In Memorium of Scooby

My great climbing friend Dave had the terrible misfortune of having his dog Scooby run away due to being scared of home fireworks on the 4th. They found Scooby the next day dead on the side of I-25 in Monument.

Scooby was an 11 year old Border Collie and he, along with his brother Shep were 2 of the best dogs one would ever have the pleasure of meeting. Along with Sierra, these 3 dogs were an awesome team of happy doggy pals in the mountains and shared countless adventures together over the years. Scooby had climbed something like 50 unique Colorado 14ers and many other peaks. If you count repeats, Scooby probably had something close to 200 14er ascents. An amazing dog.

I put together a collection of my favorite pictures of Scooby and his friends over the past 3 years that I have known him. He will be missed greatly and leave an unfillable void.

http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r296/jeffvalliere/Scooby/

Tuesday 7/8/08 Green Mountain

6 miles
2,400 vertical
37:46up
25 down

Wanted to do some sort of interval training today, but was not sure what until the last minute. I ended up doing 11 minute on/minute offs. Started from the Gregory TH and had a nice easy warm-up for 8 minutes up Gregory Canyon. The whole time I was fearing the pain that I knew I was about to go through. The first 2 efforts I felt as though I would explode and the minute on dragged forever, while the minute off seemed like 10 seconds. Things got progressively worse through effort #5 and I was thinking I could do no more, but then things came around and I felt consistently good on efforts 6-10 and then put in an unplanned 11th interval. This brought me to just below the first switchback before the 4 way junction. I jogged a moderate pace the remainder of the way to the summit and then came down the same way in an easy 25.

Monday 7/7/08 Enchanted Mesa Skunk

~6 Miles
~1,000 vertical
~1hr

Started with the intention of heading up Green, but at the last second, took a left on Bluebell-Baird to the 1st access trail, over to the base of the 2nd and down the 3rd access trail to Mesa. S. on Mesa to Skunk, then put together bits and pieces of trail around Enchanted Mesa and back to Chautauqua and up to the car. Felt crappy to start, then OK once I was out for 15 or 20 minutes. Did not feel like going the least bit fast and just took it completely easy.