Driving into Aspen after a four-hour drive from the Denver airport, I leaned over the steering wheel for a better view—burly hills rose from town, etched with sinewy singletrack and ski runs rendered meadow green by summer sunshine. My legs twitched, a Pavlovian foreshadow of what I love so much to do here: mountain bike.
I’ll come clean. I’ve never been a runner in the sense of actually wanting to run. Sure, I love having run, but I have a pile of excuses for not starting a run. And (indulge me for a moment) few thrills can compete with mountain biking around Aspen. The fat-tire buffet here features shady rides along rushing mountain streams, grueling ascents brush-stroked with desert hues, loamy woods where a Bilbo Baggins cameo would hardly come as a surprise, and epic affairs with a little bit of everything.
With my wife, seven-year-old son, and four-year-old daughter along, I knew this wouldn’t be a ride-all-day vacation, but as we parked at our hotel I was mentally gearing up to beeline to a bike store, rent a steed, and pedal into this intoxicating environment. Which is precisely when my wife said, “So, should we go for a hike?”
Um…
“Sure,” I answered, feeling myself shrink. “But maybe I’ll run while you all walk. Then I’ll get a bike tomorrow.”
Strolling from our hotel to the trailhead, I grimaced when a pack of mud-spattered mountain bikers emerged from the trees, laughing and high-fiving. “You are with family,” I reminded myself. “Do what you must.”
As we entered the Hunter Creek Trail, where a crystalline stream flumes through a cool forest, I began to jog, carefully navigating roots and rocks, slowing when boulders narrowed the passage. I was content, bordering on happy, but still I assessed the trail through a mountain biker’s lens. Here I would jump, there downshift, and there open the throttle.
By the time I finished my 40-minute scamper, buoyed by early-onset runner’s high, I thought, “This is actually fun. Maybe I’ll do it more often.”
The next day, I did just that on a family hike into the Maroon Bells Scenic Area. Inspired by locals who glided past, panting and grinning in their sweat-soaked hydration vests, I ran short bursts through Aspen groves and riparian fields, doubling back often to reassure my kids that the way ahead held no dinosaurs or saber-tooth tigers.
The going was tough at 11,000 feet, but with it came the gratification of punching uphill two miles above sea level. The hulking Bells, reflected in an alpine lake like a postcard, distracted me from the labor of it all.
How to Start Running.
That night I texted an acquaintance, Pete Gaston, a gazelle-like athlete who, with his brother John, runs Aspen-based Strafe Outerwear (tagline: At home in the mountains). “Up for an adventure tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Mountain bike? Dirt bike? Trail run into the alpine?”
I still hadn’t lined up a bike. So, with mild horror, I watched my thumbs type out the words: “Trail run sounds good." Who was I becoming?
Pete and his friend Carl picked me up at 6:20 a.m. and by 7 a.m. we were 17 miles outside of town at the Upper Lost Man trailhead. Elevation: 11,500. Temperature: 39 degrees.
We set off at a brisk hiking pace to warm up. After a half mile, Pete peeled into the tundra on what I presumed was a nature call. But then Carl followed, and neither showed any sign of stopping. In fact, they appeared to be running away. I followed.
“Watch for holes!” Pete yelled over his shoulder. “And creeks,” Carl added.
We ran across the spongy tundra, one of the most pure and earthy places I had ever set foot, eventually reaching a saddle that afforded views into a broad valley. Snow clung to northern aspects on the bigger peaks.
“Want to hit 13,000 feet?” Pete asked. Before I could nod, he and Carl were off again, leading me up a scree slope, then a section of hand-over-foot climbing and, finally, the summit. We looked down in all directions onto a raw alpine scene. Far below, the bright synthetics of a tent contrasted with the pastels of a flowery meadow.
“Let’s go see if they have coffee for us,” Pete said, as he started down the other shoulder of the peak.
We ran, animals in our natural habitat, free and light, pulled downhill by gravity and exhilaration, ribbons in the wind.
In three days I had fallen in love with mountain running. Cradled in the arms of the alpine, for the first time I found myself dreading not the beginning of a run but its end.
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John Briley is a writer—and now a runner—based in Takoma Park, Maryland. He loves more than anything to play outside and subsidizes his adventures by writing about them on JohnBriley.com.
