View Benchmark with Jun: Jun and I had a tough but very fun run up to the summit of View Benchmark in winter conditions. The trail was completely snow covered from the start and after about a mile we were breaking the trail all the way to the top which made the running tough. There were several inches to run through, but as we got higher on the mountain the drifts became deeper and it really slowed us down. The final push to the summit became more difficult because we were post-holing in deep snow and getting blasted by a really cold wind. When we left Jun's office it was nice and sunny and it was hard to believe that we were getting slammed with this cold wind, but there was no way we were going to turn back. We slogged up to the summit in 1:06 which is about 20 minutes slower than normal. The summit was enveloped in clouds so the views weren't great and the wind was very cold. After Jun made a phone call we took off down the mountain running as fast as we could, but at times we were really slowed down by the deep snow, but we were having a blast. We usually run fast the last two miles, but it wasn't really possible to push it with all of the snow. We did pack a nice trail in up there though. Just before we got back to the car we saw a HUGE buck running on the side of the mountain. I rarely see 'em that big in northern Utah. It was a really fun day and the effort was much greater than the mileage total would indicate. Check out Jun's blog for some pics.
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