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Month: July 2013

Grand Mesa 100

This was the first time I had run Grand Mesa 100, a relatively new race.  I arrived Friday afternoon and was impressed with Grand Mesa, a high plateau above 10,000 feet.   I decided to camp near the start because of the early start time the next morning, 5:00 a.m.   I greeted friends at the pre-race meeting and enjoyed a relaxing evening by Island Lake.

I managed to get a good night’s rest and it was nice to have only a five-minute drive to the start.  We were away at 5 a.m.  The course layout is very confusing and I hoped that I studied it enough to not take too many wrong turns.   The first giant 11-mile loop was very nice.  We climbed above 11,000 feet onto a narrow ridge that gave great views except for the hazy smoke down in the valleys.  I finished the loop 15 minutes slower than I hoped, but I was still doing fine.  There were only 29 100-mile runners and a bunch of 50-mile and 60K runners.  I was running in the top 10.

Happy Jack 24-hour run

Mike Place was the last runner accepted into Hard Rock 100 from the wait list just the day before the race.   I had agreed to pace him for the last half of the race if he got in, so I quickly got ready and headed for Colorado.  I arrived that night and with only a couple hours of sleep arrived in time to watch the start.   I saw Mike at the 10-mile aid station and he didn’t look well.  I commented to Matt Watts after he left, that I doubted he would make it to my pickup point.  During the rest of the morning I tried to get some rest and it wasn’t until about 2 p.m. that I noticed in the results that Mike had dropped at 15 miles.  It turned out to be scary, but he was OK.  I decided to drive to Laramie in time to make the start for the Happy Jack 24-hour run.

Duck Mountain Loop Run – Uintas

The High Uintas are open early this year for running.   It was time to get up there.  I was interested in trying something new and decided to go run the Brown Duck Mountain Loop.   The trailhead is north of Duchesne and Mountain Home, at Moon Lake.  It was an easy drive, 2:45 from my home, all on pavement.   I arrived about 11 p.m. and slept in the car.   I woke up at 4 a.m. to get ready, but there was a big windstorm going through with a little rain.  I had no desire to run in terrible wind, so I went back to sleep.

I ended up getting on the trail around 7 a.m. and had wonderful weather all day.  The rain the previous day or night was nice because the trail was soft and not very dusty.  I had previously thought about also summitting Duck Mountain, but as I approached it, I could see that it was just a pile of rocks.  To get to the summit and back to the trail would be six miles of boulder hopping which would take hours.  Instead, I tried to run the actual loop fairly fast, faster than my normal adventure runs.   But I took plenty of time for pictures and several stops to eat.    The video tells the rest of the story.

Climb up Cascade Mountain

During the terrible heat wave this weekend, I tried to escape the heat by climbing high, above 10,000 feet.  I climbed Cascade Mountain for the first time which towers above Provo/Orem, the next mountain to the south of Mount Timpanogos.   It was 81 degrees when I started in the dark and 103 when I returned to my car.   My Garmin said I climbed more than 11,000 feet.   Here’s a video of the adventure: