Saturday was a big day for me, in terms of vertical - run and driven.

First off, I had a fifteen miler that morning, leaving the condo and heading north on Hiway 550 up and over Coal Bank Pass - this gave me a 1900 ft climb between Hairpin Turn and Coal Bank Pass, then another 400 ft of climb coming back over the pass from the north, then another 100 ft or so between the Hairpin and my condo - the route is www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3946950 .

About 2.33 miles into the run, you see this sign -

                                           

..which is a little discouraging, but turns out not to be true - it's only 3.67 miles or so.

It's just plain UP - there is no level or downhill at all, anywhere on this run, except for the 100 meters or so across the bridge at the hairpin turn. And the further up you go, the less oxygen there is - by the time that I got to the pass (the first time) I was not moving very fast at all - but I was still running - ran every step of the way.

But I did stop twice on the way up - potty breaks and to take a Succeed pill each time (electrolyte tablets). I noticed that, after I stopped, starting back up again was difficult indeed - I felt completely out of breath for several minutes until things got equalized again.

When I got to the pass (10,600 ft) and saw all of the folks standing around at the parking lot taking pictures, I realized that I had intended to stop there for a bit, but my spirit would not be stalled, and I kept on going over and down the other side. By the time I was 200 meters on the other side heading down, I was grinning and singing along with the iPod. You don't need much oxygen to run downhill : )

When I got to the turnaround at 7.5 miles (at 10,200 ft) I stopped and took some pics - one of them looking back up at the pass -

                            

 - and called Ethel. And stretched. And changed out some stuff in my pack - anything to stall and avoid having to run back up that hill!

...but I did, indeed, run back up that hill. It was one of those "character building" experiences that seem to be happening more and more for me lately.

I did stop at the top this time, and retied my shoes before the 6 mile downhill bang-up run home.

When I got back to the condo, I stretched and ate a banana and drank some chocolate milk, stretched some more, and then let Ethel hit my legs with a rolling pin before getting into a tub of cold water and cooling my legs off. All of that activity is aimed at giving me a quick recovery from the run - and it seems to have worked.

After a brief nap, we decided to take a drive up into the mountains around Silverton, On the way back up to Coal Bank Pass, we saw cars slowing down, and found out that there was a mountain goat eating something that had fallen by the side of the road -

                   

Ethel and I had a delightfully confusing exchange upon seeing this animal, which I would love to relate to you all, were it not for the unfortunate consequences of such an action (she and I are together in a small condo for the next six weeks, day in, day out. And there are sharp objects in the kitchen).

When we got to Silverton, we disagreed as to our eventual destination, which means that we went northeast on County Road 2, which is what Ethel wanted to do. It was a lovely drive up the Alpine Loop, and we turned off onto a Forest Service road that headed up to Stony Pass on the Continental Divide.

The road was amazingly steep and narrow, and Ethel's Santa Fe handled it nicely. After some miles we got up above 12000 ft, and the trees went away entirely - nothing but a velvety moss and lichen cover on the granite, and small copses of crumholtz.in sheltered areas between boulders. There were some pools of water than seemed to have no source or exits -

                      


and simple beauty in all directions. This is the high country, people -


                      

Just over Stony Pass, there is a small bubbling spring that is described as being "the headwaters of the Rio Grande"  (how, exactly, do they determine that? When you are going upstream along the Rio Grande, and the river splits into two tributaries, how do you determine which is the river, and which is the feeding stream?) which gave a fellow a chance to pee in Texas while standing in Colorado. (of course, if you peed ten meters in the other direction, it wound up in Arizona, unless it gets pumped away from the Colorado into LA, which is a bonus.) That's why it's called the "continental divide" - because anything on one side winds up in the Atlantic, and anything on the other side winds up in the Pacific.

There are no condos in Stony Pass. You can tell this because I'm not living there now.