Had the best run/hike of the year so far this morning with Jun. My son came into my room last night at 1:30 am barfing all over the carpet, my bed and himself. I had only been asleep for about 30 minutes and with the alarm set for 6:00 I was worried I wouldn't be feeling it today, but I felt great the whole time. We met my friend Matt at the trailhead to Big Beacon (Mt. Wire) at 7:00 this morning and it was COLD. Matt was taking a break from work, and wasn't dressed for hiking, but he is pretty hardcore, so he just came up in his jeans and leather shoes.
The first mile was really cold and the hose on my Camelbak froze and I couldn't get any water. We made good time to the summit hiking fast. We could have run, but we didn't want to leave Matt. We made it to the top in about an hour, and Matt bailed to get back to work. We took a few summit shots, and then decided to go down a different way that would take us over a minor summit and then take us over to the Red Butte summit ridge. The run over to Red Butte was so fun in the well packed snow.
The Red Butte ridge is a little scrambly (not bad) so it slowed us down some and we were soon on the summit while spying several deer (I think we saw at least 50 today). The run down from Red Butte is pretty steep and technical, but a lot of fun. We had a great time and moved really fast down to the saddle, where we decided to take the switchbacks down to the BST.
Once we got back down to the BST it was another couple of miles to the car and by this time it was really hot. My Camelbak finally started working again, and I sucked down some water.
This was an amazing day and I would go back and do that again anytime. The only bad part of the whole hike/run was my nose ran constantly, and I had to keep farmer blowing. Jun was incredibly strong, and considering he ran a marathon+ two days ago it was pretty amazing that he did so well. I will post up some pics and a little video later today.
I just put up a video from our run:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Utah13ers#p/a/u/0/powTZ4q-krs
Here are some photos:
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