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Friday, August 28, 2009

Friday Morning Time-Waster

Coloradans Stefan Griebel and Charlie Nuttelman are attempting to set a new record for the so-called Longs Peak Triathlon today, and you can track their progress live because Griebel is carrying a SPOT tracking device that's uploading to this web page. The Longs Peak Triathlon has several permutations, but each involves biking from north Boulder to the Longs Peak trailhead (43 miles), running up the trail to the base of the east face (6.5 miles), and climbing the Diamond by the Casual Route (5.10); some aspirants do the round-trip. The fastest known time for the variation Griebel and Nuttelman are attempting—a round trip with gear cached on the mountain —is 10:30 (Beidleman-Cooney, 1990).

Griebel and Nuttelman left the intersection of Broadway and U.S. 36 in north Boulder at just after 5 this morning. As I write, about 1 hour 20 minutes later, they are part way along the steep climb up South St. Vrain Canyon. If all goes well, they should be back in Boulder by midafternoon.

6 comments:

Peter Beal said...

What is the consensus for style on this? Cached gear/food seems off-route to me.

Dougald MacDonald said...

No consensus—it hasn't been done all that often. People have used different tactics, and it's all cool as long as they say exactly what they did. As far as I know, the record for a completely self-supported triathlon was Roger Briggs' one-way time of 5:45 to the summit (he free-soloed the Diamond). I don't know of a fast, self-supported round-trip, or a self-supported and belayed trip—biking and running up to Longs with the gear for the Diamond sure would add a lot to the challenge!

DW said...

I did the duathalon (no climbing) back in 2002 unsupported. In fact it was the one and only time I have been to Longs. I had tried it the year before but didn't leave early enough and was forced back due to bad weather. The time I made it was a perfect day, not too different than today in fact. Mark Howe has done it before I think, most likely faster too.

Dougald MacDonald said...

DW: I think the duathlon gets done fairly often, but it's still quite a feat.... Good job on doing it your first time up Longs!

Narc said...

One of the better all day time wasters I've seen. It's cool to get a sense of so much activity happening from the seat at my desk. I've barely broken a sweat.

I was a little confused though by the path taken from 20->21->21->23 though. Is the GPS slightly inaccurate or does the approach really zig zag like that?

Dougald MacDonald said...

Narc: I think the GPS was on the fritz, probably because they were hemmed in by the big walls of the Chasm Lake cirque. The final approach is pretty straight.