To: nolans14@yahoogroups.com From: "ericjr77" Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 05:01:31 -0000 Subject: [nolans14] Eric's Report OVERVIEW Nolan's 14 is a 60 hour adventure run and climb in the Sawatch Range of Colorado. The object is to start at Blank Cabin trailhead, summit fourteen different 14000' peaks, and reach the Fish Hatchery near Leadville within the time limit. Failing that (and most people do), the object is to summit as many of the 14000' peaks as possible. The run direction switches from year to year, so next year the run will start at the Fish Hatchery and end at Blank Cabin. The best thing to compare this run to is Hardrock squared. Hardrock climbs a fourteener; Nolan's climbs fourteen of them. In terms of climb ratings, Hardrock is about 93% class 1 and 7% class 2 (i.e., off-trail); Nolan's is about 40% class 2, and several runners have opted for shorter but more difficult class 3 and 4 routes. At Hardrock the route is marked with unique metallic flags; at Nolan's there are no markings at all. For that matter, there is no predetermined route. Each runner must use judgment and orienteering skills to locate the best route to each summit. There are many, many choices of route at Nolan's. Navigational mistakes are seemingly inevitable even for the most experienced, especially at night. LEAD UP This was my third year at Nolan's. I managed 9 summits in 2000. In 2001, I made 11 summits with six hours sleep. My goal for 2002 was at least 12 summits (ending with La Plata). By avoiding sleep altogether, I figured I might manage 13 (Elbert). I arrived in Colorado on August 10, and took a beautiful climb up Long's Peak that afternoon with my brother John and Ginny LaForme. This was twelve days before the run, which would make for the longest period of altitude acclimation I have ever had before a running event. For most of the time, I camped with my family and Ginny at about 9300' in Avalanche Gulch. We did training runs on Antero, Tabeguache, and Princeton. We also did night runs on Yale and La Plata. We revisted Yale to try to figure out a better ascent. I did a solo climb on the class 4 route up Missouri after seeing the photos from John and Ginny's trip a week or so earlier. After six days at altitude, I felt close to normal on the summits. I actually managed to get some rest in the last few days before the run. THE START A few minutes before the 6am start at Blank Cabin, someone is methodically approaching every runner, asking for Fred Vance. Fred hasn't arrived yet, so the stranger is steered towards Jon McManus, the run director. The newcomer turns out to be Bobby Keogh, hoping to enter the run. Jon's first question is "do you have a crew?". Apparently not, but Bobby quickly talks his way into the run anyway. A few photos later, and we're off! SHAVANO, TABEGUACHE, ANTERO There is an easy trail almost the whole way to the summit of Mt. Shavano, with a just a few talus blocks at the very top. There is some banter as we start up the trail. Above treeline, I can see 11 different runners in a long, intermittent string. I am the fifth one to the summit at 8:07 am, about half an hour faster than planned. It only takes a few minutes to cross a small talus saddle and summit Tabeguache at 8:38 am. I can hardly believe that Tabeguache is rated as a seperate 14er (but I'll take it). We can see fresh snow on most of the peaks to the north, including Antero. I return to the saddle and descend a scree chute towards Brown's creek to the north. At the bottom of the chute is a moraine covered in snags. In training, I went straight down this moraine, bearing slightly to the right to reach Brown's creek. But clambering over the dead trees is slow and awkward, so I decide to improvise (MISTAKE 1). I head directly into a woods I think will come out at the creek. Instead, I emerge in a swamp, and have to cross about a quarter mile of sludge. Despite gaitors, my shoes fill full of a filthy, abrasive grit that I can't seem to be rid of no matter how many times I empty my shoes during the rest of the run. After finally reaching and crossing the creek, I climb north for a curvaceous white chute that I call the Hourglass Express. This is a good, direct climb. (In the opposite direction, it is a wonderful, fast and easy descent). When I reach the top of the chute it appears that Dennis Herr and Betsy Kalmeyer have opted for a less direct route, going up Brown's creek instead of straight across, then up an orange, rocky chute. They're still well ahead of me though. I cut for the upper jeep road, getting a good look at a recently stranded vehicle that simply fell off the road. I see John running down the road, already on his way back from the summit. Closer to the top, I see Dennis and Betsy, also on their way down. The other person in front of me is Ginny, but she hasn't returned yet, so it seems she must have decided to try a cross- country route directly from the Antero summit into Baldwin Gulch. I discover there is still a bit of snow on the very top of the mountain. I return the way I came on the jeep road, seeing several others coming my way. I bear right on the road to get into the Baldwin Gulch drainage. Once in the proper drainage, I cut some of the switchbacks, jogging straight down the steep grass and coming out alongside Dennis right above treeline. From here, I stay on the road for the rest of the descent, mostly staying behind Dennis with a conservative walk/run while eating cookies. I want to avoid burning up my legs on the first truly runnable downhill. I reach the bottom at Alpine in good time, about an hour and a half ahead of schedule. I spend 10 minutes with my crew, and leave with a full 100 ounces of water, figuring that the next section will take about 7 hours altogether. PRINCETON I leave Alpine ahead of Dennis, climbing on the trail above Busted Ass Ranch. I later hear on the radio that Dennis left Alpine with only 40 ounces of water, planning to find more water in Grouse Gulch. I puzzle over that, since I can't remember seeing any water there on our training run six days before. The trail ends in a meadow, and I locate the shallow drainage that provides passage through the worst of the trees. Above treeline, I climb grassy slopes to the spine of the ridge that leads north to the infamous point 13971. Dennis radios about his water problems. He arranges to regroup with Richard Hypio, who is some distance below him in Grouse Gulch. Richard gives him some additional water, hopefully enough to reach Maxwell Gulch. I clamber over point 13971 and reach the Princeton summit shortly after Ginny. It turns out that Betsy must have taken a longer route through Grouse Gulch and is just behind me. She asks about the descent route, and I let her know that I am returning to the saddle between Princeton and 13971 before descending into Maxwell Gulch. She decides to try that route, and we stay together all the way down to the bottom of Maxwell and for several miles along the Colorado trail. Ginny stays a few minutes ahead of us the whole way. Our crews meet us about a mile before the highway with extra water. Ginny has been out of water for some time, though I still have a remnant left. I begin to worry that I haven't been drinking enough. Ginny spends some time with her crew as Betsy and I walk up the highway. Betsy has about a minute lead on me when it starts to drizzle. I notice that she turns around and starts making some strange gestures while walking, so I wave back. She repeats the gestures and yells something. I finally turn around and notice the huge rainbow alongside Rainbow Lake. At the Avalanche Gulch checkpoint, Hans is there with his RV (in other words: kitchen) and has a scrambled egg sandwich ready for me, which is perhaps the -perfect- food for a multiday event. YALE I change socks and load up on nightime clothes and gear, leaving just before sunset. Betsy follows just a couple minutes later, catching me almost immediately. She takes the Colorado trail all the way to Yale's very long and very bumpy east ridge. My plan is to take what I call Ginger Ridge (a shortcut spied on the map by Ginny). This involves leaving the trail at elevation 10650', taking bearing 300 through the woods until reaching 10950', then taking bearing 270 until reaching the foot of a steep ridge that leads straight up to point 13420, eliminating about half of the nastier bumps on Yale. I luck out for once, and totally nail the route through the dark woods. Behind me, Ginny tries the same route, also in darkness, but misses the foot of the ridge, and ends up crossing a large basin and partially ascending Mascot Peak before correcting course. Ouch. Betsy is climbing well and reaches the Yale summit at 11:22 pm, almost an hour ahead of me despite a longer and more difficult route. When I hear that she will be descending via Kroenke Lake, which in my opinion is an unneccesarily long route, I figure that I might be able to make up some of that time. I reach the summit at 12:18 am and descend the talus and scree to the north, planning to cross the basin to a saddle at 12500' that leads into Blake Wood's avalanche chute, a direct route that emerges right at the North Cottonwood aid station. The basin is pleasant and easy to cross, and I'm fairly sure I find the correct saddle, but somehow I miss the avalanche chute after descending north of the saddle (MISTAKE 2). I never encounter the margin of scrub on the right, and the airplane wreckage that points the way downward. I suspect I went too far left and wandered into a different drainage. Nearing treeline, nothing seems familiar, so I do the only thing I can: descend into the woods and try to maintain a good line north until hitting North Cottonwood Creek. The woods turns out to be terribly choked with deadfall. And it slopes far too gently, taking a very long time to reach the creek. I discover a trail on the far side of the Creek, and reason out that I must be upstream from the aid station, somewhere on the Kroenke Lake trail. It takes another twenty minutes to reach the aid station, so I literally missed my target by a mile. Something resembling Ginny's voice comes on the radio, and she reports that she has had a similar problem finding the avalanche chute. That, and "I'm throwing up, over." I finally arrive at North Cottonwood at 2:55 am. Blake is there with with two other guys who I'm pretty sure were not high school cross country team members or daughters (though at the moment I'd be pretty hard pressed to say who they really were!). I get served some very welcome hot chocolate and soup, but I pressed on after a brief stay. I could have easily slept there, but I didn't want to sleep anywhere that was too comfortable. I climbed to scrubline on Columbia's incredibly steep south ridge and laid down on the rocks in the lee of some bushes for 20 minutes of cold sleep just before dawn. That was the only sleep I had during the 59 hours I was on the course, but I think that was about perfect. Afterwards I was able to start climbing fairly strongly again, reaching the Columbia summit at 7:19 am. COLUMBIA AND HARVARD Dropping from Columbia into Frenchman creek is a bit more difficult than expected, because it the strip of grass I had used last year seems to have died or disappeared. I slowly climb down more talus than I had hoped for. But across Frenchman creek, the grass slopes toward Harvard are fairly easy. After traversing south of the pinnacle, I reach the Harvard summit at 10:34 am. I descend the rocks on the NW ridge, then turn left on some of the first available grass to descend into the large basin west of the ridge. When the grass threatens to end in cliffs, I traverse north across a small gully and onto new grass. Once on the basin floor, I travel north easily, until hitting woods and swamp. From there, it is somewhat slow and mucky to reach the Pine Creek trail. I had never scouted this route before, but am hoping that it comes out closer to Matt's Avenue than the way I had ascended the previous year from the drainage east of the ridge. It does, but I suspect that simply running straight off the end of Harvard's NW ridge would be faster and more direct. After crossing the swamp, I am within sight of Matt's Avenue, but am unable to raise Fred on the radio. Afraid that there might be some problem with the aid station, I resolve to simply start the climb with whatever supplies I have. Then I see a red shirt hanging in the trees, and Fred's camp at the base of Matt's Avenue. It turn out that Fred's batteries had merely gone dead, so I have a nice little rest while he heats up two bowls full of mashed potatoes for me. OXFORD AND BELFORD (IN THAT ORDER) I climb up the woods on the right hand side of Matt's Avenue to reach the elk trail. This requires going around or over several rock escarpments. (Since then, I have heard that the woods on the other side of the chute may be a little easier). Luckily I find the elk trail without incident and turn right. Somewhere ahead of me, Betsy had already climbed straight past the elk trail, up what must have been an extremely difficult route, almost a cliff, under the mistaken belief that the elk trail is located "above treeline", which isn't true at all. It's located on a partially wooded bench. Anyway, Betsy and I reach our eighth summits at the exactly the same time (3:17 pm), but we are not together. I am on Oxford and she is on Belford. Having accidentally "skipped" a peak, she'll have to make a short out and back to pick up Oxford. Fortunately, there is no rule against bagging summits in the "wrong" order. We greet each other on the short trail that connects the two peaks. There is a brief flurry of summiting activity: Ginny reaches Oxford at 3:55 pm; I summit Belford at 4:07 pm; Betsy summits Oxford at 4:27 pm; then Ginny summits Belford at 5:01 pm. MISSOURI I pay close attention to the separation between Ginny and me, because she and I are both planning to climb Missouri Mountain from Elkhead pass, which presents a certain amount of hazard. This is a class 4 route full of rotten rock. I want at least a half hour lead on her, in order to avoid accidentally dropping rocks on her head. It sounds like I have almost an hour lead, which should be plenty of time. I can kick rocks to my heart's content. At 13200' Elkhead Pass, Bob Ross is there to replenish my water and battery supply, a tremendous help considering that the class 4 route up Missouri bypasses the Missouri Gulch aid station. The first eye-opener on this route is a traverse across a solid, but exposed class 3 ledge. At the end of the ledge it is neccessary to climb straight up a class 4 vertical wall. I am fine to this point. Now for the biggest hazard of the route. At the top of the wall, I have to somehow clamber on top of a steeply sloped slab of rotten rock known as the White Band, which is covered in loose gravel and rocks. In training, I did this move by traversing about four feet to the right before going over the top of the wall. But at the moment, I can't figure out how to traverse to the right. I hesistate for a couple minutes before the proper holds and moves become apparent. I get on top of the slab of rotten rock and feel momentarily relieved. There is perhaps fifty feet of rotten rock before reaching solid holds again. This is no place to pause, because the longer a weight rests here, the more likely it is that something will break loose. A slip here leads to an ugly fall back over the wall, beyond the ledge, and into deep air. I angle right, taking the shortest path through the White Band and onto solid rock, even though it means I'll have a tricky leftward traverse to get back to the recommended route. I make the traverse and arrive at the bottom of a long pitch straight up a wonderful, solid class 4 dihedral. Actually, I find it quite a bit easier to climb up the four inch crack about three feet to the right of the intersection of the two dihedral planes. From the top of the dihedral, it is only a few hundred yards of class 2 and 3 climbing to reach the summit. I get there around 5:51 pm. (One more comment on the class 4 route: under the right conditions, it can be an acceptable route for climbing, BUT THERE IS NO SAFE WAY TO DO THIS DESCENDING. That is, unless you can controllably ski down a 40 degree angle covered in rotten rock and loose gravel, stop on a dime when the slope becomes vertical, and simultaneously grab three or more one inch holds on the vertical wall below you :-) Next year, the best way down is probably one of the class 3 chutes that drop into Missouri Gulch.) From the summit, I head down the SW ridge to a saddle, then go down the lowest scree chute to the right. After doing so, I see that the second lowest chute would have been much better. The very lowest chute is too intermittent, choked with too many patches of steep talus. Once on the basin floor, I descend easily on gentle grass to the far end of the hanging valley, near treeline. I pick up an intermittment trail that heads NW to the outlet of Cloises Lake, crossing the water at around 8 pm. HURON BY MOONLIGHT I climb the deadfall-strewn trail on the other side of Cloises Lake. The trail is hard to follow in places, and I get fooled by several false leads that end in a tangle of fallen trees (MISTAKE 3). The correct trail trends SW to a large oval meadow near Lois Lake. I cross the meadow in the darkness, then head west along a wooded bench. I recall that left of the wooded bench is a large rockfield, while right of it is thick scrub on a steep slope. I find it fairly easy to make my way through the woods by following a series of grassy streamlets, void of water this year. The wooded bench ends near a series of cairns that lead NW through a rocky ravine that parallels the main rockfield, though it is set somewhat north and east of it. I follow the cairned route as it leads north towards some squarish cliffs, then west up a difficult scree chute to the saddle between Huron and Brown's peak. The moon is mostly hidden by clouds, and it is difficult to tell which is the proper scree chute. The moon pops out for a moment, long enough to reveal the proper route, but then I spot a strange little cloud on top of the Huron summit. It's a puny but very violent cloud that unleashes several dozen bolts directly onto the summit in a matter of minutes. I climb slowly, hoping it will dissipate by the time I get there. Luckily, it breaks up as I near the top of the scree chute. The top half of the chute is truly a difficult and tiring thing to climb. I find it slightly easier to the right, where boulders are slightly more prevalent and slightly more stable. After reaching the saddle, I pick up the summit trail and summit without difficulty. I get in contact with Ginny, who is somewhere below, trying and repeatedly failing to find the proper scree chute. I try to give her a few better clues, such as moving north in the main drainage toward the squarish cliffs, then west up the now-brightly moonlit chute to the saddle. But I purposely neglect to tell her just how difficult the chute really is. I ought to be able to run down the well-maintained Huron trail, but find that I am starting to develop some painfully bruised and blistered feet, perhaps as a result of the abrasive grit I got in my shoes in the swamp near Brown's creek. So I walk almost the entire way into Winfield, arriving at 1:32 am. By now, Hans has moved the RV to Winfield from Avalanche. He kindly heats up some stew and hot chocolate for me, and seems to want me to sleep there, but I am more interested in getting moving, and leave at 2:02 am after another change of socks. GULLIBLE TOURISTS ON LA PLATA I walk along the cold road, west past the cemetary and towards the fork that leads to the trailhead. When I got to the fork, I almost it looks totally alien in the strange moonlight. There is supposed to be a large cairn here, but I can find only an odd boulder that had perhaps formed the base of the cairn. Or perhaps not; I can't really tell. Luckily I decide to take the fork despite the strange way it looks. I reach the trail and climb through the woods and bogs. In the bogs, I am paranoid about getting my fresh socks full of grit again, because I already know that I have a serious blister problem. Fortunately, the bogs are much drier than normal, and I don't encounter too much muck. Climbing the steep, moonlit headwall above the bogs, at about 4am, the fatigue mounts, and I feel like another nap is imminent. But I don't really want to stop, because I am just emerging onto a very cold and windy ridge. Instead, I decide to try a 200 mg caffeine pill. It truly works wonders. For the rest of the run, I don't feel sleepy at all, and am able to maintain a good climbing speed. I clamber over the long sections of talus to reach the La Plata summit at 6:30 am Saturday, shortly after dawn. Descending La Plata on a weekend morning, I soon encounter the first non-Nolan's people I have seen in two whole days of hiking. There are quite a few people headed for the summit, most of them asking if I have already been to the top. I giddily tell them that I have more or less been on my feet for 50 continuous hours, and that La Plata is my 12th summit since starting. People will believe almost anything if you say it with enough conviction and enthusiasm. ELBERT I get to Lake Creek shortly after 9am, and Bob is there with ravioli, cold drinks, and sunscreen. The third day is turning out to be a very warm one. The two mile walk down the highway to echo canyon is almost oppressively hot in the sun. It is better once back on the shaded trail, but some of the switchbacks on the way to the Golden Fleece mine are also quite exposed to the sun. On the grassy ridge above the Golden Fleece, the wind picks up enough to cool things down, but upon reaching Bull Hill, I have a new problem. By now my feet are very swollen and blistered, enough that the idea of my usual traverse at 13000' to the south of Bull Hill seems highly unappealing. The camber is far too steep for comfort, full of loose jagged rocks, very painful to cross on sore feet. This fear looms large enough for me that I start to act a little unreasonably (MISTAKE 4). I spend about an hour wandering up and down the flank of Bull Hill, looking for a less painful way across, even though I know there is none. I make three different false starts at traversing the thing at various elevations (none of them at 13000'). I hear Ginny report from the summit of La Plata, and I congratulate her. Suddenly I realize that I very much need to cross Bull Hill and stop wasting time. I make my way down from 13500' toward my normal crossing point at 13000', and discover that though it is bad, it isn't quite as bad as I had feared. From the 13000' saddle between Bull Hill and Elbert, I find it a difficult traverse and climb to the summit. I make several extraneous climbs to rocky prominences along the ridge; it would have been easier to stick to the gentler rockfield south of the main ridge, a fact that I should have remembered from last year (MISTAKE 5). I reach the summit at 2:37 pm, where a couple dozen hikers are hunkered down against the wind. I find the place altogether too breezy to consider stopping for a rest. I hike very slowly and painfully down to the North Elbert Trailhead, running out of water halfway down. I reach the trailhead at 5:10 pm, my adventure over for this year. SUMMARY I travelled about 82 miles altogether. I climbed about 41000 vertical feet. I slept about 20 minutes. I spent 59 hours and 10 minutes on the course. This thing truly is a multiday event. I can't wait for next year. I can surely shave off another six hours or so. That's what I need to make another peak.