Summer Catch Up

Well hell! Summer is flying by and it's been great. Way back in the latter part of May I enjoyed a fabulous trip to Alaska with Josh, Aaron, Sam and Andy & Sarah Thien on a trip to climb and ski Denali, North America's highest point at 20,320'. A long story short is we got turned back at the 17,000' camp by nasty weather and beat a hasty retreat off the mountain to live and ski again! While we didn't reach the summit we had a grand experience and got in a good bit of great skiing (snowboarding in my case) on Denali. It was as excellent as it could be minus the summit. I still haven't gone through and uploaded my photos from the trip but Josh has and so has Andy. Check them out for all the details of our adventure.

Denali West Buttress Skiing, May 2012 from Jason Halladay on Vimeo.

While enduring the cold weather on the mountain, I had many thoughts of warm, low commitment sport climbing trips with my special lady friend (SLF), Allison. So as soon as we got back from Alaska, Allison and I headed south to the Enchanted Tower of New Mexico for just that--a relaxed weekend of comfortable and easy camping with lots of hard (for us) sport climbing. We had a blast and even saw a black bear walk by our camp one evening. Since that trip, we've been back down to the Enchanted Tower twice more with our good friend Nat.

From Enchanted Tower, NM. 2012-07-04

I had aspirations of running my sixth San Juan Solstice 50 mile race in late June but my toes were pretty sore and beat up from the Denali trip so I bailed out on that run. To make up for missing my favorite summer 50 mile race, I'm heading up to near Grand Junction to run the Grand Mesa 50 mile race this Saturday. It's a new course for me and I'm excited to see some new territory and run a new race. I'm not in the best running shape of my life but I'm feeling pretty good and hoping for a decent run. I even bought my first-ever singlet in hopes that will make me run faster. As the old saying goes, "if you want to run fast, dress like you're fast." OK, I just made that up. I'm even more looking forward to the upcoming weekend because Allison and Mom are both going with me and we hope to climb Otto's Route on Independence Monument on Sunday. It could be a toasty day up there near Grand Junction so we'll see!