Lake Mountain with CraigL:
I love early morning Sunday runs. Craig and I had a really sweet run up Lake Mountain. This is one of my favorite training runs in the winter because it gets tracked out by a snowcat and the conditions are usually very good. It was cold, but not terrible and the air was clean and fresh getting out of the inversion. We saw so many deer and on the way to the saddle we saw 3 big bucks that we watched for a few minutes. Up toward the saddle we could hear some loud crashing and as we got near the top we could see two huge bucks jousting and banging their racks together. There was a bush just off the road that allowed us some cover as we slowly made our way closer. We got within about 30-40 feet from them and they didn't even notice us. One of the bucks had a huge rack and the other one was really big. Big ol bucks like these rarely let you get this close to them and it was kind of a stroke of luck that they were more worried about showing their dominance with each other and that allowed us to sneak up on them. We watched for several minutes as they crashed into each other. Eventually the big guy sensed something was up and started looking our direction. We held very still for a few minutes, but he knew something wasn't right. We started getting cold and we had been there for several minutes watching, so we stepped back onto the road and watched them bound up the mountain slope. Awesome. A few minutes later we could see them going at it again as we climbed to the peak.
We hit the summit and took a few minutes to enjoy the view. The run down was fast. After we got back down to the road it seemed like we pushed a sub 7 pace most of the way back. Craig said we were running 6:20-6:50. It was a total blast. We didn't see another soul up there and had a really fun time.
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