Wasatch 100 course (Lambs aid to Brighton) with Jun and Adam H.
We met at 4:15 am at the BCC PNR and after dropping off cars at Brighton we had an incident with some longboarders that had crashed coming down the canyon. Two young guys that were both bloody and dazed. One of them looked much worse than the other and kept complaining that he was going to die. We drove them to the 7-11 at the mouth of the canyon where they called some friends to come take them to the hospital. They were not wearing any protective gear and didn't have headlamps. Dumb! They are lucky to be alive.
We started at the Lambs Canyon aid area for the Wasatch 100. None of us had run this section of the course and it was really fun. After 1.6 miles up Lambs we took the trail on the right that would take us up and over the pass to Millcreek canyon. The sun came up about half way up the climb and it was beautiful in there. It was a touch overgrown, but not too bad. At the pass we had a good solid run down to the canyon road at Elbow Fork and then we all grabbed a quick snack while we headed up the canyon to Upper Big Water. We ran most of the canyon road and only hiked the steepest sections.
The trail from Upper Big Water to Dog Lake is very pretty and in great shape. We hiked most of the steeper sections and ran where we could. After Dog Lake we knew we had to get some water, so we hit the spring just below the trail junction to Desolation Lake. We all filled up our water and I got into some stinging nettle, which bothered me for about the next hour. The trail up to Desolation is steep and tough. We were all feeling it at this point. We were not moving fast.
We reached the crest and decided to bag Desolation Peak. Why not? On the summit we took a few peak jumping photos and then headed back to the trail. From there we ran most of the way back to the base of Scott Hill. Jun got ahead and was waiting for us. We stopped there and took a break and Adam and I decided we were going to climb Scott Hill and Jun had to get back, so he took off while we took a few minutes to eat some real food (granola bar, Powerbar, Fritos).
From this point on it seemed like Adam and I were climbing up. We went up Scott Hill and then after dropping down and losing some elevation we had to climb back up to the ridge to Guardsman Pass. From here we were off the W100 course and decided to climb as many peaks as we could on the Brighton ridge run. Adam was out of water, so we would have to bum some off of hikers if we wanted to do anything serious because it was very hot. We did find a few nice hikers that let us have some water, but the steep climb up to peak 10,420 and Clayton Peak was taking a lot out of us. The sun was beating down most of the time and it was a tough climb with 20+ miles and several thousand feet of elevation already on our legs. We really slowed down a lot. When we reached the summit of Clayton I ran out of water and Adam had about 16 ounces left, so we knew that we were done. That would barely get both of us back to the car and if we didn't see anyone with water we would be screwed if we tried to go further, so we decided to call it a day. We made our way back to the saddle and then ran the road back to the car that was parked in the Brighton parking lot.
We finished with 4 peaks, 8311 feet of elevation gain and just under 24 miles. I also got to run about 20 more miles of the W100 course. I really can't imagine a race course being any tougher than this one. It's coming quick. | 