Fires and Fitness on Helena

I got back to working out more seriously a few months ago. I was wondering if I could test myself with this peak. How fast I can do this, without stopping?

It turns out uphill, pretty good, 2 hrs for 5 miles and 2100 ft elevation gain.

Downhill has still a way to go, 1.5 hrs.

But I am feeling better, slighter, quicker than I have been, so I am taking what I can get.

On a totally different note, I work in GIS mapping for a big evil utility company. The last couple of years I have spent a lot to time staring at mysterious road names like Mark West Springs and Frantz Valley and Tubbs. It was humbling to drive through this area and finally put a face on what to me only existed as cartographic abstracts on paper up til now. It was interesting to watch all the new construction going on, the community rebuilding itself after the fire. I should have come up here a long time ago.

Helena itself has a wide swatch of firebreak going through it. I actually used it to hit the middle peak.

The new California reality.