Trip Reports

Boulder, CO - 4:00am, May 17, 2018 -      Peter Bakwin and I hike out of Chautauqua Park, intending to climb 4 routes in the Amphitheater, then continue south and climb 29 more. Today.  Climbing 5th class rock in the dark with no rope wearing scrambling shoes can be alarming, but we’d rehearsed this section last week - a key parameter of this project…

New Ultimate Direction ambassador Kyle Richardson is a young, hungry athlete who spends more time running Boulder's Green Mountain and scrambling the First Flatiron (and many more Flatiron classics) than nearly anyone else in town. He's motivated by the big, classic routes, whether on foot, on rock, or by bike. Last month Kyle took on a real cycling test piece: the White Rim in a…

What were the most inspiring, difficult, fast, or just plain 'out-there' FKT’s last year?  A panel of 27 runners reviewed the 22 Nominees (selected from the hundreds of FKT's reported last year), voted for their top 5, and the Results are below.  A hot discussion this year was the widening gap between Unsupported and Supported efforts - some people did their whole route solo, while…

How hard is it to set a new Fastest Known Time? Really hard as it turns out. In April we awarded four Grants to people undertaking interesting and ambitious projects. How did it go?  Some great attempts, some not so great … and none succeeded! But do any of these constitute a real “failure”?  Is learning, growing, and exploring a failure or a success?  Read…

By Matthias Messner There is not much information about the LA Freeway. The most I ever found was in  Anton Krupicka’s Ultimate Direction blog post, Schemin’ and Dreamin’. According to Krupicka’s post, Buzz Burrell, who named the route, was the only one to ever complete it. In two days. Nobody had ever completed in one day. I thought, no wonder, after reading the specs for…

Written by MAX TAAM Living in Aspen it's hard to not know about the Grand Traverse. I race the biggest skimo races in the world in Europe but when I am at home everyone is always asking about the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse. It's a one of kind race and on many Colorado (and beyond) residents bucket lists. The Elk Mountain Grand Traverse is a backcountry…

On April 10, Peter Bakwin and I ran from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to the South Rim. “R2R" of course is now quite normal; a bucket-list route for many. But this took us 11.5 hours. Why so long? Because we started on the North Rim of the Little Colorado River, descended the fabled Hopi Salt Trail, ran and thrashed down the LCR…

by: Buzz Burrell NEW ZEALAND ("Aotearoa" in Maori) is a fabled recreation destination.  Everyone you know has been there or wants to go.  Including you. One week into our 3 1/2 week trip to New Zealand this January, my companion said, “I can see why people want to move here.”  Indeed: great beaches, mountains, lakes, food, wine, and people - what’s there not to like?…

By Peter Bakwin Living in Boulder, as I have for most of my life, can be strange. Nearly everyone here, young and old alike, is insanely fit. Everyone has set some outlandish running or climbing goal for themselves, something to keep the sense of adventure alive and to expand their skills and experience. I myself have set many, and even achieved some, and this has…