A great run this morning down the West Rim trail in Zion NP. Had a little group: Billy, Scotty H, James H, Steven, and Logan. We started out in the dark and made our way down the dirt road to the trailhead. Then it started to get light and everything looks like a photo opp. The fall colors were out and that even made things more beautiful. The running part was good as I never felt like we even ran at all in the end. We hit 8:01 avg for the run... not bad down that trail. But we surely didn't push the pace like last year. I took a bunch of pic and posted on facebook so some of yall can check them out. The sad part of the trip came just as we started going down the chizzled trail in the face of a cliff. I came running down the trail and into a baby fawn deer. There was three choices the deer could make:1. Go back up past us and be ok... but it would have to have walked right next to us. (2. turn and go down the single track ledge cliff trail to the bottom and be safe- but this would have required some reasoning and the little guy is only animal. (3. Get freaked out and jump off the 300 ft cliff and see how that turns out. It was sad (honestly it was) and he jumped off. I tried everything I could in those short seconds to get him to come back up and go find mommy. But by that point he was freaked out and running like a bullet in every direction. I almost wish we hadn't gone this morning and maybe it wouldn't have happened. I have a soft heart for stuff like this so it was kind of a downer from there on out. But the run was good. The views were Amazing and I really need to do this run more than once a year. We did it last year this very same weekend but no deer died... just my hamstring because we ran it like animals that time. | 