Summit junkie!

My legs were pretty sore and I wanted to get out of the heat so I took the family to Brighton to hike up to Lake Mary. After having lunch and then cleaning up some garbage that someone (slobs) had left behind near one of the picnic areas we hiked up to the lake. The skeeters were out in full force. It was a perfect day up there with temps in the 70's. Everyone had a great time and it was good to stretch out my legs.

My ITBs and quads are pretty wrecked. I have been rolling them out and they seem to be a touch better every time, but I haven't been this sore since Wasatch 100. I hit the gym to lift for 50 minutes (upper body/core).

4 very easy miles to shake my legs. I can't believe how sore they were after the race on Sat. I was slow.

Sugarloaf, Baldy, Hidden, AF Twins and Red stack peaks with Jun Jsh and Mark:

I think this was the best pre-work run of the year so far. Up at 3:30 to meet the guys at the LCC park n ride at 4:30. We took two cars and left one at Snowbird and then jumped into Jun's and drove to the lower Albion Basin road where we parked and started. As soon as we got out of the car we could smell smoke and it was pretty thick for the first few miles. I felt like I was back at the Ritz dance club smoking cloves circa 1990. My stomach felt like crap and we were all moving slow. At the Catherine Pass trailhead I stopped for a quick break and that seemed to help my stomach, but it didn't settle completely for about an hour. We slogged up to the top of the Apline ridge where we were greeted by the standard wind slap in the face. A few more minutes and we topped out on the first summit of the day (Sugarloaf).

After a quick break we ran the ridge over to Baldy where we stopped again and had a break. I downed a gel and then we ran over to Hidden Peak. I love this ridge! It is one of the most scenic places in the Wasatch. At the top of Hidden Peak we could see the next objective, the two summits of American Fork Twin peaks, the high point in Salt Lake County. The ridge over to AF Twins is a bit sketchy with some scrambling and Jsh decided to head down the road while we continued on the ridge.

I really loved the scrambling across the ridge, but it did slow us down a lot while we negotiated a few precarious spots. Incredible! I'll post some pictures later. After the spicy section it is a scramble up some loose rock and boulders to the top of the east twin. Another sweet view and out 4th peak over 11K for the day. Does it get any better? We ran over and tagged the west twin and then negotiated the ridge over to Red Stack Peak where we took another break.

The descent off of Red Stack is horrendous! Steep, boulders and nothing resembling a trail. It sucked, but after that we picked up the dirt road above the Gad Valley lift and ran it in back to Snowbird. Awesome!

Timpanogos with Jun and Dorsimus:

Knowing I would be running Timp in a few hours I stopped at In N Out for a Double Double with fries and then topped it off with some Coke and chocolate chip cookies. I was feeling like a million damn dollars when I met Jun and Dors at Kohlers in Highland. Dors left his car and I drove up to the Timpanookee trailhead. We had a nice look at the Grunge couloir (it's still in MattVH) and started just after 9:00 pm.

We didn't see a lot of people on the trail, but the people we did see all told us we were cool/crazy/awesome etc for running to the top in the dark. I bought a new headlamp and it felt like I had traded in my Yugo for a Ferrari. I could actually see!! It didn't seem like we were pushing that hard, but we still topped out in a respectable 2:08. It was windy and cold on top, so we grabbed a quick bite, signed the register and took off. Jun would get ahead and then stop and wait for us to catch up and just before the saddle Dors passed me and the rest of the way down went like this: Jun and Dors would run fast and get ahead and then stop and wait for me about every 10 minutes. I definitely don't push the downhills as fast as those guys and I didn't want to fall, so I just kept a nice easy pace. That trail is really technical and I took a nasty fall up there two years ago and didn't want to repeat it.

The last few miles my legs felt hammered and I could feel the effects of over 9K elevation and 6 11,000 ft. summits in the last two days. I finished about 5 minutes after the other two and Matt had taken a dive right at the end. Timp is one of the best runs/hikes in the Wasatch and it was awesome getting up there again with good friends.