Epic Trail Run #2. Got up at the crack of 8:45 AM, and was sitting on the couch when Cody called me asking if we could move our run up 45 minutes, because he had gotten home early from Fathers and Sons camping. Our original plan was to meet at 10:45, but I was ok with going when the weather was a little cooler, since our planned run was going to take a solid four hours. We drove up to Third Dam and started on the Spring Hollow Trail, which is a pretty steep and gnarly-yet-runnable, straight-up-the-mountain kind of trail. Well, most of it. This is fast becoming one of my favorite trails. The views are awesome, it's a challenging run, and you can get all kinds of cool places from it. I'd never been beyond the aspen grove just above the rock slides, but today we'd be running the whole thing to connect on to North Syncline. Once we got to the aspen grove, the trail smoothed out and was perfect. Not too steep, buffed out, and shady with incredible views. We continued climbing until we reached the Forest Service road (part of the Logan Peak course) just above the turnoff to North Syncline. By this time we had already had a little bit of adventure. We met a hiker on the switchbacks near the top who warned us that there was "lots of snow" and that he'd lost the trail and had to turn back. It was obvious we knew where we were going more than he did, so naturally we decided that the best plan was to follow the tracks of the guy who said he lost the trail. So, we lost the trail too and had to do a little hiking before we found the road. We didn't get lost too badly though. Well, by not badly I mean we eventually found the road and we were never really lost. We knew where we were. We just didn't know where the trail had gotten off to. Silly trail. There was quite a bit of snow, but not nearly enough to turn a couple of crazy mountain goats like myself and Cody back, so we kept on going and found that North Syncline was actually fairly runnable. There were a few downed trees (one of which looked like it had exploded on impact) some big drifts, and a few spots where we would break through and sink to our knees, but overall it was surprisingly clear. We took a few pictures for Bruce Copeland, the Logan Peak RD. I had forgotten how awesome of a trail North Syncline is. I'd only run it once before during Logan Peak 2010 (the 2011 shortened course did not include the best part of the race--bummer), and so I was really enjoying running it in non-race mode and taking in the scenery. Rounding the bend to the top of Logan Dry we came across what looked to me like mountain lion tracks. They were quite large, and looked too round to be a dog's tracks. Super cool. We didn't see the cat though, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Although with two of us I don't think it would have been a problem. We saw another hiker on the overlook and another runner shortly thereafter, but on the way back they had both mysteriously disappeared. I'm saying the mountain lion ate them. And I'm sticking to it. We turned around after scouting out the top of Dry and the South Syncline from a distance. At this point I should note that I made the discovery that Gatorade's version of Shot Bloks suck. Be warned. Terrible. The road back was just as much fun for me as coming up. Cody was tired, but I was feeling really good for some reason, so I just enjoyed the run. When we got to the junction of the Forest Service road and Spring Hollow, we decided to see if we could find where the actual trail went. We found it with no problem, but it was mostly buried in snow and so we couldn't really blame the hiker for missing it. After all, we are expert trail runners with eyes trained to pick out the slightest hint of a trail, right? Yeah, because a few minutes later we somehow missed what should have been an obvious turn and ended up bushwhacking for a couple of hundred yards down the mountain before the trail decided to get back in line with us. We passed a couple of hikers halfway down the rock slide portion of Spring Hollow right as we were discussing how we hadn't seen anyone since the top (I'm telling you, that mountain lion must have been hungry!) and how only crazy people hike or run in the middle of the day. The hikers were very confused I think. We finally made it back to the car with just over four hours of total running time. Probably 4.5 with all the dinking around we did, but as I told Cody, you're supposed to have fun and enjoy training runs, right? Great run with some small adventures, beautiful weather and scenery. Looking forward to running much of the same terrain at Logan Peak in 6 weeks--only there will be zero snow then. Be homesick, Jon. ~4:10 (13:30/mi.) 5500' vert.
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