The Glorieta Baldy Challenge
**If you have run Glorieta Baldy I'd love to keep a tally of the best times here so drop a comment with your time and I'll keep updating the blog with the newest times.**
I've spent the last week in Glorieta New Mexico which sits at about 7500 feet above sea level. So for the first few days I was constantly out of breath and needing to drink lots of water. After a couple of days which included some short runs and some extra napping I was feeling like my body had acclimatized so I decided at the end of the week I would try a pretty crazy run, at least by my standards.
There is a mountain peak here called Glorieta Baldy with a trail that takes you right to the top. The peak puts you at about 10,300 feet. It's a pretty advanced hiking trail with some serious elevation changes over short distances. The rumour around the camp here is that someone has run up and down in just under 2 hours. So I thought I would give it a try and see how close I could come.
I started in front of our hotel, The Hall of States, ran to the trailhead and continued up to Baldy only stopping my watch when I got to the top. My time to the peak was 1:31:23 The last 1.5 miles feel like they are pretty much straight up and are very difficult to do any running in. But when I reached the top the view was worth all the work. Here's a picture from the top looking down at the camp.
And this is the lookout tower you can climb up to get above the tree line for a great 360 view.
Coming down was much quicker and hurt just as much, just in different places. I made it back to the hotel in 2:27:53.
Here are some stats on the trail.
Total climb - 2,699 ft.
Top Elevation - 10,200 ft.
Distance up - 5.1 mi (from trailhead)
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