Avenue Twin Peaks with MattVH:
I met MVH at the Capitol building at 5:30 am and it was windy and cold, so it was tough to get going, but once we started running it wasn't bad. We ran the first mile up the canyon to the trailhead. Matt wasn't feeling it at all this morning and who can blame him, he just ran a tough ultra adventure run 3 days ago. As we made our way up the trail he wanted to take a gel, so he slowed and I kept going, so I tried to go a little faster because I knew he would catch up. I kept climbing up and his headlamp never seemed to get closer and the higher I went the further it got, so I knew he was having an off day. When I got up higher on the ridge I saw a person off the trail just standing there in the brush. It was a little freaky because they were wearing dark clothes and I couldn't tell if it was a guy or girl because it was still dark. 'It' was just standing there looking at me.
I power hiked most of the steep section up to the peak, but I love running the last little bit because it is really steep and it was pretty much awesome up there this morning. The sun was just coming up and the views of the city and mountains were as good as they have been all year. Awesome sunrise. I hung out on top of peak #2 playing air guitar to 80s metal and waited for Matt to get up there. Rocky Mountain high. After Matt arrived we made our way back over to the the first summit and then back down to the ridge where we saw the strange dude in the brush again. He was watching us with a spotting scope or some binoculars. Weird.
The run down was slow, but we had a ton of fun and laughed just about the whole way down. It was an incredible start to the day. | 