Like the canyon

7 miles of easy cruise'en.  Felt pretty good all in all.  Hot of course.

Nice little cruise up to Lewis Peak that included a rabid squirrel, out of control baby sage grouse, sleeping rattlesnake, and a near mountain lion encounter. Wild one out there tonight. 

Easy paced 1:03 to the top, a little longer on the way down with all the critters around.

Very nice sunset from the peak.

I have no appreciation for these things... 

AM: Walked out of the house for my moring run to see this

Yep, that's Taylor Canyon and from what I could see it looked like  the fire was right on the Malan's Peak trail....which is where I was headed.  Lot's of timber and lots of fuel in there so I imagined the worst....Felt like I was loosing a good friend.

A quick drive up the street and I could see it was 1/2 mile east of the Malan's trail and it looked like it was a single tree burning.

Drove up 27th street and there were several forrest service trucks, they were on it.  I ran up to Taylor canyon and bumped in to a firefighter walking down and ribbon marking the trail for the other crews to follow.  Really good guy, said they had been on the North Ogden fire until 3:00 AM and got called out to this one.  I walked up with him for a bit, even offering to carry some of the gear, those guys are tough, it was hot and they are decked out head to toe and carry alot of gear. He gave me the go ahead to continue up the trail, which I did until I ran into a group of 5 firefighters who asked me to turn around.  I thanked them for their hard work, turned around, ran 100 yards down the trail, crossed the creek and hiked around above them, I know....but there really wasn't any close danger. 

Ran up Malan's took some good pictures of the fire and was relived to see it was contained in low brush and rock.....Very, very lucky.  Any other spot on that whole hillside and the thing woulda burned huge all the way to Snowbasin .

PM: Got out for a nice hike with the boys to this little piece of tropical paradise up Taylor Canyon.  Pure spring water, cold and clean.

Ran into the same firefighter I walked up with this morning.  Poor guys had been sitting on the hillside all day in 100+ degree heat keeping any eye on the fire....Kind of a cool job, but gotta be pure misery on days like today.

Home for dinner then a nice 45 minute easy cruise just after sunset. 

AM: 6:00 AM Easy paced cruise up "the hill" with a BST loop and on.  Saw the old guard coming down and a pack of HUMR's.

PM: Muggy 5 miles on the BST in the dark...Bluh.

AM: South lower/upper BST loop.

PM: Not much..

 Wild day on the peaks this afternoon.  Got a late start so I was hoping for a little cloud cover and some weather.  Got just what I wanted, windy, fogged in, a little mist of rain. Perfect.

Cruised up the BL, said hey to the Camo guys looking for goats in all the wrong places, Ha! I'm not going to tell them where they're at. Beautiful misty ridge running over to Willard.  Solid power hike to the peak.....then I don't know what went wrong but I got turned around in the fog and instead of going south, ended up going north off the end of the peak and ended up right back where I started....walking in circles...what an idiot.  Guess I was a litlle distracted by these guys:

Ghosts in the fog....It seemed I kept stumbling into heards over every rock out cropping. They are pretty tame up here and used to people, but they did have little one's with them and the fact that a dozen or so get picked off every year by Camo types like I saw earlier (they might have a grudge) meant I tried to give them some space.

Back to the car and up Lewis for ways before the lightening and a very intense down pour turned me around....worried about all the slow movers in jeans and t-shirts I passed up on BL that were no doubt caught up high by the deluge.....

Day: 24ish miles, around  6800 vert

Week: 70 miles, just about 17,000 vert, 34,000 for two weeks.