Yesterday I went up to Royal Gorge with Peter Fain to begin marking the course. Peter is the 2009 national 10K snowshoe Champ and holds all kinds of ultra trail running titles and records. He currently is on the Redfeather Snowshoe Team and is the main promoter (along with Royal Gorge) for the "2011 Racing Gnome Snowshoe Race and Fun Run" . Me, I'm just a helper gnome.
Here (link) is more information and details on the event from an earlier post. And here is a pdf of the flyer for the event.
The first thing you need to know is that the Royal Gorge X-country resort is huge. Here is a pdf of the resort map. Here is the map with the 10K course dotted in red and the 5k in yellow.
This is the 10K on Google Earth
As you can see the course utilizes a very small part of the resort. The course goes back and forth from groomer to singletrack with awesome climbs on both. The 10k course is very challenging with 2 very steep climbs. The 5k is much much more tame. Both courses are "point to point" starting at the Royal Gorge Lodge and finishing at the Ice lakes Lodge. Not only is the terrain diverse but so are the views. You will be rewarded with awesome views of Castle Peak, Anderson Peak and the rest of the Pacific crest as well as all the incredible backcountry to the West of the crest.
I'll post a few photos right in this post but to see more just check out the slideshow at the bottom. Be sure to click on the photo's to see them in full screen. Or just click here for the Slideshow.
Hope to see you out there!
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| Castle Peak |
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| There are a few tough climbs! |
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| But the views are rewarding |
To see the pictures in the slide show below in full screen, just click on the slideshow and it will take you to the google web-album where you can play the large/full screen slideshow.
