31 Miles - High Creek - High Creek Lake - Mt Naomi (9979') - Tony Grove - 7 sisters - Mt Elmer (9676') - Green Canyon Mission accomplished! Joe and I have been dreaming of this link-up for years now. Today it finally happened. We even had Mike along for the ride too. It was all that I had dreamed about. Lots of climbing, lots of views, lots of sun, some pain and misery. Everything. We started at 6:45 where the road turned to dirt at the mouth of Richmond?/High Creek? canyon. Some boring dirt road running for a few miles before we hit the trail. I was dragging until the moment I hit the trail. Don't know what it is, but a switch went off in my head and I suddenly had energy and excitement. Trails! 9 miles in we had made it to High Creek Lake (9000') - Some hiking and whining ensued on the climb to Mt Naomi - Me, on top of the Bear River Range. Now for a 3 mile descent to Tony Grove. After a quick douse in the lake we were back moving (slowly now) towards Coldwater Springs and Mt Elmer. En-route, we got quite wet during a typical thunderstorm. Lots of thunder had me worried about our exposure on the 7 sisters, but it blew over quickly (we stopped under a tree to stay drier as we were getting quite cold). (Above pic is of Mt. Elmer) This next section became the crux of the run. Insanely rocky, deer trails, lots of hills. Perfect combination for slowness. Add to that, Joe was in a full bonk mode (due to lack of training). Poor guy, he sure suffered. What do you expect when you choose to honeymoon instead of run around the mountains? This gave Mike and I time to pose for pictures and practice our ridge running technique. Yes, Mike almost tripped and fell. So close... We eventually made it to Mt. Elmer where Mike and I tagged the peak while Joe went on ahead. This is a view from Mt. Elmer of the route we just took with Naomi in the center. 10 miles left, all we had to do was drop 5000 feet down green canyon and call it a day. We stopped at the spring at the top of Green to fill up and douse ourselves to combat the heat of the day (91 degrees). Mike and I quickly ditched Joe and cruised down the trail (every man for himself!). Joe ended up struggling to finish up and after 35 mins of waiting at the bottom, he finally showed himself. Tired, satisfied, beat-up, but happy was the consensus of the group. One of the greatest routes around. Highly recommended. T-6:30 (12:35) 8500' vert
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