Staking out camp
In addition to the Leadville Trail 100, the Leadville Race Series hosts a number of other running and mountain biking events throughout the summer. One of the major fundraising activities for the CMC running team is providing campsites for some of the race series entrants at the college. For this, Coach Darren invited the team up for the Silver Rush weekend, which includes a 50-mile ultramarathon and a 50-mile mountain bike race. As part of this team-bonding and get-acquainted activity, the team also got to stay in the dorm. It was apparent Darren intended to foster a family-style camaraderie among teammates, while also building partnerships with the race series and sponsors like On and Honey Stinger.
We left Westcliffe bound for Leadville on a Thursday in early July for this first opportunity to meet teammates. As it turned out, only two other runners were able to make it — Ben LaGue and Harrison Freis-Levy. Ben was from nearby Buena Vista and the other Harrison was from the Denver area. In addition to having a second “Harrison,” there was more comic confusion because the other Harrison’s dad was also named “Darren.”
Coach Darren got everyone introduced and then we set about staking out campsites on the CMC soccer field. Each campsite needed to be 20 feet by 20 feet, which create a bit of a large-scale math puzzle — no problem since Coach Darren happened to be a math professor. We also set up a tent at the entrance where the campers would check in. Since NJCAA rules prohibit coaches from working directly with athletes out of season, Darren asked me to take the three guys running on the college multi-use trail system.
We headed out from the campus through the lodgepole forest. When I lived in Leadville I skied those trails frequently during the winter, but I quickly realized the network had changed a great deal over the decades. Some of the trails were the same but more had been added and some of them ranged farther from the campus and connected to the Mineral Belt Trail, a paved route that skirts the entire south and east side of Leadville. Another network extended even farther south. These CMC trails had all been given names, like “Perma Grin,” “Boulders” and “Swoop,” and the system was initially confusing to me.
Darren wanted us to do a medium-distance run so we headed out from campus, crossed the Mineral Belt then continued south, passing beneath a big overhead power line. The trail then dropped off steeply into Iowa Gulch and crossed a creek. I continued on with the guys as this path looped east, crossed another small creek, and then curved back north toward the campus. I had it in my mind that this trail would loop back to the main system but it abruptly ended. The choice was to either turn around and make the sweeping run back, farther than we intended to run, or bushwhack down the gulch, across the creek and scramble back up the other side.
If there was any doubt among the other two boys that I might be crazy, this was quickly confirmed by my decision to do the latter. The next thing we knew we were fighting through tangled willows, wading through a silt-bottomed beaver pond, and then climbing up the steep log-strewn embankment on the other side with wet feet. Harrison W. was especially not amused. We stopped on the aspen hillside to wring out our socks and shoes before continuing on a two-track road. I knew exactly where we were, and within a couple of miles we were back at the college. Soon we were reading rules to campers and guiding them to their campsites.
This was also our first experience of staying in the residence hall. The dorm rooms seemed cozy and comfortable — the ambience of a summer camp with views of the pines and towering peaks out the widows. Harrison seemed to be enjoying getting to know his new teammates and previewing his new living quarters. Later that night, per Darren’s request, Harrison and I walked through the campground to make sure people were following the rules about fires, drinking and quiet hours.
We went to sleep and I woke up to the shotgun blast starting the 50-mile run down at the bottom of Dutch Henry Ski Hill. We looked out the window and could see hundreds of ultramarathoners coursing through the nearby woods on the CMC trails.
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