For those of you who don’t know Dan Harm, he’s a bike racer who also does other things. Like hiking, building trails in the mountains, chopping wood, bike touring, weight training?, etc. I decided to do other things a few days ago too: a one-night back pack trip with my roommate, Kim. I rode up to Estes Park in the mountains, we hiked, then the next day I rode home. This wasn’t a true Dan Harm adventure though, because the ride there was only 3.5 hours and our total hiking distance was only 13 or 14 miles, but it’s mid race season and my wise guru coach Sim Jinson wouldn’t want me doing anything too extreme.
I can’t be bothered to flip this right side up. This is the dirt section at the top of Magnolia, a nice hard climb out of Boulder.
Peak to Peak highway.
Just your basic bullshit church-castle on the side of the road up at 9,000 ft or so.
Basic bullshit 14,000 ft mountain scenery.
Combination Taco Bell and KFC. It was only a 65 mile ride but had over 9k feet of climbing. And everyone knows that the elevation gain to burrito ratio is three to one. At least.
Back when I was a kid bean burritos were like 69 cents. Now they’re a buck o’ five! The same price as Freedom! Thanks for nothing Iraq war, now our burritos are freaking expensive AND the rest of the world hates us even more.
This Taco bell has certainly had some upset customers too. Before the ride I googled it to find out where it was. My only complaint was that they had the hot sauce behind the counter and you had to ask for it, and I had to ask three time for the guy working there to give me enough fire sauce. But here’s the google reviews. Not pretty!
I took a nap in a park while I waited for Kim to arrive.
$20 parking fee and $15 overnight permit?? No thanks. Jeeze we Kim already paid $8 for a map!! How about we and find a spot way in the woods to camp where no ranger will venture, park in a gravel pull out, and walk on the road to the trail head. And lucky us, some guy ended up giving us a lift in the back of his truck for the last 0.01 miles.
The trail we took had lots of trees on it. I think they fell the night before.
And lots of snow.
But no people!
After walking around for one hour trying to find a spot that was level and didn’t have any snow, we found our camp site near a lake. And then it got cold. And then I got hungry. And then I cursed Kim for forgetting the damn cracker trail mix!
I told Kim we shouldn’t have a fire because it’s illegal and illegal things are bad to do and I always obey the law, but she wouldn’t listen to me and started one anyways. And burnt her mittens.
The lake the next morning. It was too cold to go swimming.
We took a longer way back to the car and things turned sepia for a moment.
And then things turned REALLY old timey sepia.
And then we jumped in an extremely cold river and laid on a rock for like three days, which we both decided was not nearly long enough and within a few more hours I was on my bike and Kim was driving to work. My legs felt like shit.
Kim’s drive home
KENNETT PETERSON 
I don’t now how I feel about this. Estes Is the mecca of hard bouldering right now.. And I don’t even see any climbing in your pictures. This is like reading a blog post about someone going to the buttermilks for hiking.
Also, they know how to service their customers at muchas gracias. Unlimited refills of sour cream!
If I were to show climbing pics they would all be like V2 and unworthy of any mention. Damn it my oats just boiled over. Anyways, if someone did go to the Buttermilks to hike, that person would likely meet their death within the week due to angering the climbing gods. So hopefully Estes isn’t on par with Bishop.
Oh man I bet you gained so much upper body mass carrying that backpack around
No I had the waist belt really tight so all the weight was on my hips.
No post for 3 weeks? Now what am I supposed to read? You write really well and have now spoiled other blogs for me. Thanks. (and thanks!).