Andrea Sansone was an elite endurance athlete, but it took crushing a women’s speed record for climbing 14 of Colorado’s tallest mountains to get her out of the shadow of her partner, legendary athlete Andrew Hamilton.
Mount Elbert
Posted inNews, Outdoors
Hiker traffic on Colorado 14ers fell by 110,000 visits in 2021 after setting a record in 2020
After a record-setting year for Colorado’s highest peaks at the height of the pandemic, traffic on the state’s 14ers dropped in 2021, falling by more than 110,000 user days. The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, using remote-sensor counters on 23 trails around the state, counted about 303,000 hikers scaling the state’s 54 14,000-foot peaks in 2021, down […]
Posted inNews
Meet Colorado’s ultrarunning, Coors-chugging, self-described “rave twink”
When you go through his TikTok account, Michael Mitchell could be held up as an example of what happens when you spend too much time at high altitude. The videos show him carrying his slim, tan figure and wholesome, golden haircut up steep trails as fast as most of us walk a sidewalk in downtown […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors
As hikers flock to Colorado 14ers, trail-building crews work to rescue the alpine tundra
MOUNT ELBERT — Lloyd Athearn pauses during an uphill climb to grab a tiny scrap of litter left on the trail by a careless hiker. It’s the easiest bit of trail maintenance the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative will accomplish on this misty August morning as the fog rises out of the forest and hovers on the […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Outdoors
Without the burden of races, Colorado’s long-distance runners are shattering trail records
Jacquie Mannhard had long heard her fellow trail runners talk of fastest-known times. The prospect of tackling a gnarly route relatively unsupported had tickled the Boulder-based distance runner’s fancy for years, but she’d never gotten around to looking into it further. Then the pandemic struck. It was April when she got the first notice: “Given […]