.jpg)
When: 10/11/20
Where: Mt. Massive Wilderness Area
Goal: Sub-4 hours
Result: 3:35 and an FKT!!
Intro:
It has been slow going recovering from my two tibial stress fractures back in May. Going from 90-mile, 15,000-foot weeks to barely cracking 50/5,000 on a good week has certainly been humbling. But, it's my last week in Colorado and I did not want to go the entire stay without at least attempting a challenging FKT. I mean, this route is no Nolan's 14, but a time of just under 4 hours for a 13-mile, 5,000-foot route, almost entirely above 12,000 feet, is very strong. This route was bound to be a challenge!
The Run:
After dropping Megan off at the Mt. Massive trailhead (my end terminus), I drove the car up to the Windsor Lake trailhead to start my run. I felt fresh and ready for a good attempt, plus just plain excited for what looked to be a beautiful alpine ridge run. I walked up to the start of the trail (forgetting to take a picture as usual), started Gaia on my phone, and began.
The route starts out on a trail up to Windsor Lake that is steep but still very runnable. Starting at a pleasant 10am, it feels really weird going up to treeline in sunlight after a plethora of alpine starts over the past couple of months. I cruise up the trail way too fast, and after a mile or two and a good 1000' of vertical, I'm quite out of breath. The running comes to a halt at Windsor lake, and the power hiking begins.
The trail veers off abruptly just past the lake, where I say goodbye to easy hiking and begin climbing through a grassy meadow. This gives way to a stretch of thick, woody vegetation in a dry marsh that scratches my legs up as I push through. I hit the climb up to the ridgeline and push my way up. Grass gives way to scree and a surprisingly large snow field up in a wide gully near the ridgeline. Gasping for breath, I hit the crest of the ridge on all fours and stop to catch my breath and have a GU. My watch reads 1 hour exact.
Looking up at the sloping ridgeline ahead, I am deceived by how runnable it looks. I begin a slow, sidehilling jog and almost immediately my left foot catches on a tussock of grass, sending pain up my ankle. This pain makes itself known with every sidehilling step that pushes the outside of my foot up, and I elect to gain the ridge instead of traversing around the large knob to my left. I climb over this knob and look up to see a pair of mountain goats streaking along the ridge ahead of me effortlessly. I imagine they are incredulous at how something like myself, gasping for breath and stumbling among the rocks, could ever have made it up into their domain.
(You can just barely see the mountain goats ahead of me, dead center of the ridge here)
The goats lead me across the ridge, mocking my pathetic rock-hopping with their loping grace. I see them along the far ridge one final time before they veer off the right out of sight. I keep moving across the ridge, hiking the long climbs and running the short descents from each knob, gradually gaining elevation. Up and over a particularly hefty pile of talus, and I am afforded my first view of Massive since the drive in a couple hours ago.
Mt Massive, a hulking, 14,429-foot hunk that I had only stared at from Route 24 on a couple of occasions on my way to other adventures. Mt. Elbert might be the highest peak in the Rockies, but I think Massive is the true heart and soul of these mountains. It stands as the northern sentinel of the Sawatch range, looking North deep into the Rockies, West into the most remote sections of the Collegiate Wilderness, South to the endless 14ers lined up one after the other all the way across the Sawatch to the Sangres and in a mostly uninterrupted spine to Culebra and Taos. Climbing Mt. Elbert felt iconic, but climbing Mt. Massive feels exciting.
After a good 40 minutes of climbing above 13,000 feet, I start to get pretty nauseous on the climb up to 14,300-foot North Massive. Here I see the first hiker I've passed all day, along with the first trail since Windsor Lake. "Trail" is a generous term, however, and I immediately hit a steep, scrambley descent, before looking up at the final, 400-foot climb to gain Mt. Massive. My watch reads 2 hours. Right on schedule. I've made it: all downhill from here!!!
A very disheveled summit selfie
The ridge immediately down Massive is a popular trail, and I'm able to fly down it. All too soon, however, I am off the trail and back along my lonesome ridge for the climb up South Massive. This is a short climb, but it is by far the hardest of the day. By now I'm wiped from a solid 4,500 feet of gain plus over an hour at high elevation, and I I'm not feeling great at the top. This side of Massive has a decently steeper ridge down with a lot of loose rock, and is much less runnable than I had hoped. I hit the end of the ridge and start to bail down. There's supposed to be a faint trail here, but I can find nothing and just slide down the scree field in more of a controlled slide than any sort of run. I open up my stride at the bottom and wham! my foot catches on a rock and I go flying. Nothing to do now, I'll see how the knees are at the bottom. I hit treeline, and have a brutal stretch of off-trail sidehilling through the trees. I charge downhill recklessly, dodging blowdowns and boulders. Suddenly I'm out in the open on the Colorado Trail. The end is near. My watch reads 3:24. I know I've got the FKT now, but still, I want to drop the time as low as I can get it. I open up my stride and absolutely fly down the last couple miles of trail, enjoying every bit of smooth downhill after the off-trail treachery of the ridgeline descent. Too soon I can see the sun glinting off of car windshields as I emerge into the parking lot of the Massive Trailhead. 3:34:18.
Comments