Rocky Mountain High - Ragnar Snowmass 2019 - Part 1
Howdy, everyone! I've taken a bit of a break from blogging for the past few months...we've been busy getting settled in the new house and training for the event I'll be recapping here, but mainly, I just didn't want to write for a while. Thank goodness that's over! Let the stories recommence!
As you've read about in previous blogs, each November for the past 5 years, our "Breaking Rag" team has headed either to McDowell Mountain (in northeast Phoenix) or to the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation in Southern California (never again!) to participate in a 24-hour, around-the-clock, eight-person trail relay run. This year, we thought it might be fun to take the show on the road, and after checking everyone's schedules, we signed up for Ragnar Snowmass, held in early June at Snowmass Village in Colorado, just outside the fancy-pants town of Aspen.
The event ended up being absolutely amazing, but it was a bit more stressful than normal to get there. While we generally have folks needing to leave the team for one reason or another (mostly health related - we are all getting older, to be sure), this time, we had several swaps, including one at the very last moment (72 hours before we arrived in CO!) that left Christina, who was attending with us as a spectator this year, fast-hiking a set of loops so we wouldn't have to find a last minute replacement. She's a goddess (and an extremely good friend, to boot), but more on that later.
We headed out to Snowmass in pairs - Bryan and Jen flew to Denver from Tucson, heading to their family's house to procure extra camping gear and preparing food before making the drive to the event. Jake flew to Denver from Phoenix, heading to his buddy Tim's apartment in downtown Denver to grab provisions before their drive west (a huge thank you to Bryan and Jen's family and Tim for being our local providers of things Ragnar didn't give us - camping stoves, pots and pans, and the like). Christina and Amadeo were flying directly to Aspen, and since they'd beat us all there, they volunteered to grab us a good campsite before spending the night in nearby Glenwood Springs with their friend, who just happens to be the mayor of the lovely town (yes, really).
For our part, Chris and I would be taking the direct flight right after Jake's to Denver, where we'd grab our rental car around noon, then head to downtown to meet Tim and Jake for lunch at Biker Jim's Hot Dogs. Unfortunately, that part didn't go exactly to plan. When our alarm went off at 5:15am, we read a text message from Southwest, stating that our flight had been completely cancelled (due to "unscheduled maintenance." Um, gulp). Crap. After calling SW and speaking to the lady there, the earliest flight they could get us on was a connecting option through Vegas that wouldn't put us in until 4:15pm; given the amount of time it would take to get our rental car and drive the 4 hours to Snowmass, that left us only a 30 minute window of safety before the Ragnar campsite closed for the night, and we could be stuck paying for an extra hotel room we hadn't budgeted for.
Thankfully, when we made it to the SW counter to check our bags (no flying standby for us, as we each had two full bags stuffed with regular clothes, running gear, sleeping bags, pillows, and the like), the counter agent was able to get us onto the direct flight to Denver leaving at the same time, which would get us there around 2:30 or so. We still couldn't lollygag around (no Biker Jim's! Sob!), and we'd have to lean on Jake and Tim to do our part of the team shopping (which they did with aplomb, as all of our teammates are amazing folks), but we'd likely make it there before the gates shut for the night. Big sigh from this spazzy little monkey.
The flight was totally fine - we'd grabbed "to go" lunches in the airport, so we ate those, and we read and napped for the short hop across the mountains. We landed, grabbed our checked bags, and boarded the bus to the rental car counter. Once in the Hertz lot, I talked Chris out of renting a Suburban (Jesus, the gas!) and we settled on a silver Kia something instead (we named it "Squishy," as both the gas and brake pedals were rather...soft). We must have walked past this car 800 times in our long weekend driving it, as it was downright invisible; forget fancy sports cars - this thing is what true international spies must drive.
As you've read about in previous blogs, each November for the past 5 years, our "Breaking Rag" team has headed either to McDowell Mountain (in northeast Phoenix) or to the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation in Southern California (never again!) to participate in a 24-hour, around-the-clock, eight-person trail relay run. This year, we thought it might be fun to take the show on the road, and after checking everyone's schedules, we signed up for Ragnar Snowmass, held in early June at Snowmass Village in Colorado, just outside the fancy-pants town of Aspen.
The event ended up being absolutely amazing, but it was a bit more stressful than normal to get there. While we generally have folks needing to leave the team for one reason or another (mostly health related - we are all getting older, to be sure), this time, we had several swaps, including one at the very last moment (72 hours before we arrived in CO!) that left Christina, who was attending with us as a spectator this year, fast-hiking a set of loops so we wouldn't have to find a last minute replacement. She's a goddess (and an extremely good friend, to boot), but more on that later.
We headed out to Snowmass in pairs - Bryan and Jen flew to Denver from Tucson, heading to their family's house to procure extra camping gear and preparing food before making the drive to the event. Jake flew to Denver from Phoenix, heading to his buddy Tim's apartment in downtown Denver to grab provisions before their drive west (a huge thank you to Bryan and Jen's family and Tim for being our local providers of things Ragnar didn't give us - camping stoves, pots and pans, and the like). Christina and Amadeo were flying directly to Aspen, and since they'd beat us all there, they volunteered to grab us a good campsite before spending the night in nearby Glenwood Springs with their friend, who just happens to be the mayor of the lovely town (yes, really).
For our part, Chris and I would be taking the direct flight right after Jake's to Denver, where we'd grab our rental car around noon, then head to downtown to meet Tim and Jake for lunch at Biker Jim's Hot Dogs. Unfortunately, that part didn't go exactly to plan. When our alarm went off at 5:15am, we read a text message from Southwest, stating that our flight had been completely cancelled (due to "unscheduled maintenance." Um, gulp). Crap. After calling SW and speaking to the lady there, the earliest flight they could get us on was a connecting option through Vegas that wouldn't put us in until 4:15pm; given the amount of time it would take to get our rental car and drive the 4 hours to Snowmass, that left us only a 30 minute window of safety before the Ragnar campsite closed for the night, and we could be stuck paying for an extra hotel room we hadn't budgeted for.
Thankfully, when we made it to the SW counter to check our bags (no flying standby for us, as we each had two full bags stuffed with regular clothes, running gear, sleeping bags, pillows, and the like), the counter agent was able to get us onto the direct flight to Denver leaving at the same time, which would get us there around 2:30 or so. We still couldn't lollygag around (no Biker Jim's! Sob!), and we'd have to lean on Jake and Tim to do our part of the team shopping (which they did with aplomb, as all of our teammates are amazing folks), but we'd likely make it there before the gates shut for the night. Big sigh from this spazzy little monkey.
The flight was totally fine - we'd grabbed "to go" lunches in the airport, so we ate those, and we read and napped for the short hop across the mountains. We landed, grabbed our checked bags, and boarded the bus to the rental car counter. Once in the Hertz lot, I talked Chris out of renting a Suburban (Jesus, the gas!) and we settled on a silver Kia something instead (we named it "Squishy," as both the gas and brake pedals were rather...soft). We must have walked past this car 800 times in our long weekend driving it, as it was downright invisible; forget fancy sports cars - this thing is what true international spies must drive.
Obligatory "what's this weird thing
that came with the rental car" picture
We hit just a bit of traffic heading out the west side of Denver, but once we cleared that, it was smooth sailing, and we enjoyed barreling down the highway, taking in the amazing scenery. Seriously, if there are any ugly parts of Colorado, we've never seen them in our time there.
It's just, like, stupid pretty.
It's really not fair.
For dinner, we made a quick stop in the city of Frisco at Ollie's Pub and Grub, which had just about the best fried pickles we've ever tried (and we've tried A LOT). Both our burger (Chris) and buffalo chicken wrap (me) were also great, and we topped off our water bottles before we bid the cute little city adieu (we were pushing crazy fluids, since one of the easier ways to combat altitude sickness is through proper hydration - Denver is at 5300 feet above sea level, but Snowmass Village was closer to 7500 - we were way out of our league here).
Ready for noms at Ollies!
It was my turn to drive, so Chris took over the picture taking duties as we crossed Vail Pass (10,000 feet of elevation) and headed back down:
We also found ourselves heading through a few legit tunnels, which was a novel experience:
Eventually, we got close to Snowmass Village, right as dusk was starting to fall, around 8:30 or so. Christina and Amadeo were already heading to the Mayor's house for the night, but they'd secured us a great spot in the Glamping section of the event. Between all of us, we have a good amount of camping stuff (we all looooove gear/gadgets), but since we were doing this event outside of reasonable driving range, we decided to spring for the Ragnar Glamping option this time; for an extra cost, the race organizers kit you out with tents, canopies, tables, sleeping cots, and several other nice options (they even made us mimosas on Saturday morning!). It was pricey, but given the time and effort we saved (they put everything up and tore it all down as well), it was well worth it.
We found our campsite right where Christina said it would be - next to the team with all the pink flamingos:
As advertised
When we got there, Tim and Jake were watching Game 6 of the Cup and Jen and Bryan were checking out the Ragnar Village. Christina and Amadeo had already officially checked us in, picked up our race belt with bib, and grabbed our tickets for shirts and Saturday night meals! All we had to do was get settled in and put on warmer clothes! Have I mentioned how awesome everyone is?
We did take a spin around our Glamping area, which is where the Snowmass Rodeo is held:
Amadeo inside our Glamping site,
earlier in the day
Ready for the calf scramble!
Contemplating mutton bustin'.
As one does.
Ragnar likes to be super duper green friendly,
and this was our recycling list.
Dang it, I knew we should
have packed our old phone books!
Before we retired for the night, we had a great time catching up with everyone, and Jen and I put together our new Breaking Rag sign. The old sign was too bulky and unforgiving to make the trek to Colorado, but it's still happily living in our shed; it will have a place of honor in the new garage, once it finishes being built.
Hard at work inside the tent's common area -
this was a seriously cool setup.
The whole thing was modular -
there were four big canopies and the four
2 person tents zipped right to them.
It was decently warm at night,
and since we had a few rain sprinkles
throughout the event,
we were happy to have this setup.
Of course he's eating GORP!
After the game was over, Jake grabbed some cool night photos of camp (if you think any of the pictures on the blog are super neato, they're probably from Jake):
All decked out!
Let's do this thing!
Tired from traveling (and stressing, for me), we all hit the sack around 10:30, ready to wake up tomorrow morning and get our run on!
Later!
Amy
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