Gear

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Post Mountain Update 1

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Well, I started my climb and if you follow me on social media, you’ll know how it went. I meant to edit 2 videos on the drive out to Colorado, but the source videos didn’t copy to my iPad correctly and so I’ve been eager to get this and another preparation video uploaded for you.

So rewind time in your mind for a moment and pretend it is still the night before I’ve left and am still packing my gear. In this video you can see all of the gear I set out with on the trip. In future videos I’ll review how the gear performed and what I would have changed about my 59 pounds of stuff.

Here is a link to the spreadsheet I used to keep track of all of my gear, its weight, and if I planned on packing it: Gear Weight List

If you’re interested in buying something, please consider using my links below to help support my page and channel. It costs you nothing, but I get a small cut if you use one of my links. I’ve tried to put the gear names and links in the order I show them in the video and noted if the item is no longer available.

Gear Links


Mountain Preparation - Day 166 - Unable to Sleep

Last night I had a bit of an “OMG I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BE DOING THIS THING AND I’M NOT READY AT ALL!” moment. ’Wait,’ I hear you saying, ‘shouldn’t you have gone already?’ Why yes, I was originally supposed to on my trip the last week of June so that I was climbing the Mount of the Holy Cross on or as close to my birthday as possible, however, this spring had exceptionally heavy snow falls, 130+% above normal and the melt off was slower than usual as well.

Weather on the Peak for the week of July 8th. - mountain-forecast.com

This means that even today, July 8th, there is still a good deal of snow on the mountain. Neither my climbing partner, Seth, nor I have snow climbing experience and we aren’t ready to learn just yet so we pushed our trip date back to July 19th - 26th to give the sun a few more weeks to do its work. I expect patches of the trail to still have snow, but they should be reasonably navigable or avoidable. Temperatures are in the low 40s on the peak and even today there is 1 inch of snow predicted.

The gear on the blue tarp is what I’m planning to go in my pack

The extra month of prep time has turned out to be a good thing, but with only 9 days left until we leave, I feel like I could use another month! I’ve been getting my gear together and have nearly all of it, but I am still missing a few things such as a lighter, maps, and contact solution. Despite having nearly everything in order, I am still very stressed over it all. Do I have too much? Do I have too little? Am I missing something?

I haven’t begun to buy, prepare, organize or weigh my food yet and that’s a big looming weight over my head. On top of that, it all has to some how fit in my pack.

Anyway, I felt the need to vlog about it last night so you get the chance to see my worry manifest for yourself as I have a mini breakdown at 1 a.m.. Get ready for a wave of posts and updates over these next 9 days as I finally reach the last stretch of this months long journey to climb a mountain.

Mountain Training - Day 44 - Staying Warm

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been 17 days since my last post.

A month or so ago I was given a lot more responsibility at work and it’s been taking up a lot of my time and energy. The past week and a half it’s been all I can do to drag myself to the gym. I have to park 3 blocks away if I don’t go late at night and it’s been bloody cold. I hate walking with sweaty clothes in sub zero temps back to the garage. It’s been hard to stay motivated with all the extra work at my job and the temps, but I’m still getting through it.

When I go to the gym, it usually ends up taking about 1 hour 45 minutes which sucks up a lot of my free time so I’ve been more eager to run outside where I can get a good work out in about 30 minutes. But with the cold weather, it’s meant I’ve had to figure out how to stay warm.

Below is the stuff I wear when I’m running in freezing temperatures.

Mountain Training - Day 27 - Cold Weather Running

Today was a rest day, but let me tell you about yesterday afternoon.

After complaining about the pain I was in yesterday, I ended up having an awesome workout in the evening. I hit up the chiropractor before lunch and that got my flow back in alignment.

I decided that the only thing keeping me from running outside in the cold was my face so I stopped by the Lincoln Running Company and bought a Sauce Frosty neck and face warmer.

This thing made a world of difference. I wore it as a mask for about 5 minutes while I warmed up, but it does get hard to breath through it when you’re sucking wind, so I had to pull it down to just a neck warmer once I got going. It might not be as tight across your face, but I have a ginormous head so it fits pretty snug. Regardless, even having it as a neck warmer kept me toasty warm.

So I went out to Pioneers Park and had a great 2.59 mile run in 20° weather just before the snow came down. You might say, that’s it? Well, even when I was running 5 days a week and 30 pounds lighter, the furthest I ever ran nonstop was 3.1 miles. Baby steps.

Let’s just ignore that slow down on the last hill 🙄

I also pulled out my Xero TerraFlex shoes for the 2nd time to give me some much needed traction along the snowy parts of the trail. They aren’t your average running shoe. They have a wide toe well, and not much in the way of padding to allow you to feel the trail better as you run. My ankles and calves are really sore after using them because I worked muscles I don’t normally use when running.

Lots of traction. I plan to wear these or something similar on the mountain.

But the long and short of it is, it was a great workout after feeling so bad earlier in the morning. I’m looking forward to continuing to do cardio outside.

One final note. I’ve finally figured out a way to share videos with you on here and not have to host them on YouTube or pay for a service like Vimeo. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least a start. To test it and celebrate, I made a cheesy timewarp video of this run trying out more features than I should. :) Let me know in the comments if you have any troubles watching the video.