Alex Lowe Duathlon

Steve House said that in remembrance of the passing of Alex Lowe on Oct 5th ten years ago, that we should do something difficult. So I planned a "duathlon" on Sunday. Then I recruited another glutton for suffering, Chris. I wanted to do Heinen and Kepros in the same day. Heinen is a 10 mile hike/run with 3,000' of gain and Kepros is almost 10 miles with a lot less gain. The plan was to hike/run Heinen and mountain bike Kepros. Everything went according to plan, since we had figured that we would have to "hike-a-bike" on Kepros.

Heinen has many false summits and a large headwall to start. Once you make it onto the ridge, the going is very pleasant.

We made it truck to truck in 5 hrs 15 min. Not a great time, but we knew that we would only be half done so we tried to pace ourselves. The downhill didn't do my knee any good, either. We fueled up on Chris' legendary turkey-tortilla wraps. Then we drove to Blacks Creek summit to start the biking leg.

Kepros in the distance

The start of Kepros was as expected with us taking the bikes for a hike. On the top of the ridge where it splits to Three Point, it became rideable. Well, somewhat rideable for me. Chris is really good on the bike and teaches me a lot. He was able to ride down some of the stuff I had to walk. He was giving me a good lesson and by the mid-point of the ride, I was doing a lot better on the downs.

Terrific single track!

The ridge turns into a road in a mile and a half. We met a jeep scouting for deer. The jeep drove all the way to the summit.

Trail meets road (me pointing back to start)

Looking at Heinen from Kepros

The ride back went even better because we found a trail that went around the ridges we had ridden over. We made it back to the truck in 3 hours 30 min. So the total time for our homemade duathlon was 8 hours, 45 min. The real purpose was to feel a little enlightenment through exertion...

Swan Falls Bouldering

Swan Falls has more bouldering than you could imagine! Even with the cold today, we went down in the canyon for some bouldering. The rock is bulletproof basalt and there is plenty of steep and overhung stuff. I stayed more on the vertical side due to my non-bouldering weakness!

There is even an abundance of cracks to boulder on. There was a boulder with a 20 foot tall splitter hand crack.

Too bad it is mostly a slab! If it were vertical, it would be a blast. It was still fun and the arete to the left was cool. Grab your shoes and head on down!