Since graduating from RIT in 2012 life has been anything but normal. Normal would have been a desk job at an engineering firm, an apartment, and perhaps a week or so of vacation once a year. Instead of doing that I took a job on a cruise ship and traveled the world. In about a year and a half I got to visit six of the seven continents and so many different countries that I have long since lost track. Amidst all of the traveling I continued running. Much to my surprise I returned home for vacation in the fall of 2013 and ended up winning the 2013 JFK 50 Mile. A month or so later I signed a deal with Nike and a few months after that I completed my job on the ship and returned to life on land. This time, however, I moved to Colorado where I started working as an Engineering Instructor for Play-Well TEKnologies.
And this is my sister Ashley!
With my feet on the ground and my lungs at altitude I spent the rest of the year working, training, and racing all over the world (Italy, France, Qatar, etc.). In fact, as I type this I am sitting on the floor of the London Airport awaiting my final flight home from the Transvulcania Ultra Marathon in the Canary Islands. And much like last year when I boarded a flight after the Lake Sonoma 50 Miler, I am once again prepping for a significant change. No, I am not returning to the ship. I'm not moving out of Colorado. I am simply switching jobs and moving lofts (I still get to sleep in a loft...hooray!). So where am I headed? Well, it is with great excitement that I announce that I, along with my sister Ashley, have been hired to be a full-time caretaker at Barr Camp!
Barr Camp is an off-the-grid mountain camp/refuge located on the side of Pikes Peak. With the camp sitting at 10,200 feet (3,109 meters) and approximately six miles up the Barr Trail, I like to think that I'm moving up in the world! While working at Barr Camp Ashley and I will be responsible for taking care of all of the guests who book a stay at the camp. This means we will be cooking meals for them (pancakes for breakfast and pasta with garlic bread for dinner), maintaining the camp, hauling in re-supplies, responding to rescues, and many other things. While the work will be plentiful and tough, I am very much looking forward to it. Plus, I am pumped to have miles and miles of high altitude trails right out the door!
Ashley and I will be taking over in the next few months. Please feel free to venture up our six mile "driveway" and say hi. I'm really looking forward to getting to know the community of people that frequent Barr Camp / Trail and exploring the mountain. I've done a lot of floating around in the past, but I'm happy to have the opportunity to focus on getting to know one place really well. In the words of Ricky Gates "...I think that a single mountain range is enough exploration for an entire lifetme".
