which mode of travel you want to use.

Jill that lives in Juneau is doing it for the second time. She always has great posts about her rides along with pictures of the awesome scenery. John Stamstad is on the start list. I haven’t seen anything about him racing in a long time. In ultra mountain biking, he’s known for eating Spam and Twinkies during races. I remember one year at the 24 Hours of Moab, he lapped me during the night and I asked him how it was going. He said it would be better if he would quit throwing up. I didn’t say much but I thought how much better of a racer he could be if he would use some good fuel. Even with what he ate he generally did really well. I think 24 Hours of Moab is one of the few races that I didn’t win even though he did it at least a couple times.

The following weekend is the Iditarod Trail Invitational. It has pretty much the same rules but you have a choice between 350 or 1100 miles. My friend has done it and has tried talking me into it. Sometimes I really start thinking about doing it but then I come to my senses.

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New Pike/San Isabel Forest Meeting

February 12th, 2007

After people were turned away from the Pike and San Isabel Forest Management Plan meeting a couple weeks ago, the National Forest promised to schedule another meeting in the Colorado Springs area. They’ve made good on their promise and have scheduled a meeting for March 6th. It will be held from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM at the Doubletree Hotel – World Arena, 1775 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd.

Leadville 100 MTB Entrant List

February 12th, 2007

Leadville 100 MTB Start

The list of people that made it through the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike lottery has been posted on the Leadville 100 website. The only problem is it’s an Excel file embeded into the web page. If you don’t have Excel or something that can read Excel files, you can’t view it. Even if you have Excel you’ll probably get a security warning. I’ve converted the entrant list and put it on my website so it’s a regular web page.

There are 927 racers on the list. I think that is about 100 more than they’ve let in the last couple years. The interesting thing is that Floyd Landis isn’t on the list. Are they reserving a spot for him if his doping charges are cleared up or is he not in? It does say the list is preliminary.

Ingrid on the Yahoo LT100 Bike group went through and figured out how many got in from each state, their ages and gender. The youngest is 22 and the oldest is 71. 808 men are entered and 119 are women. 38.66% of women are between 40-45 and 24% of the men are 40-45. See her post if you want the detailed stats.

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Banjo Brothers’ Big Bad Bulky Biker Bodyfat Challenge

February 9th, 2007



Since the Race Across America last summer, I’ve gained over 25 pounds. I’ve always had trouble with my weight and this winter it’s been worse than normal. For one thing I got used to eating a lot when I was training 20-30 hours a week. After RAAM I realized just how much I had put off while training and so I was hardly riding. At the same time, my doctor decided my medication was too high for my thyroid so he reduced it. It turned out that I really need to be in between the dosage I was on and the next lower strength pill. Being on too little thyroid medication makes me gain weight faster. Then to top it off I got injured just after Christmas. I wasn’t getting much exercise before that but at least I was get a longer more than none.

I need something to get me to be careful what I eat and get my weight back down. That’s where the Banjo Brothers’ Big Bad Bulky Biker Bodyfat Challenge (B7 Challenge) comes in. It’s a challenge that The Fat Cyclist is putting on that ends on August 1st. The final score consists of two things. The first one is the percentage of your weight loss goal that you achieve. The second one is how much faster you get for a 3 mile cycling time trial. If I end up with a better score than The Fat Cyclist, I get a free jersey from him. If I lose I have to give him what I wagered.

Last year I did basically the same challenge except that it only went until June 1st and was called the B5 Challenge because it didn’t have a sponsor. I tracked my food intake and my weight very closely with Diet Power and made my weight goal. It was while I was training for RAAM so I was burning plenty of calories. I wrote a post last April about what was working for me that has a screen shot of my weight loss.

Hopefully I will be able to get back on track and lose my goal of 25 pounds. The problem is I’ve actually gained a little weight since the start of the B7 Challenge. although I’ve actually gained a little bit. Since I was injured, I didn’t do my time trial the beginning of January so I did my initial one this last Tuesday. It was the first time in a long time that I’ve actually gone all out. There’s good pain and there’s bad pain and for the time trial I was deep into the bad pain zone. My guts so big it felt like it was keeping my lungs from expanding as far as they should. My HR wasn’t quite as high as I can hold when I’m fit. I still felt like I was going to blow a couple times and I didn’t have anything left at the end. I did it in the Air Force Academy. This is a different course than what I used last year during the B5 Challenge so I can’t compare my time to last year. I certainly felt like I was slow. The Air Force Academy was closed after 9/11 and was only reopened last fall.

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Endless Hours of Climbing Stairs

February 7th, 2007


Yesterday I got an e-mail from Danny Chew saying that he plans to climb up Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning Building at least a 100 times this Saturday. That would be more than 40,000 feet of climbing! Danny Chew has won the Race Across America twice. His goal is to ride one million miles in his lifetime. He reached 600,000 miles on September 10th, 2006. Below is the e-mail he sent.

Twas 14 years ago that I set my 86 times up Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning Building record in 12 hours. That record has stood for long enough, so I plan to break it (shooting for at least 100 times up) this coming Saturday, February 10, 2007 starting at 8am. I plan to average about 6-7 times (actual climbing time of 6-8 minutes) up per hour – meaning it will take me just over 13 hours (ETA: 9pm)to tie my 86 times up record, and about 15 hours (ETA: 11pm) to reach my projected goal of 100 times up! Then depending on how I feel, I may just go on for 24 hours and 150 total times up.

Don Erdeljac will be my main support person. Please feel free to come out and do some climbs up with me. The Cathedral of Learning Building is located on the University of Pittsburgh campus between Forbes & 5th Avenues in Oakland. If you show up late, the 5th Avenue side entrance doors always seem to be open. I will be climbing up all 764 steps between the Ground and 36th floors – taking the elevators down each time.

I will be counting my laps on the top (36th floor) with tally marks on a yellow sheet. I will also have guest sign-in sheet on which you can write down how many times you climbed up that day. The vertical mile (12 times up) is a common endurance goal for some people.

With over 400 vertical feet one time up, 100 times up would be more than 40,000 feet or over 7 miles up – much greater than from sea level to the top of Mt. Everest! Stepclimbing records are posted on my website.

Colorado Springs Watershed Access Meetings

February 5th, 2007

Pikes Peak from Rampart Range

The revision to Management Plan for the Pike and San Isabel National Forests isn’t the only issue that could affect trail access in the Pikes Peak region. The other issue is the Colorado Springs Watershed Access Policy. Not only would it affect mountain bikers but all trail users. Two meetings will be held this month and the first is tomorrow night from 6-8 PM. The next meeting will be Thursday, February 22 from 6-8 PM. Both meetings will be at the Leon Young Service Center.

The draft policy was presented to the public on November 28th, 2006. The Gazette had an article about it on December 13. At the meeting a map was shown that had 3 different zones on it. Zone 1 has no public access, Zone 2 has trail corridor access only and Zone 3 has limited public access. It’s a little hard for me to figure out exactly where the boundaries of the zones are on the map since there’s not much detail. In any case Zone 1 was drawn to not only include Coloraod Springs Utilities (CSU) property but big sections of Pike National Forest Land. Some of these areas include popular mountain biking and hiking trails. It seems that areas around the Forester Trail and Jones Park, the old Manitou Incline, Camerons Cone, etc. could be in restricted areas.

Jim Yount wrote the following in an e-mail to the Medicine Wheel Group

Scott Campbell of CSU has stated that the map was misunderstood and frustrating to those at the 1st meeting and that it is being revised for the 2nd public meeting. The revision will supposedly zone only CSU land (not National Forest) and he also has stated that the placing of Zone 2 corridors is ongoing and that all “accepted use” trails on CSU property will have Zone 2 corridors around them. However, CSU does manage National Forest Land, so they still might restrict access on land coincident with the first map but just not tell you that during the public process because it is separate from the Watershed Access Plan (I’m not a cynic!).

However, it is up to us to ensure that the trails we love are Zone 2 and not simply leave it up to CSU to define “accepted use.” For example, he stated that official (numbered, like 701 for example) Forest Service Trails are “accepted use,” as is Barr Trail, but that we shouldn’t expect “social” trails to become Zone 2.

Although the South Slope watershed has been off-limts since 1913, several groups have worked with CSU and the Forest Service to come with a Pikes Peak Master Plan. It included two trails through the South Slope. One would connect the last 4.5 miles of the 60-mile Ring the Peak trail and the other one would connect Cheyenne Canon area trails with Barr Camp. I’d like to see those trails happen although I think it’s good to have some of the South Slope restricted. I want the area to be protected and no more roads built. I don’t think it’s necessary though to make parts of the South Slope and west of Pikes Peak into a wildernes area like the Central Colorado Wilderness Coalition wants. As part of their Wilderness and Mountain Biking Guide, IMBA has a section on how to preserve areas like this without banning mountain bikes.

Update: Mostly final Pikes Peak South Slope Plan was presented on April 27th, 2010

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Some Skiing on a Windy Day

February 4th, 2007

Clouds on Rampart Range
Friday morning it was -12 degrees here and it was forecast to only get to 6 degrees but we got downslope winds that warmed it to the upper 60s. Yesterday morning it was really windy. But after straight weekends of snow, the sun was shining and it warmed into the mid 40s. By noon most of the snow of the last few days had melted off the streets.

It would have been a good day for a road ride int the afternoon although it might have been a little sloppy. I’m going to the Eiseman Hut the end of the month for my annual trip. I wanted to see how my leg injury was doing and how I’d feel on skis. I had planned on going cross-country skiing in the morning but decided to wait until mid afternoon to see if the wind would die down.

The wind didn’t die down but I went anyway. I wanted to ski into Rampart Resevoir which is about a 45 minute drive to the trailhead for me. Soon after I turned onto Rampart Range Road out of Woodland Park, there was an open section where it was drifting really bad. There were two Colorado Springs trucks with plows trying to clear the road. There was a vehicle coming the other way that I thought was waiting to go through. After a little while, I figured out that it was stuck. After about 10 mintues, one of the trucks backed up to where I was waiting. The driver said they had pulled 3 people out and that it was drifting back in less than an hour.

Pikes Peak from Rampart Range with blowing snowIt was already late enough that I didn’t want to go looking for somewhere else to ski. I decided to try the Schubarth Trail. I didn’t go too far before it was drifted so I parked. As I was getting ready I realized, I had forgotten my poles. I wasn’t going to waste my drive so I decided to go anyway. I felt pretty awkward the first few minutes but then got used to it. I still missed them especially when I was having to side step up some of the big drits. The road had been plowed out but it was well drifting in. The snow was pretty wind blown and wasn’t good for skiing but it was still better than being inside.

When it was time for me to turn around so I’d be back to pick my kids up from my parents, I was where I was starting to get into the trees so wanted to go a little longer. About then I got to a sign that said there was absolutly no trespassing. I was pretty sure that’s where there’s been a problem with a landowner threatening people with a shotgun even though the road is public access. I went just a little farther and there was a house right by the road. I decided that was probably a good time to turn around.

Clouds on Rampart RangeOn the way back it was getting dark and the the clouds where lit up by the sun even though it had set where I was. It was really pretty but I hadn’t charged my camera battery and the camera would shut off when I tried taking a picture. As I skiing along, I thought that if I could warm the battery I might be able to get a picture. I got the battery out and held it my hand for a couple minutes. I was able to get a couple pictures. I then was able to get a couple more later by holding the battery again.

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