Running/Hiking the Four Pass Loop in Aspen!

Running 28 miles in one day, through breath-taking wilderness, all above 9,000 feet, is very empowering. And fun! And probably one of our favorite trips of the year, other than Belize.

Yes, this was much more fun than hiking around Lake Tahoe-knowing that we could sleep in a bed that night, and not have to pitch our tent, was very nice!

Hal and I planned this adventure to celebrate our seven year anniversary. Nothing says "I love you" like spending 11 hours running through mountains!

This is an extremely popular backpacking loop, and seeing as we saw 30 backpackers on a weekday at the end of September, I would imagine this loop is like a human freeway in the summer.

Just one more reason to run it!

We used this website for most of our information, and also brought this map with us.

We broke the cardinal rule of 'always test out your gear before heading out for a trip' and bought these amazing packs a week before our run, having never tested them until the big day! Fortunately, they were awesome, and now we won't use anything else. I'm a size small and Hal is a medium, in case anyone wants to throw down $150 for an ultralight backpack!

Our shoes of choice were the Hoka Challengers, and again, Hal bought his pair the day before while we were walking around downtown Aspen.

I don't ever recommend buying new gear the day before a big event, but in this case, I already had a pair of Challengers and loved them, and they fit Hal perfectly out of the box.

We had our good friend Andy join us, and it's always a treat to have friends come on our crazy adventures with us!

We left town at 5:30am and were at the trailhead, ready to go, a few minutes after 6am. It was still dark out, so it was good that we had headlamps for the first hour.

I'll use the pictures to tell the rest of the story, but bottom line is that this was an all-time favorite run, and we would highly recommend it to anyone who's up to the challenge!

We ended up being out for 11 hours total, 28 miles, and 7,912 feet of elevation gain. We traversed four 12,500 ft. passes, and all of it was amazing. And Hal and I both felt good the whole day, which is rare. If you are an athlete, you know how special and fleeting those days are when you feel strong and powerful all day, and both Hal and I were having one of those days during this run, thank goodness for that!

Enjoy the pics and as always, thanks for reading!