Jade Mountain, Taiwan - Solo Monkey, International Style (Part 1)

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end

Ernest Hemmingway

I get to travel some for work, and luckily on a recent work trip I had an opportunity to try to climb the highest peak in East Asia, Jade Mountain in Taiwan.  But this adventure began not at the TaTaJia Trailhead at the Jade Mountain National Park in Alishan, Taiwan, but long before that.  Just getting to the trailhead to climb Jade Mountain (玉山) was an adventure all by itself.  Part one of this trail report will detail the trail to the trailhead, and part two will detail the climb itself.

Jade Mountain Park Entry Permit Application

To climb Jade Mountain, you cannot just show up and start climbing the mountain.  There are two different permits you must attain before entering.  The first permit will authorize entry into the Yu Shan National Park, the application can be found by clicking here.  Because I was also planning on summiting and returning in one day, the requirements included providing photos of yourself on 3 or more summits above 3000 Meters (almost 10,000 feet), your exercise regimen in preparing for the climb, your equipment list...even your "Environmental Education" background (pack it in, pack it out, respect the mountain and terrain, etc.)  Being an Eagle Scout has its privileges.

The second application is a "Mountain Entry Permit", the application for this permit must be filed with the Interior Ministry of the National Police Agency of Taiwan here.  When you enter the park, the police station at the entrance takes the top half of the form.  If they don't get the second half of the form back when you descend, that's when they send out the search parties, looking over the cliffs to see if you've fallen off the mountain.



Scenes from a Train Ride.  And my ear.

So now...getting to Alishan.  The park is located in Alishan (阿里山), which is a township in ChiaYi County (嘉義鄉). I was staying in Taichung (台中), which is two counties away from Chiayi.  I jumped on an Express train and made it to Chiayi in a little over an hour.  I was hoping to ride the High Speed Rail to get there--it's fun to travel at 300 km/hour in a train--but there were no scooter rental stations at the HSR station, only at the train station.  But riding trains in Taiwan is very convenient, more space than a plane ride, foot rests, reclining chairs, and you can smoke between train cars if you would like.  Very Hollywood.


Once I got to ChiaYi, I went to the Big Elephant Scooter shop and rented myself a monster of a 125cc moped.  Taiwan is full of motor scooters, it's the most convenient way to get around and they're pretty fun to ride.  But when I told the shop keeper where I was heading...he just laughed and shook his head.  He couldn't believe first that I was planning on climbing Jade Mountain, and then couldn't believe that I was riding a scooter that far.  But he took my $400 Taiwan Dollars (about USD $14), and I was off.  After fueling up, I was on the road.



First view of the mountains...Beginning my climb from sea level to 2600 meters.  I got the scooter over 100 km/hr at one point on this straight away, which is much faster than I have skills to manage.

Stlong Blidge!  Stlong Blidge!  And a Taoist Temple.

I quickly turned up the skill level on the motor-scooter...At stop lights I start firing through the intersection when the opposite lights turned yellow (when the crossing light turns yellow that in essence means your light is green, even though it's red); I swerved and leaned into my turns like a pro; I non-chalantly pulled within 3-4 inches of dumptrucks and buses, sucking in fumes of other motorscooters and industrial vehicles.  Most people wear face masks to avoid inhaling the exhaust of so many vehicles, but not me.  You only live once.

The road up the mountain was a two lane highway, winding and winding and winding...steep drops on one side of the road and cars passing each other with obstructed views.  There were also a lot of very large vehicles going up and down this road, tour buses, construction trucks.  They really have no problem with passing one another on blind corners, either.  The whole traffic system is a series of suggestions and flow.  Just keep the roads flowing, don't stop and get in the way, avoid items larger than you, etc.  To see video footage of the road click here.

The Road to Alishan

After riding for about an hour, and once I had climbed to a certain altitude, the mists and fog and clouds began to appear.  It became difficult to see more than 30 yards in any direction because of how thick the tropical mists were at this elevation.  I slowed down quite a bit, but began to realize I may not be able to see any of the mountains, and my hike would be done in a foggy haze.  Trail Running outlook not so great.

I really Mist you.

My trusty old steed at the entrance of Jade Mountain National Park.  I hear the park is beautiful, but I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me because of the fog.

The park was empty.  Really, no one.  I didn't see anyone for about the last 30 minutes of my ride.  And a road trip that I thought might take less than two hours ended up taking 3.5 hours, because I couldn't go very fast with such a limited view.  I was wet, cold, and hungry.  I was planning on buying some dinner at a roadside restaurant, or even a convenience store as a last resort, since you can't walk more than three steps in Taiwan without running into some sort of convenience store.  But this place was empty!  Like I said it had been 30 minutes since I had seen anyone, and even longer since I had seen any type of building.  Who knew that such a crowded little island could have such solitude.

I finally found the Hostel that I had reserved for the night and checked in.  It was about 5:00 PM, and there were only a couple of people there.  The manager showed me to my bed, and I took my wet clothes off and got settled.  I was in a room with 32 beds, and there was another adjoining bed that had 32  beds, although it looked like there were only 3 or 4 that would be occupied.

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

I asked the manager where the closest convenience store was, as I was getting hungry.  I had some power bars and gu chomps with me, a couple fruit leathers, but those were for the trail, not ideal for pre-race fuel.  "oh, they're all closed, they close up here early".  So I asked if she had any food I could buy, she had some ramen noodle bowls and could give me some hot water for dinner.  I happily ate two bowls of beef-type flavor noodles and hoped that they had enough MSG in them to power me through the next morning.  

Not the ideal pre-race meal, but better than nothing.  I believe the oily mystery-meat flavor pack that I'm squeezing in here may have shaved a year or two off of my life.

More people started showing up, and the hostel was soon full.  Big tour groups came in, one group took up one entire room at the hostel.  Only a few were planning on hiking, others were just taking photos of the area around the park, not hiking or camping, just enjoying the scenery.  One guy even had ridden his bike up to this spot, almost 100 km of uphill riding in a day.  The folks who were climbing Jade Mountain planned on spending three days here, and couldn't believe I was planning on trail running.  Some were leaving at 2:00 AM, some were leaving at 3:00, some at 4:00.  I decided to change my plan and leave around 4:30, seeing how that was the cool thing to do.  I would be the last hiker to leave for the trail that morning.

I was still experiencing a little jet lag, and so I was one of the first to hit the sack.  Incredibly, intolerably loud snoring from the guy next to me and the guy above me woke me up at about midnight, and it was so noisy and startling it keep me awake for a while.  I switched my head to the opposite side of the bed, and luckily there was some sort of de-humidifier by my bed, I turned in on high so it created enough white noise that I was able to fall back to sleep for a while.  But it had some sort of internal sensor that would shut it off after a while, so I fell into a routine of turning on the de-humidifier, falling asleep, being awoken by the dinosaur snore, and turning on the de-humidifier.  Lovely.

I've included this photo for Sam's enjoyment.  Ready...Aim...

One last thing.  For those of you that have never been to Asia, and never before experienced a squatter, in many rural and traditional locations there are not toilets, only squatters.  They're essentially a strategically placed hole in the floor.  You have to position yourself as best you can and try to not fall over while you're taking care of your business.  For anyone who's had a knee injury or who doesn't practice yoga with regularity, it can be a bit of a challenge, to say the least.  The first few times using one of these is more difficult than you would think.  TMI.

I got out of bed at 4:30, at some bread thingies I had stored from a 7-11 the day before, and got ready to leave.  No one else was awake, and those who were also hiking had departed long ago.  I jumped on my scooter with my camelbak and went out into the darkness to find the trail.  

To be continued....



Lewis Peak

Lewis Peak Map via the North Ogden Divide Trailhead.

Lewis Peak is located just north of Ogden Canyon. We took the North Ogden Divide Trailhead accessed from North Ogden Canyon, which coincidentally shares a parking lot with Ben Lomond. Sam's wife had a baby earlier this week and Steve is still recovering from his marathon, so we took it easy most of the way up. We started at about 6:30 am and it was cold. The trail has about a mile of switchbacks right at the beginning, then stays up on the ridge-line the rest of the way.

Steve, with the first rays of sun, starting the ridge-line. Ben Lomond in the background.

The trail was absolutely stunning. I asked Steve several times why we had never done any trail-running in October (of course, we are only into our second year of serious trail-running). I think October may be my absolute favorite time to get out on a trail. It's beautiful beyond words and it's also a lot cooler, which means my face doesn't need to be rung out several times.

Summit Warrior!  No... he didn't pull it out of the ground.  It was on the
ground when we arrived.  

The trail was roughly 5 miles to the summit, which passed by rather quickly, even though it took us about an hour and a half. We didn't gain much more than 1000 feet and most of that was in the first mile. The views were spectacular in all directions. The trail allows you to view from Ogden down to Salt Lake and over the other side at Pineview as well.

Inspired by Jake, we left a monkey at the summit. OTM's were here!

I really enjoyed the trail. I love running the ridge-lines especially, because the views are awesome and more distance can be traversed. I think Lewis Peak will become a regular October run.

Looking South at Mt. Ogden.

An Olympus Afternoon

Moonlight over Mt. Olympus

While Steve was resting up for his marathon on Saturday morning, Jake and Sam decided to climb Mt. Olympus as a duo.  Both Sam and Steve had done this climb many times, but for Jake it was a first.  Many of his hikes with the Trail Monkeys are firsts.  And again he had no idea what he was in for, particularly when it comes to vertical gain.

Sam mentioned the route would be something like this...

"First there's the beginning climb, then there's the switchbacks, then you get to the river, then you get to the caterpillar crawl, then you go up the Never-Ending-Staircase, and then you're on the saddle, and then there's an easy rock-scramble to the top." 

Sounds easy right?  Monkeys can climb just about anything!  Or so I thought.  We started out by wondering if we should try to break the record, Steve's done it in some ridiculous time of 1:35, but we both quickly realized that this wasn't happening on this day.  Neither Sam nor I had been able to run much the last month, what with school starting and another kid on the way and football practice and basically life in general getting in the way of our free time.  So we decided we'd enjoy the climb rather than try to push ourselves too much.

Mt. Olympus in Greece

By way of information, The Mt. Olympus wilderness area and the Mt. Olympus peak in Salt Lake City it named after....Mt. Olympus in Greece!  SLC's Mt. Olympus is roughly the same height (9,026 feet) as Thessaloniki's Mt. Olympus, (9,570 feet), and the two mountains have very similar features and vertical gain.  Although The Greek version is a much more technical climb, with 5 different pitches that require rock climbing and rock climbing gear.  The SLC version only requires...calf muscles.


 

Nearly every trail report about Mt. Olympus talks about how the trail is "strenuous but rewarding", or "the hike is fairly steep", or "Difficulty:  Strenuous".  And so it goes.  I've never had cramps while hiking before but got some good ones while on the Never-Ending-Staircase.  Calf Cramps.  Still not a bad first climb for climbing the mountain named after the Home of the Greek Gods.  The fall leaves were beautiful, the scramble to the top was more fun that it was dangerous, and it didn't hurt so bad that I don't want to go back.  Maybe even to challenge Steve's time to the top....

Once we reached the top, Sam was in cell phone range and was able to check in with the wife, you know, to make sure she didn't go into labor or anything important like that while he was on top of the mountain.  Also, the mailbox has a summit registry in it.  Jack Frost has even been to the top of this mountain.

Monkeys break for bananas

Steve's Layton Marathon 2012



Layton Marthon course

In my attempt to redeem myself from my lousy performance in the Utah Valley Marathon, I signed up for the Layton Marathon as soon after the race as possible. The Layton race is the flattest marathon in Utah, and is the only course that meets the requirements where one can officially break a world record.  It has a total elevation change of about 200 feet, and a net GAIN of about 80 feet.  Knowing this, I was still hoping to break my best time of 3:47:55.  The reason I chose this course was it was less than 4 miles away from my house.  This meant I didn't have to drive through any kind of trafic, especially Utah county traffic, to either register, run the race, or get home.  It also was a faily cheep race of $60.00, instead of all the other overpriced marathons.  In addition, being so flat, it also gives you better feel for what your "real" marathon time is.  I think I'll make this race an annual event.

The race was beautiful.  It started before sunrise running north along the east edge of Antelope Island.  Since only 152 people ran the full marathon, the crowd quickly spaced out, and I was left to run mile after mile in quazi-solitude, which was absolutely wonderful.  I saw a small herd of antelope run across the road in front of me, and a large herd of buffalo running around while the bus was driving us to the start line.

Starting about 10 minutes before the race, I had a orange GU Chomp in my mouth for nearly the entire duration of the race.  They look, feel and taste like giant fruit snacks... yup, giant fruit snacks that have been left unwrapped in your pants pocket for the last two months.  But at least they do taste better than the GU gel packets, which taste like used kitty litter, minus the litter.  The good news though is that this helped me not experience the normal energy drain I have experienced all summer when doing longer runs. 

I ran a little over an 8 minute mile pace for the first 17 miles.  I hit my first wall at that point, but then got a second wind from mile 20-23.  At that point, my muscles started feeling the distance, and I finished the last few miles at about a 10 minute mile pace.  My total time was 3:50:15.  Overall, I'm very happy with this, considering the flat course.  I finished 26th out of 152.  I actually finished 3rd in my age group for 30-34.  I didn't stick around to get the medal, since I didn't think I had any chance to ever be in the top 3 of anything, so I wonder if they will let me come pick it up somewhere...  So you'll all just have to imagine me standing on the 3rd place pedestal receiving my medal.  That's what I'm doing.

Grandeur Peak

Grandeur Peak sits above the North entrance to Millcreek Canyon. There are several trails that lead to the peak, but we took the more common, and easier, Church Fork Trail. At least, according to our research it seemed like the easiest and most common. About a mile into the climb Jake asked, as he seems to do on every hike, if we purposefully chose the steeper trails just because he was along. This was the first time we'd been on the trail and had little knowledge of its difficulty.

It wasn't really that bad though. Not half as steep as the other trails we've taken Jake on. Gobbler's Nobb and Twin Peaks were much more difficult so I don't know why he was cryin'. It's not like he can't keep up...most of the time. Anyway, it was nice to get up on a trail again. It had been a little more than two weeks since we were all together. The evening air was a little crisp and much more comfortable than expected. This time of year is great for running trails. 

Sam, Jake, Steve with 1/2 mile to go.

Walk the rest of the way? Forget that!

Dude, what did you eat before we started running?

We had planned on running Mt. Nebo on Labor Day but were unable to. We hope to get a few more peaks bagged before the weather gets too bad. Nebo, Deseret, or a full Twin summit. It was also nice to see Mt. Olympus from the north. It sure was a beautiful view. On the way down Jake seemed to fly ahead, taking a good lead, until he almost got eaten by a dog twice his size. Luckily, he was able to hide behind a tree for a little while. We celebrated with a visit to Godfather's Pizza for all-you-can-eat, which now closes at 8:00 pm. We just missed it by about 20 mins. but the manager was nice enough to let us scarf down the rest of the pizza anyway, and even gave us a dollar discount.

How does an Orange Trail Monkey run?

One might wonder... what are they doing? But the real question is, where did Sam go? Did he fall down the cliff, and Jake was looking for him? Or, was Steve trying to run away from him?

It's a rare event to catch an OTM running formation in slow-motion.

Stalking a Huff in the wild.

Spartan Beast - Monkey Style

Even though this race was a couple of months back (6/30/2012), I thought it was appropriate to throw into the OTM blog.  Thanks to my bro SuperflyChris for loaning me the GoPro, and thanks to my bro Nate for keeping me going in the mud.   We finished in 2:45, and it was quite possibly the funnest run I've ever done.  There was mud in places it shouldn't be.  One of my friends that ran this race was sitting in church the next day and someone asked why she had dried mud on her elbow.  Yeah, it was that dirty.  But a fun kind of dirty.  I'm already signed up for next year, and can't wait to get all muddy again.

 

 

Playing in the Mud

Summer Trail Series VI - Partial Credit for Twin Peaks

After a few painful treks with a couple Orange Trail Monkeys (OTMs), I suppose I have now become a quasi-official member of the group, as I have been asked to file the report on the latest climb in the summer trail series.  And it would be fitting that I have been asked to report on a climb in which we did not reach the summit.  (i.e. expectations for Jake's reports and climbs should be fairly low.)


Bridge Over the River. Why?

We started our day fairly early, leaving the trailhead just after 5:00 AM, our goal being to make it as far up Twin Peaks as possible before having to turn back around to make it back down in the valley in time for work.  Twin Peaks is the highest mountain on the Little Cottonwood Canyon ridge (11,489'), and it is named Twin Peaks because the peak itself is made up of two similarly shaped summits situated on the same mountain top.  It was still fairly dark when we started, so Headlamp Huff led the way.  Slowly but surely we made our way up the mountain.  And then, there was a first.  Sam got tired....And had to slow down.....And had to sit down.  Never before has this happened, I'm told.  But here's proof:


The Thinker

Obviously something wasn't right.  I'd spent most of the other runs with the OTMs as the caboose, just hoping to not get too far behind, or to at least keep within shouting distance of one of them.  And so to have Sam pulling up lame just wasn't right.  Sam then confessed to having had donated blood the day before, noble generosity to benefit your fellow man Karmic contribution blah blah blah.  I'm no Doctor, but I'm going to theorize donating blood before trail runs at 9,000 feet above sea level may have a small effect on one's endurance.  So we left him.  Every man for himself, isn't that what they say?  Amen.



First Light

Soon there was enough light to turn off the headlamps, and then Steve just about ran into a big, big fella on the trail.  Another trail, another moose, only this one was about twice the size of the one we ran into on Gobbler's Knob, and Steve was close enough to touch this one before we realized we almost ran into it.  We allowed this bullwinkle time to move off the path, and that's when Sam caught up...You can't keep that man down for long, and he powered through the blood-donating fatigue the rest of the day.  All for one!  One for all!  As long as you can keep up!

After working our way a bit higher up the mountain, the trail became less defined.  This was the first time any of us had been on this route, and so our limited knowledge of the trail came from various summitposts and hiking blogs, and so we approximated what the course to the top would be.  One would think that it would be easy to make your way to the top of a mountain that was right in front of you.  Alas, one would be wrong.  And so went our climb.  There were some vague directions on the easier way to the top, take your first left, then right, then stay right, then stay left...We followed what cairns we could see but ended up taking "The Robinson Variation" of the trail.  Robinson Variation sounds like it should be some lifesaving procedure, or a wrestling hold, or maybe even a dance move, not a trail route.  In this case, however, the Robinson Variation was simply an unmarked scramble up a scree face, in which no one's lives needed to be saved, no grappling moves took place, and there certainly was no dancing.

A Gift Found On The Trail

There was on extremely pleasant bonus from taking the Robinson Variation:  Wild Raspberries!  Quite a few of them....All over the mountain!  At the lower elevations they were relatively small berries, but in other places we scored some pretty big ones.  Little pockets of juicy, sweet, sweet joy that also leave you with tiny seedlings to pick at in your teeth for a few climbing steps.  We spent a while grabbing handfuls of berries, and then continued our march up the mountain.


As we continued climbing up the scree portion of The Robertson Variation, something very important came up.  We'd heard this word "Scree" many times in different conversations with other climbers/trail runners, seen the word "scree" on some climbing reports, and even used the word "scree" to describe some of our own trails (http://orangetrailmonkeys.blogspot.com/2012/08/quest-for-kings-2012.html).  Anyway, Steve had actually looked up the word "scree" in the dictionary, and essentially we've guessed right and have been using the word correctly.  Scree means: an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff, aka Talus. And scree looks much like the photos of scree from the Quest For King's 2012 blog post that I've listed here.  (See more photos of scree here.)


A Huff Sighting...Feeding on Berries in the Scree

As we made our way further up the scree slope, we realized that time would not permit us to make it to the summit, and that we'd need to turn around soon in order to make it back to the base camp in time to get to work on time.  Steve made it much further up the mountain than the blood donor and I.  But we did have a tremendous view and were able to enjoy the sunrise on the trail.

Here comes the Sam

Tres Hombres, with some climbing still to do.

We made good time on the descent, and even got airborne a few times, and there's pictures to prove it.  We will be back in the future to conquer this peak.  Both of them.

White Men Can Jump

The trail, there and back again.  And we will be back again in order to get fully there.

Happy Birthday to Me

As is becomming an annual tradition, I made another summit of Mount Olympus to celebrate my birthday.  This year, Sam's schedule allowed him to make one last summer summit with me before school starts.  This makes my fourth summit of Olympus this year and Sam's third.  We once again attempted to break the 90 minute mark to the summit, but still fell just a little short.  Perhaps if we had had a few more days to rest from our Friday hike up Twin Peaks Robinson Variation we could have made it, but since when are we the kind to take a few days rest?



Summit Photo - Looking South



Summit time for Steve:  1:38:22, which was 4 seconds faster than my July summit, and my third best time.
Summit time for Sam:  1:41:22, which is a new PR for Sam.

Steve's Splits
1st creek bed:  34:29
1st to 2nd creek bed split: 18:47
Staircase to saddle split:  31:27
600' saddle to summit split:  13:37

 

The area between the 2nd creek bed and the saddle are what we affectionatly call "The endless staircase."

Quest for Kings 2012

This was Round 2 of the Quest for King's Marathon and our third time summitting King's Peak in the past four years. It was definitely the highlight of our summer and running season. We beat our first time from four years ago by six hours, and beat our last year's time by more than an hour. Our training leading up to this race was much more intense than the previous year, especially on Steve's part. 

As we set up camp the night before we found some other people who were planning on walking King's. They had no idea that a group of runners were going to be on the trail with them. Coincidentally, at the summit we found yet another group of people who walked it all in one day who had started at 3:00 a.m. It was cool to see a lot of people doing it, whether they were part of Quest for King's or not. It was also fun to meet up with the other runners and share stories around the campfire. We all had a good laugh at many of the stories, especially the ones that involved pooping in the woods.

Here's a view of the course, with the trailhead in the bottom of the map.

Henry's Fork Trailhead has an elevation of 9,430'.

A view of the course from the other angle with King's Peak on the bottom right.

King's has an elevation of 13,528'.

We started at 6:00 a.m. running much more consistently than last year and felt really good about our progress up to the Elkhorn Bridge and Dollar Lake. We maintained a steady pace of about 12 min. miles for the first 7.5 miles. 

Jake was the Flash. About 3 miles in.

Steve, shortly after crossing the Elkhorn Bridge. About 6 miles in.

Sam, near Dollar Lake. About 7.5 miles in. Look closely for Jake in the background.

After passing Dollar Lake it's about 3 miles to the top of Gunsight Pass, which has an elevation of 11,888'. We call this part The Steps of Gunsight because it gains elevation quicker than the previous 7 miles. At this point we all had to break from running and walk a bit. We had hoped to run all the way to the top of Gunsight, however, we were making good time so a little walking wouldn't hurt. Our time at the top: 2:24:32.

Gunsight Pass. Sam in the foreground and if you look closely you can see Steve in the background.

After going up Gunsight Pass it's about 2 miles until you reach Anderson Pass. We take the common shortcut of scrambling up a steep cliff of rock scree. There's actually a fairly decent trail leading up through the rocks and without the snowdrift from last year, we made good time. After this point it is mostly bolder-hopping the rest of the way.

Jake and Steve coming up over the steep scree. Gunsight to the left.

I tend to be very nimble on my feet while traversing the boulder fields and if you look closely in the photo above you can see me taking the lead. Steve had maintained the lead until this point. You can also see Anderson Pass on the Left side. Anderson has an elevation of 12,700'. I must have been in much better shape this year because the last mile climb from Anderson to the top of King's seemed much easier. Last year I remember taking two steps and wheezing for a few seconds before taking another step. I thought Steve might pass me at this point but I maintained the lead and was the first to summit.

Jake, taking his last steps to the summit.

Steve, taking his last steps to the summit.

Jake, Steve, Sam on King's summit.

Sam's summit time: 3:41:52

Jake's summit time: 3:46:57

Steve's summit time: 3:48:31

Last year, Steve was first to summit right at four hours. I followed ten minutes later and Brian another ten minutes later. This year we summitted much closer together and broke the four hour barrier. Another thing we decided to change from last year was how much time we spent on the top. We were close to an hour on the top last year, which sure, was a nice break, but a waste of valuable time. So, we snapped the photo shortly after all of us arrived and I took off. Steve and Jake followed just a few minutes later. As I descended I started to see many of the runners coming up from Anderson. It was nice to exchange encouraging words as we passed each other. I felt really good as I ran the boulder fields of Anderson and started the decent to Gunsight. Just before starting down Gunsight I looked up and saw Steve and Jake starting the decent of scree cliff. That was the last I saw of them until the end. This year I ran straight down the gully instead of taking the long switchback. I know it saved me a lot of time. 

I started running on the trail at a slow pace because my legs felt a little wobbly. After a few miles I regained my strength and sped up a little. This point of the race is always rather fun and exciting. The hard parts are over, now we just have to make it back as quickly as we can without letting the bowling ball sized rocks jump up and trip us. It's also fun to pass the many people on the trail. We always get some funny looks and comments from backpackers.

After crossing the Elkhorn Bridge there's about 6 miles left to the trailhead. This year it was an annoying game of dodge the horses. I've never seen so many horses on a trail before. The people riding the horses were not very cooperative in letting me pass them. But eventually, I got by all the horses and was feeling pretty good when I hit the rock slide, which marks about 3 miles from the trailhead. I tried to imagine a regular routine of three miles and pushed my pace a little. It was hard. With every step my body seemed to say, "whoa there, just slow down and walk for a minute" but I pushed through the pain.

At about the last mile a runner came up behind me. I talked with him for a moment and gave him room to pass me, but he stated that he was not in a hurry and was content to finish it out at my pace. So, I felt inclined to push the pace a little more and finish strong. Jake got stuck behind the horses or he may have broke seven hours. Steve decided not to eat anything and was running low on energy, but still did awesome.

Sam's finishing time: 6:46:26. An hour and thirty-six minutes faster than last year.

Jake's finishing time: 7:07:00. Way to go Jake! It was his first real trail run, ever.

Steve's finishing time: 7:09:00. An hour and twenty-three minutes faster than last year.