No foolin' - let me know your total distance (in M or km) and total active time if applicable. And if you are willing to take on running the April challenge, please let me know that, too!

As of March 15th, we have the following statistics:

alexseanchai - 38% mileage goal
temve - 59% mileage goal and 58% time goal
raininshadows - 32% mileage goal and 56% time goal
semielliptical - 27% mileage goal and 38% time goal
ell - 27% mileage goal and 94%(!) time goal
ridicully - 5% mileage goal and 53% time goal
meri_oddities - 48% mileage goal and 67% time goal
blnchflr - 13% mileage goal and 0% time goal, but that's only because I'm shifting her report to next week
ilanarama - 48% mileage goal
zulu - 28% mileage goal
cadenzamuse - no goals, but yay for your running and activing, which I will add on to the rest!

In aggregate we have run 264.6 miles, which is the total length of the four interurban rail lines connecting Dallas, TX with surrounding cities...in 1916. It is also the distance by air between Bangladesh and Bhutan. In addition we have exercised 68,75 hours which is almost 69 hours (link NSFW - it's a porn star website describing this movie, which is a porn version of the Eddie Murphy movie "48 hours").

If you didn't check in last time, I just copied your previous information over! If you just forgot or didn't have time, add it in to this week's check-in. Which is now! Please comment with your total distance in miles or km, and total active hours, for the month so far!

How many miles or km, and active hours if applicable, did you manage March 1-7?

I am so sorry for the lateness of this post! But we went skiing on Tuesday, and then yesterday afternoon while putting it together I came down with a killer headache and couldn't bear to look at the computer for the rest of the afternoon. (Fortunately, I'd already done my run... :-)

Anyway, we stepped up the mileage this week, with 204 aggregate miles bringing us to 518.4 miles: we've just made it to Rocky Mountain National Park!



After leaving the east portal of the Alpine Tunnel at mile 315 we go pretty much due north for a while We cross 12,154 ft Tincup Pass and descend East Willow Creek to Mirror Lake, and then climb again to Cottonwood Pass at mile 335, where we cross the Cottonwood Pass Road.



We could use some of our active hours to hitch a ride to the town of Buena Vista, 20 miles to the east, or we could climb the nearby fourteener Mt. Yale, which at 14,202 feet is the 21st highest peak in Colorado.

Another 18 miles down the trail we get to climb Huron Peak, which is barely a fourteener at 14,003 feet. Just past the spur trail to the summit, at mile 354.6, we hit the ghost town of Winfield (that link has a very nice slideshow of the old structures there).

At mile 366.9 we hit the Twin Lakes Reservoir. The designated route goes, ridiculously, the long way around to the east, but there is a much shorter alternative to the west - or we could just get franzi1981 to row us across with her rowing hours!

At 370.2 we're going to divert from the marked trail and go up Mt Elbert, which is not only a fourteener but the highest mountain in Colorado at 14,433 ft. Up the 4.6 mile southeast ridge to the summit, then down the 3.4 mile northeast ridge, which incidentally is the opposite of what I did back in the 90s when I climbed it!

We contour above Turquoise Lake, which is actually another reservoir, and then cross the highway to Leadville at Tennessee Pass. There is a WWII memorial here; the Tenth Mountain Division, a group of soldiers trained in winter survival and skiing who were deployed in Italy in 1945, trained at nearby Camp Hale.

Around 410 we cross the Eagle River in a big open area called Eagle Park, then head up Cataract Creek and back above treeline at Kokomo Pass at mile 414.2 and Searle Pass 3 miles later. Then at 425.7 we come to Copper Mountain ski area, where like at Monarch we can magically shift to winter and use our active hours for skiing!

We cross the highway here and head into the wilderness again, over Uneva Pass, Eccles Pass, and then a long descent into the town of Silverthorne, on Dillon Reservoir. At 466.6 we cross Jones Pass; right around mile 470 we'll leave the trail so we can stay right on the divide and climb 12,947 foot Vasquez Peak. Six miles later we cross the highway again at Berthoud Pass, then traverse a long ridge looking down on the beautiful lakes of the Indian Peaks Wilderness – Ice Lake, Lake Caroline, the Iceberg Lakes, Crater Lakes, and the Arapahoe Lakes.



At mile 493 we turn west and descend to Lake Granby, which is on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Shortly before we finish our week's hike, we stop at the Twin Creek Ranger Station, mile 514.9 to get a permit to camp at our endpoint, somewhere along these beautiful shores!



Our progress in numbers:

frayadjacent - 62%
silveraspen - 0%
semielliptical - 78%
ilanarama - 51%
meri_oddities - 76%
alexseanchai - 29%
raininshadows - 73%
franzi1981 - 81%
temve - 76%
ell - 77%
liv - 35%
linaelyn - 93%
skuf - 103%

Apologies for the lateness of this post; I was having way too much fun finding cool stuff for it! Anyway, I have totaled up our mileage for the first week of February (except for silveraspen and liv who did not post their miles/kms and hours – please just add them to next week's numbers) and I am delighted to say that we have come 172.9 miles (22.6% of our planned 766.5, so we're a little behind but not bad) and done 23 hours and 15 minutes – just under a solid day – of other active stuff. So, what are we doing with it?

Well, as most of you know, I live in Colorado. The Continental Divide goes through Colorado, as does the Continental Divide Trail, which more or less tracks the divide – in fact, it passes about 60 miles to the east of where I live. So I thought maybe we'd follow the CDT from south to north and see how far we get!

The nearly 173 miles we've run has taken us from Cumbres Pass near the New Mexico border through the San Juan National Forest and into the Rio Grande National Forest.

( Photos, links, and a few videos of what we have seen so far... )

Here's our progress on the map: