Brandon Fuller

Mount Sanitas

Kim and I are always on the lookout for babysitters and our steady went off to college this fall. Bummer! Since then, it has been more of a struggle to get out together. However, I had an epiphany the other day while doing the bills and seeing how much it costs to put my kids through school — and we are still early in this! I am already paying for the babysitter — and they teach the kids too! So instead of crying about going out on Friday night, let’s use a school morning to get something done. I will make up the work later in the day.

So after seeing JV assault the Boulder foothills on a daily basis over the past few months, I decided to implement the Boulder Tuesday AM Hiking Club. Current members: Kim and I. Let’s get out and do some moderate hikes and hit these local trails. My experience on these routes is very limited so it would be fun to explore while spending quality time together. I talked with JV yesterday and he gave me a few hints on places and I settled on Mount Sanitas for today. It should be quick and painless. It isn’t flat so I wasn’t sure how Kim’s knee would do but only one way to find out. When given a choice, I have a tendency to try and choose the harder of activities and it puts her off the first time. So I thought this would be a good match over some of the harder stuff I was considering.

We went up the west side and was all steps. Somebody needs to explain to that trail that switchbacks were invented. Lots of big steps and logs that were not kind to Kim’s knee after about 30 minutes. But she kept at it and never looked back. At about an hour, we topped out and took a few shots via the iPhone.

Looking NE towards our house.

Looking down on Boulder.

The happy hikers. I was struggling to self photograph with the iPhone. Not easy to find the button when you can’t feel or see it!

And that was it. Thanks for reading. Bye. Huh? How did we get down? Yeah, so it is a loop so we headed down the East Ridge trail. Lots of steps and we were talking. Got to this section with some big boulders and somehow veered right instead of left. Where did the trail go? Oh, right there I said. I took the lead. This trail seemed not right. It was a trail but not heavily used, which is odd because this mountain has tons of people on it. Very popular daily hiking. Where did the people go? Oh well. I could see the bigger trail way down below so let’s descend. That is the point at which Kim’s light colored pants started getting darker because she had to scoot down some portions on her butt. I was thinking to myself…what did I do? Everything was good and then I screwed up a fork in the trail and now I am going to kill her. Interestingly, she just kept laughing at me and not yelling at me. We kept descending and when we looked back up, it was clear that wasn’t the way we should have gone.

After that, we got to the flats and made good time back to the car. Ate a quick lunch and swung into school just in time to pick up the kids and then get back to work. Minus the route issue, which ended up giving us a good laugh, it was a great morning to get out. The weather is so perfect right now. Cool breeze and hot sun. I think I love fall. Shit, did I say that? Don’t tell summer I said that. She knows she is my number 1 season but this wasn’t so bad. Hopefully, the club goes again next week. I enjoyed the activity and more importantly the company. I love you, Kim.