Camped out overnight with the new rooftop tent up Skyline Drive (4WD-preferred dirt road) right before things suddenly went from dry dirt to several feet of snow within the span of about 100 feet. Crazy what a change on the path to a north-facing aspect can do. Daria took the car home via Skyline while I ran home over the ridge and down Sessions. I slogged up Skyline and onto Sessions Road. Things were straightforward for about 2 miles, and then I started crossing some pretty steep and deep snowfields that completely covered the road. Around 2 miles in, the snow was deep enough for me to run over the top of a "Road Closed for Winter" sign. Hah. Around 2.5 miles, all tracks ended, and the snow was deep enough that navigation became somewhat of a challenge, especially considering that I've only run that chunk of dirt road up there a couple times and it's been a few years since I've been up there. I'm quite glad that I have the Fenix 5X (with built-in maps), as I was somewhat lost around 3.5-4 miles, and it turns out I had gotten a fair amount East and down mountain of the road. To be fair, the road had at least half a dozen feet of snow at that point and there were no tracks anywhere. However, after consultation with the built-in maps on the watch (seriously, such a great feature to have), I figured out where I was going, hiked up a steep snow field, and was able to find the peak and Sessions trail. Going down Sessions was reaaaally slow up top, with the steepest portion (near the top, probably 45 degrees) completely covered in snow. I'm surprised my pace managed to hover around even 20 min per mile for that portion. It was pretty wild. A few of the really rocky, steep downhills were also crazy slow today, as I just didn't want to commit to running them at anything other than a jog. Probably didn't help that we forgot matches to start the grill and barely ate last night - and then for no reason at all, I only had a single graham cracker for breakfast - so I was pretty hungry and not wanting to put a lot of energy into stability on steep downhills. Haha. Anyway, finally popped out on the road after a few miles of 10:00 rocky downhill (seriously so lazy about putting energy into stability to run faster without falling hahaha), then did an easy mid-high 7 min pace from there, both on the steep downhill outside of Mueller and and on the flatter Orchard. I'm glad that a bit over 14 miles at ultra effort took nothing out of me - I guess that's kind of important since I'm going to run 50 miles a week from today. Hah.
1110' uphill and 4530' downhill.
| 