Hike Club

Hike Club was started back in feb. '13. Karen and I had been camping the summer of '12 with Amber and Evan. Memorial Day weekend we went to the Sand Dunes and camped on Medano (pronounced Med-no) Pass in the Sand Dunes National Preserve. While there for the three day weekend we hiked the Dunes in the most miserable wind you can imagine. The next day we tried to find Medano Lake, a couple miles up a hiking trail. People coming down the trail told us nobody had found the lake and that there was so much snow they lost the trail several times. So we turned back figuring that being memorial day at about 10,000 feet the lake could still be covered in ice and snow. Also a major motivation for heading for camp was that we were all out of steam. The rest of our camping trips included a hike, because Colorado is beautiful so lets go see it! I felt i was holding us back because of my physical condition, being overweight had to change.
I knew we needed to be hiking more to build stamina and i always want to take my friends. Facebook was the ideal medium for me to get my friends and like minded peeps into the mountains on short notice.
Hike Club came to me while falling asleep one night. In a sleepy haze the next morning i wrote this to describe what Hike Club was about:

First rule of Hike Club is: Nobody talks about Hike Club.
Karen Evan Amber and I are planning an Epic summer full of camping and hiking. It's still snowing but and too cold most of the time but there are glimpses of summer here and there. And there are some year-round trails near Denver. The point of Hike Club is to provide a high speed dynamic communication stream that will allow for rapid planning and execution of hiking events in the early season.

The group started with 15 or so people that i knew would be interested. Today it's at 90 members. There have only been a hand full that have hiked with karen and i, less than 20. But that doesn't matter. I'm still taking my friends in to the hills to have fun and be active. I didn't really know what it would be when i started, but now i think i have a good idea. It was very active in the beginning but slowed as camping season arrived and everyone's schedules filled up for the summer. Now that summer is over i need to redouble my efforts and get back into the swing of things.
It's always worked like this: I watch the weather report during the middle of the week and if Sat. or Sun. has nice weather I plan at hike. Mostly we hike at Jeffco open space parks, we've been to a couple Denver mtn. parks. The info goes out to the facebook group via an event. I pick a location and start time and basic route for the hike and give specifics like distance, difficulty, and elevation change.
Our first outing was an epic failure. I thought i had a plan but was very wrong.
I found a route on a public sourced website starting at the hogback parking lot on the north side of I-70. I thought i was taking us on a three mile loop, or that's what the website said. I learned later that the description was not accurate for the map that that showed the route. Thinking it would take an hour or two we didn't start until 1:00 in mid Feb. As it turned out we hiked 6-7 miles that day, as we were hiking along the top of the hogback we watched the sun set while we were still more than a mile from the cars. Being our first trip we were all super tired, karen was gassed but keep hiking. people kept telling her "it's all down hill from here" (now one of our running jokes that typically prompts the response "Fuck You!") but they were wrong. We did make it with out incident other than being chilly and exhausted.
My distance estimates are typically wrong; you can safely add two miles to what ever i say it will be to find the actual distance. I always know where we are and where we need to go since i always have a map and GPS. The actual distance is not so important. It's about the trip, We have a good time.

If your interested hit me up on FB and i'll add you.