Winter Mishaps and Spring Training A Big Summer Fall from Grace

Between injury and cycling, I had logged a total of about a hundred running miles by this point in the year which is absolutely pitiful! Running and the version of mountain running that looks a lot like hiking have always been my main love and it turned out to be just the rehab and therapy I needed in the final bits of 2025. As my running fitness returned (to a degree), my health improved and my little corner of the world improved.

A Fourth-Quarter Side Quest!

Somewhere in the year, I’d heard about the Boulder OSMP Trails Challenge: the City of Boulder challenges you to traverse all 162 miles of trails in their jurisdiction in whatever way you choose. To make it even easier, someone in the community has written a nice app which connects the Trails Challenge checklist to your Strava account so it keeps track of everything on a map, saving me the effort of coding up something like this myself! I’ve looked at the Trails Challenge before and concluded I’d been on every inch of City trail (and more) at some point in my 20 years in the area. But I’m a sucker for checklist projects like this, so I figured it would be fun to see what I could do in calendar-2025.

This was now the perfect storm of personal motivation: checklists, maps, exploration, and optimization problems. There is little that motivates me more than figuring out how to “collect” a set of a half a hundred trail segments in as efficient and aesthetic a way as possible. In some cases, big sections could be knocked off with single big runs such as a modified version of the Skyline Traverse or a hike/run of the brutal Eldo-Walker connector or a nice unseasonably-warm, daytime loop up on top of Flagstaff Mountain we usually do in the dark. In some cases, there was nothing to it but to run a handful of miles to collect one missing tenth-of-a-mile segment. In a couple cases, I used lovely Sunday afternoons to go out on multiple short runs of a couple miles each, netting a total of perhaps a mile of missing trail.

Collecting a Mesa Trail segment

While I had claimed to know every inch of Boulder trails, I was wrong. There were lots of little community connector bullshit trails (KOA Lake Trail? Really?) and side spurs; plenty of trails you wonder why they were on the map and plenty more prominent social trails which apparently weren’t included. There were a handful of new in the past couple years trails I’d never seen (Vesper Trail, North Sky, re-routes to things in Boulder Valley Ranch). Best of all, there were at least half a dozen places I’d never visited in all my time here which were very much worth a visit: Sombrero Marsh, Lost Gulch Overlook, Sawhill Ponds, the Amphitheater Express loop, the owl-clogged Upper Upper Paraglider Point) and twice that many I hadn’t been to in far too many years! That alone was worth all the strange runs and route planning.

January 7th, shortly before I broke my shoulder… and changed the course of 2025 Sawhill Ponds Aurora from Kohler Mesa Amphitheater Express Eldo-Walker Connector Teller Lake Number Umpteen I swear I’ve never seen this sign before. The usual night run shenanigans Sombrero Marsh Lost Gulch Overlook Skyline Traverse with the lads The Secret Third Paraglider Launch Point/Owl Roostery

When I logged my last segment cleanup (Mesa Trail Connector near Towhee and Mesa south of town), it was a surprisingly emotional moment. The Rangers at Chatauqua keep a logbook of everyone’s record and exactly what your own rules were (lifetime, year, dogs-allowed, hopping on one foot, etc) and give you a nifty little micro finisher’s medal/pin.

The last segment Finished map!

What a fun and unexpected challenge! I understand that OSMP uses this as a way to publicize and popularize their trail network and get people (including myself) off of their usual routes. Thanks to them, I saw a lot of really cool new territory. But another result (whether intended or not) is that it kept me on trails. Next year I’ll make a point to explore various “social” trails I see on the map which were not part of the challenge.

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So 2025 was not the year I was expecting: winter injury, no ski mountaineering, lots more biking than expected, and all of the Boulder trails. Thanks to all the folks who aided and abetted what the year was and what it became. We are our community.

Next year I’d like to focus on skiing, alpine adventures, and spending a week in the summer doing a fast-and-light solo backpacking trip. But who can say what the next year will bring? Perhaps I’ll learn again that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.