On the third day we decided to recover a bit and went for a drive again. The highest paved road in North America is conveniently only about an hour away from Dillon. So we decided to pay Mt Evans a visit. While quite touristy, it still afforded us quite some nice views. At 14,271ft (4350 m) we felt the elevation quite a bit again and we were quite happy we didn’t try to hike it ;) Morning from our cabin: Observatory on top of Mt Evans: Wild mountain goat roaming through the parking lot: Another goat: Melting waters: We better get out of here:

On the second day we worked our regular East Coast hours, so we had some time to explore in the afternoon. For starters we went with a very short trail: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/us/colorado/meadow-creek-trail-to-lily-pad-lake We didn’t quite expect the elevation change to impact us so much, but as it turns out, we’re also dependent on our red blood cells for oxigen delivery. As a result even the little elevation change was quite exhausting. Apparently going from sea level (Boston) to 9000+ ft makes a difference in what we can do ;) Some more pictures: Fab trotting up the trail: Trail: Made a new friend: View onto Dillon: View onto Royal, Victoria, and Peak 1: Lily pad lake:

After finally getting our luggage at the airport, we took the shuttle to the rental car center. After a brief sting in downtown Denver (it was a bit crowded for us) we headed westbound on I-70 towards Dillon. Since we couldn’t check into our airbnb before 4pm anyways, we decided to do a little scenic loop after a short coffee stop. I70->24->91 Here are some of the pictures we took:

The new season of Diablo kicking off last Friday’s night made us change our routine of hiking on Saturday and instead hiked on Sunday. We have noticed that usually we hit more traffic on Sunday’s compared to Saturday’s and we decided to wake up at 4 AM to see if that would make our drive back better. I think it did, it was not perfect but better than our previous experiences on Sunday’s hikes. We hiked the North and South Twin peaks. The first half up was mostly flat, with three easy water crossings. I still needed my walking poles to help me balancing the jumps between rocks though. The second half was really challenging, most of the elevation gain was in that second half, very rocky terrain as anyone should expect in New England. We found out on our way back that our downhill muscles were not tired and once we passed the rocky steep part we started trail running most of the trail on our way back to the car. Surprisingly no mosquitos, maybe the mosquito season is ending?

Back on the East Cost, we jumped straight back in and did one more of the missing 4000s: Galehead. Surprisingly enough, it seems the mosquitos were on some other mountain, pestering the hikers there. We had a nice day, no rain, not too warm. Enjoy some pictures:

This was our second weekend hiking in Cali. We started thinking that the nice weather and almost zero mosquitos were not a one-time good luck thing. Unfortunately the same goes for the long traffic lines on the way back to the SF area, not a one-time bad luck event. The hike was quite enjoyable and not very challenging, even though the elevation gain was around the 3000 feet spread out over 15 miles distance. We could see why someone described Mt Wittenberg summit as creepy. Only the last 2-mile section was annoyingly crowded, most of the people going in the opposite direction. We decided at some point to just ignore the crowds and not say hi anymore. They did not say hi either, so I guess the trick is to avoid eye contact :).

We redeemed ourselves from all the broken rules pretty quickly just one day after our first hike in San Francisco. This time we did a loop hiking part of the Ben Johnson and part of the Dipsea Trail. We learned that the Dipsea route is the oldest cross-country race in the United States, it started in 1905!! And here we were, thinking that cross-country races were something relatively new, ha! We were very well prepared for this hike with our camelbacks filled out with water, sunscreen, bug spray we surprisingly did not need, emergency kit, no cotton clothing, snacks and what not. This was definitely not a baby-hike considering the 10.4 mile and overall 3048 ft elevation gain. Very different from the east coast hikes in New England: during this loop we almost did not encounter any rocks, there were plenty of switch-backs (barely seen in New England), only one mosquito made contact, the creek trail was very dry (and no creek in sight).

During what would be our first hike in San Francisco, we definitely broke some very basic hiking rules -hopefully I will not get banned from AMC a.k.a. Appalachian Mountain Club and not to be confused with AMC Theatres. To be fair, we started the day at 3:30 AM EST for a 6AM six-hour-long flight from Boston to SF and went directly to the hike after a brief stop at the hotel just to leave our big bags at the lobby (it was quite early to check in and get our room). Also, we had previously decided to do a hike we would categorize as baby-hike: 4.3 mile loop and 603 ft elevation, so the broken rules had barely any impact;)

In a fortunate turn of events, I had the opportunity to participate in the DRE as well as the Ducati Adventure Tour last week. While it certainly was quite hot in Italy during the days (35-40 degrees C), it was still a couple of very enjoyable days.

The initial training (DRE) happened in the fields around Castle of Nipozzano. The tour took us a couple of hundred miles through Tuscany. Every day had nice double and single track routes, beautiful scenery, and some fun road riding.

This weekend we hikend Mt Garfield. It was a really enjoyable hike. Compared to other hikes in the whites it has a surprisingly little amount of rock scrambles. The trail up was beautiful and mostly in the shade. Albeit a 11.5 mile round trip, it was very enjoyable. Apparently it’s Liz’ new favourite trail now ;)