Training Archive: kissyIn the 7 days ending 2007-04-15:
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| M | T | W | H | F | S | S | |||||||||||
Saturday Apr 14 | ||
| Running 45:15 [2] | |
| Stopped by the Colorado National Monument in Grand Junction, CO, on the way back to Denver. Took a look around and then went for a trail run...and got another stamp for my passport book. That's 4 in one trip, not bad. This was a beautiful place, but after being in Canyonlands NP, I don't think any other canyons will compare...except maybe the Grand Canyon. | ||
Friday Apr 13 | ||
| Mt. Biking 4:00:00 [2] | |
| For a change, we headed south out of town and spent time Behind the Rocks. We headed out of the campground at the trailhead, and started down the valley (which is backwards from how the map showed the mile markers for the trail). The trail turned north, and became part of the 24 Hours of Moab route. So far, the trail was loose dirt to sand and was difficult to get through at times, but nothing technical. We passed Prostitute Butte (something SF wanted desperately to see), and started heading up hill and on to Black Diamond trails. I think these were Black Diamond because of the steepness and sand, and not the technical difficulty. However, we soon found the technical stuff when we encountered our first Double Black Diamond section, White Knuckle Hill, which was a series of two cliffs with absolutely no obvious way of getting down. As we stood there surveying the situation, a bunch of ATVers showed up and surveyed with us. Mikell and I ended up carrying our bikes down, which was difficult enough...basically lowering the bikes and jumping down afterwards, and the ATVers turned around.
At this point, we started looping back towards the campground and decided to take the Tip-Toe Behind the Rocks trail, which turned out to be very sandy! It also had some pretty intense Double Diamond sections, Upchuck and High Dive, which we once again, scrambled through on foot. Then, some rolling, technical sections which culminated in what the map called "steep, sandy hill." Well, that was an understatement. After being out for about 3.5 hours, I was exhausted and only made it up 1/4 of the hill. Mikell made it up a little past half-way before he tossed in the towel. I was exhausted after just walking my bike up that thing! Then a gradual downhill for about a mile, dancing over and around patches of slickrock, back to the beautiful sight of the truck. I think this was our finest outing of the week. | ||
| Hiking 1:30:00 [1] | |
| We headed back to Arches for one last hike through Devil's Garden. Managed to see 6 arches in one hike, the most spectacular being Landscape Arch, which looked like it wasn't going to hang in there much longer (geologically speaking).
A perfect end to a perfect week in Moab. We lucked out with both the weather and the lack of crowds. We could see tonight that the weekend crowds were piling into town and can only imagine how busy everything is going to get. Kind of glad to be heading out of town. | ||
| Pre-sleeping 1 [0] | |
| While waiting for the weather report to see if I'm going to be able to get home on Sunday or not. | ||
Thursday Apr 12 | ||
| Mt. Biking 1:25:00 [2] | |
| We decided to explore Canyonlands NP today so we could see the beautiful canyons...and get that park stamp! On the way there on Rt. 313, we stopped at the upper trailhead for Gemini Bridges, and biked down to them. That was quite a fun ride, downhill the entire 5 or so miles. When we got there, I was looking for arch-like things since I don't have my geological vocabulary down pat yet and didn't realize what "bridges" meant. When we found them, though....wow, what a rush. You walk along and all of a sudden, there is a huge whole in the ground, about 10 - 15 stories down, with a rock bridge over the top. And when we got closer, we saw another bridge right next to the first one (hence the "Gemini" part), with just a narrow chasm between the two. But, if you didn't see that chasm...watch out! The ride back up wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The climb was pretty gradual and the wind was at our backs. | ||
| Running 1:02:00 [2] | |
| After riding our bikes, we headed into Canyonlands NP, and ended up at Upheaval Dome. Swampfox wanted to do a long run around the dome, with a side trail down to the Green River, about 15 miles total. I wanted a shorter run, so I just ran for a bit around the Dome, and turned back. On my return trip, I heard some thunder and then it started hailing! It didn't feel anywhere close to being cold enough for hail, but there it was. I also saw a jack rabbit...so cool!
After I got back to the truck, I figured Mikell would be back in about an hour or so, so I sat in the truck and read Backpacker magazine. Well, the time that I thought Mikell should be back came and went, and then still more time passed. The hail had stopped, but the temperature had dropped quite a bit, black clouds were rolling in, and I began to hear thunder, again. When the time hit 3 hours, I was getting pretty worried, when coming from the wrong direction, who should I spy but Swampfox. He had had quite an adventure, ending up not running the side trail, for a total of 8.3 miles in 3 hours...not bad. Evidently, the trail was quite treacherous and hard to follow in spots, which made it very difficult to get through. I think he was a little traumatized because he kept saying he had *never* run a trail like that before, and he kept muttering something about the "trail through Hell." After a post-run snack of fig newtons and a Mt. Dew, and a dinner of some fine pizza from Pasta Jay's, he was completely revived. Ahhh...pizza sumption is back! | ||
Wednesday Apr 11 | ||
| Mt. Biking 2:00:00 [2] | |
| Headed north of town again this morning to the Klondike Bluffs trail. This was originally going to be our first trail in Moab, and I'm kind of glad we did the Monitor and Merrimac trail first. This was a little tougher, mainly due to the climb. We parked at the second trailhead, which cut off 2.7 miles of dirt road travel on bikes. From where we parked, we headed up towards Klondike Bluffs, kind of contouring along the backside of the ridge up, and then turning straight onto the ridge. The terrain up started with the dastardly sand, and then turned pretty rocky, and then we got on the slickrock. This was smoother than yesterday's slickrock, which was nice, but steeper. At the beginning of the rock, we stopped to look at dinosaur tracks, which were ringed with stones. To tell you the truth, if the rings weren't there, I'd be hardpressed to recognize them as tracks and not just indentations in the rock. After the slickrock, we got back on jeep tracks up to the ridge, which was the park boundary for The Arches NP. You can't ride there, but there is a handy bike rack where you can leave your bike and continue walking about .7 miles out to the edge of the Bluffs. From there, you can see forever in every direction. It was so cool to look at The Arches from that viewpoint and be able to pick out all of the places we had been the other day. On the way up, the weather was pretty nice, but up on top, the wind picked up and it got downright chilly.
After we got back to our bikes, they were gone. (Just kidding, but I was a little afraid that that was what we'd find.) No, instead we biked back a bit, and took a side trail so Mikell could see an old uranium mine. Then, we continued down, with a side route on Baby Steps, although we didn't do the singletrack part because we heard it wasn't very good. A few more stops at some mines on the way down, and we were soon back at our truck. SF went for a bit of a longer ride so he could check out Tower Arch, but I opted to stay in the warm truck and read my book, "Getting Stoned with Savages." | ||
| C • Book 5 | ||
| Hiking 1:10:00 [1] | |
| On the way home, we first stopped at the Visitor's Center of The Arches, so I could get the prized park stamp for my passport book. Then, on to the Delicate Arch, where we hiked the 3 mile roundtrip trail. I was surprised to see as many people on it as we did, as it isn't an extremely easy hike. We were definitely rewarded at the top with a spectacular view of the arch.
Then, on to Moab Brewery for dinner and beer, the former not quite as good as expected, and the latter quite delicious. And no pizza sumption! | ||
Tuesday Apr 10 | ||
| Running (Trail) 1:16:00 [2] | |
| Another beautiful day in Moab, although it was just a teensy bit chillier, with definitely more wind whipping up throughout the day. We had a light pre-run breakfast and then headed to Negro Bill Canyon (named after William Granstaff, a black cowboy, who ran cattle in the desert canyon in the 1870s) for a morning run up to Morning Glory Natural Bridge.The trail was mildly rugged in places and difficult to follow in others, with several false trails leading off of it. It ran along the bottom of the canyon, paralleling a perennial stream, which we had to cross several times. The contrast of the lush green canyon bottom and the red rock walls was stunning. At the end of the trail, in a side canyon, was the Morning Glory Natural Bridge. It is the sixth largest arch in the U.S., and was quite spectacular, with the end of the canyon just behind it, so you kind of felt like you were in a cave. The only bad part was the presence of poison ivy along the sides of the trail...poison ivy with fresh new leaves just brimming with urushiol. I hope nothing comes of that, although I'm more allergic to English Ivy than poison ivy.
After we were finished with the run, we made a beeline for the Pancake Haus for a nice stack of hotcakes. Yum! | ||
| Mt. Biking 1:18:00 [2] | |
| I think after all of the discussion on pedal choices, Mikell decided he should add toe clips to his platform pedals, so we headed back to Poison Spider bike shop. While there, we finally met Fred, the amiable bike guy who helped me buy my bike over the phone. Fred is a great guy.
With newly attached clips, we headed out to the Monitor & Merrimac trail just north of Moab. This was suggested (by the aforementioned Fred) as a good intro ride to the slickrock and sand of Moab, and that turned out to be true. We started up a jeep road that gave us our first taste of riding in sand. I came to a dead stop and wondered how I was going to get through that mess. Mikell managed to sail right through. It actually got better, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out the best technique for staying upright in the sand...I think slow and steady wins that race. We didn't take the out and back tail of the trail because we were told that it was very sandy and not that interesting, so we took the loop that wound around a closer butte than Merrimac or Monitor. The slickrock was definitely a change from the riding I've done back East, but it was so much fun. Just picking out the best, smoothest route on the way up was good, but coming down the backside, trying to avoid catching an edge on the ridges, was even more fun. When we got to the far end of the loop and started heading back, the wind had picked up quite a bit and at times, I almost felt like I was in Laramie. In both of our adventures today, I've been ever-vigilant for snakes (so I can run in the opposite direction!), but I read a trail review tonight on the Monitor and Merrimac trail that said someone came across 5-6 bears last October on the trail, and had to hightail it out of there, backtracking the entire way. Now I have to watch out for bears AND snakes...oh, my. Back home again to another delicious hot shower and even more delicious pizza sumption (do we see a pattern here?). | ||
Monday Apr 9 | ||
| Cycling 4:00:00 [3] 42.0 mi (5:43 / mi) | |
| Awoke this morning to beautiful blue skies and warmer temps, with the only evidence of last night's rain being the red mud strewn across the road. First things first, we headed to Poison Spider Bikes to pick up the new bike I bought over the phone...a Trek 6500WSD. Yes, it's the same as Mikell's, just the women's version (you can start puking now, Cristina). Headed for a local coffee shop while we waited for the bike shop to switch out the clipless pedals for platform pedals. I don't know that I'm ready for clipless in this new terrain. I was also glad to see a good number of coffee shops in town. I was a bit concerned, being in Utah and all.
We headed out of town on our bikes to the Arches National Park, planning to use today as an exploration day of the park and our bikes. We stayed on the park roads (hence the Cycling activity designation vs. Mt. Biking), and that was quite a workout in and of itself. I hadn't really looked closely at the contours on our map, so when we left the Visitors Center and I was looking straight up a pretty steep incline that required switchbacks, and no end in sight, I thought this might be a long day. But, it didn't end up being too bad. We stopped at many of the viewing areas to view. The scenery was just breathtaking, and the skies were so crisp and clear, you could see forever. The biking weather was perfect, not hot at all; actually a little on the cool side at times, which was nice. We also took the side roads out to The Windows and to Delicate Arch, which was more work than I thought it would be. Once we came back to the main road from The Windows and started heading towards Delicate Arch, I saw a road sign indicating a steep grade ahead. Once we came around the curve, I saw as massive a hill as we had out of the Visitors Center. Knowing that going down meant having to come up again, I started yelling for Mikell to stop and let's think about this. But, he didn't hear me (or so he says), and we went screaming down the hill. Once we regrouped at the bottom, I told SF that it was going to take me a bit of time to get back up that hill, and his comment was "Yup, that is one bad ass hill." Delicate Arch was cool, but we'll have to go back sans bikes so we can hike up to it. After we left there, Mikell hung a right turn towards the campground for a bit more riding, and I headed up the bad ass hill. It really wasn't as bad as it looked, but I had a little calf cramping issue at one point. I waited at the top for SF, and at least 5 cars stopped to ask if I was okay. I thought that was very nice. After that, we headed straight back to Moab, with a few rest stops (for me) on some hills. Then a nice hot shower that felt soooo good and out for pizza sumption (of course!). | ||
| C • Utah 11 | ||