Needless to say this was a big day...

https://www.strava.com/activities/9689182382

Spent the day before doubling up on Bierstadt just under 4 hours as a "warmup" for what was to come shortly after.

This was a training run for a race next month so decided to do something with a bit more of a vert/mile ratio at a much higher elevation on much more technical/unmaintained trails. I drove up and slept on top of Loveland Pass the night before, just so I could get a more full night of sleep than leaving from Denver in the middle of the night. Was too lazy to drag around the couple extra hundred grams of my headlamp so decided to wait until the trail was just visible in the morning light to get going ~5:45AM. Kept the pace and effort pretty reasonable to slowly get my legs warm for the huge day that was about to unfold. Noticed a headlamp halfway up Grizzly when I started and made it my goal to catch up with the person wearing that headlamp before we summited Torreys. The climb up the pass was chill, as well as going up over and around Cupid. Grizzly was one of the most daunting climbs of the entire route in both directions, so I was very cautious to take it easy and moseyed my way up. Coming down I kinda took my own line down since I wasn't really sure where the "trail" was supposed to be at. Starting up the climb to Torreys, I hadn't done any research on the conditions other than its very steep, and wasn't expecting any of the endless scree that made up this entire climb. I just put my head down and kept moving one step in front of another, eventually catching the person I'd seen wearing a headlamp within a few hundred feet of the climb. Made it to the summit of Torreys in around 2:20 unsurprisingly to a good handful of people already on the summit. Had a nice chat with a few people and went on my way to Grays. Honestly the route between Torreys and Grays is one of my favorites in both directions, so I had a pretty good time getting up to Grays, where I stopped to swap out my food from my pack and get a bit of a break from the unrelenting wind. The climb up Edwards was about as fun as it normally is, I love a good casual scramble so I didn't mind the climb at all plus I was already so acclimated that the elevation wasn't doing much to me at that point. Ran into a group of guys coming up from Argentine Pass as I was coming down Edwards to Argentine, who I'd run into in a few hours once we'd both have turned around. Wasn't much to comment on with Argentine, it was just kinda a blur at that point, just trying to keep moving with the winds that just never stopped the entire day. Climbing up Square Top is really when some of the anxiousness started to settle in once I looked back realizing how big those mountains behind me are, and that I have to climb them all again in such a short amount of time. Square top's descent was deceptively very long, and felt like it took forever to reach the TH/Guanella Pass Summit in ~6:15.

Sitting at the Guanella Pass TH, I swapped out more wrappers for food in my pack while also switching around some water from my pack to my vest (I had a 5L Salomon vest to fit all my food and spare bottle) while getting eaten alive by some flies before starting what turned into an absolute death march towards the most intimidating climb of the entire day. I refilled all my bottles at the last stream before the lakes at the bottom of the main climb up Square Top, and was on my way again. The death march was in full effect, making it up Square Top a solid 15 minutes slower than my previous time up, and I think that I probably won't be doing Square Top any time soon, that mountain was very close to crushing my motivation and spirit. I kept telling myself all I needed to do was get up Square Top and Argentine then the rest of the climbs weren't gonna be nearly as bad since I would be at a much closer elevation to each of the remaining peaks. Had a real nice chat with a hut caretaker from one of the huts on the East side of Argentine Pass while coming down Square Top which helped take my mind off the daunting climb up Argentine a fair bit. Once I made it back up to Argentine, that's when I really started to believe I'd be able to actually complete this route today, and do so before dark... That was until I met another guy coming down Argentine towards the pass, who was a little suspect of me being able to finish in time before sunset (Remember that I didn't bring my headlamp to save space and weight), so then I started frantically doing mental math trying to figure out what pace I needed to keep in order to make it back before dark. So after what was honestly another nice chat aside from the added anxiety of the time crunch, I was on my way up towards Edwards. That climb was surprisingly easy and I felt really strong by the time I hit the summit. Managed to run into the same group of guys I'd seen earlier on Edwards, and had another nice chat about our routes and congratulating each other on a good day to that point. Spent maybe 90 seconds before moving on towards another very daunting climb back up the East ridge of Grays. I was definitely moving slow by my standards, however made up a good bit of time by moving quick back down off the summit towards the saddle with Torreys. Luckily there was another person who had started the climb from the saddle just about the same time as I did, so I got to use them as a pacer to make sure I was keeping a steady pace up to the summit. After another nice chat and a collection of my nerves for the following steep scree descent into the final hard climb for the day, I was on my way at around 6PM (I never really paid too much attention to times or splits, but I do remember that one). I tried moving as efficiently as I could both down Torreys and up Grizzly, which turned out to be honestly better than I expected. The descent was a bit mind numbing, but once I gained the main ridge on Grizzly I just kinda put my head down again and pushed through, making it to the summit of Grizzly just after 7PM. This is when I started to really believe that I was gonna make it back before sunset... The descent down Grizzly was surprisingly very slow and loose, I must've forgotten to take a mental note of that earlier in the morning, so when I started climbing back up towards Cupid, my pace was a bit behind what I was anticipating it being. Nevertheless, made it up to Cupid, and quickly realized I gotta start really pushing and running if I wanna make it back while I can still see the trail. Jogged the descent to the saddle where there's the split in the trail for either going back up to the top of the Loveland Pass climb, or going around for a bit of a shortcut. Since I was just shy of 13,000' of elevation gain at that point, I knew I had to make the final small climb to round out my elevation gain as the sun was setting behind the Gore Range peaks, making for a beautiful sunset. Fearing how much time I had left, I actually ran most of that final downhill, making it back to the car with about 5-10 minutes of spare dusk light at 8:15PM.

This was a bit more than I was anticipating, however I'm glad I did it and managed to do it in one full day starting at sunrise and finishing at sunset. In all it ended up being 29.5 miles with 13,205' of elevation gain. My average elevation was a bit over 13,000' for the entire 14.5 hour ordeal. There wasn't a single cloud the entire day and the wind was ripping the entire day, making it both quite nice and quite miserable at the same time. I'm sure someone's done this as a point to point before, but does anyone know if this has ever been done as an out and back (or even in a day or unsupported)? It's days like these that make me so thankful to live in such a gorgeous place that gives me the freedom to do huge days out in the mountains pushing myself physically and mentally. If you've made it this far in the post, thanks for reading along, hopefully my writing isn't too difficult to understand, sometimes I feel like I end up word vomitting and not really making and sense. Looking forward to more big projects in the mountains in the future!