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trail run with camera
Gorgeous, gorgeous day (my apologies to folks in the Northeast shoveling out and cleaning up), so I decided to take the camera along on a trail run. Wanna come along?
I started up the trail behind my house which joins with the Nature Trail; I went up one switchback and then took this picture:
I ran up the rest of the switchbacks up the Ft. Lewis Mesa, then turned right on the Rim Trail. It goes along the edge of the mesa, then dips down to cross the college access road and back up to a second mesa, where it joins a doubletrack, probably an old road (no longer open to vehicles). Great views of the dry foothills to the southwest of town.
I went around this mesa on the west side, then veered off on a side trail to cross Goeglein Gulch Road and hit the Zipline Trail. At the intersection with Powerline Trail (which I did not take) I saw a small tarantula; out of respect for people who are all OMG SPIDER AIE I won't inline it, but here he is, next to my Garmin for scale. (For those of you who don't use Garmins, it's about 2x2 inches - the rubber slider on the strap is almost exactly an inch across. He's a pretty small tarantula.)
Zipline feeds into Horse Gulch, which is my trail-running and mountain-biking stomping ground. The easiest trail is called the Meadow Loop and is about 2.2 miles long. Here's a bit of it:
The trail goes up and off to the left, then turns right to cross in front of the hill before looping back. After running the Meadow Loop, I returned to Zipline, crossed Goeglein Gulch Road again, and back up the side of the mesa:
At the top of the mesa I turned right onto the continuation of the trail I had taken out (that is, this is where I stopped retracing my steps, so my route would become a sort of barbell-shape) and continued around the mesa, circling a construction site (new soccer fields, apparently) and crossing a couple of roads as I ran between Fort Lewis College and the golf course where I sometimes do a little xc skiing for cross-training. One more road to cross and I'm back on the Rim Trail, but north of the section I ran at the beginning of this route:
That symmetric snow-capped peak is called Silver Mountain (I've climbed it a couple of times, most recently two years ago) and here is a nice telephoto close-up in which it seems to hover over Durango:
And then I continued along the rim to where I originally came up from my house, and went back down and home again, home again. A beautiful day!
I started up the trail behind my house which joins with the Nature Trail; I went up one switchback and then took this picture:
I ran up the rest of the switchbacks up the Ft. Lewis Mesa, then turned right on the Rim Trail. It goes along the edge of the mesa, then dips down to cross the college access road and back up to a second mesa, where it joins a doubletrack, probably an old road (no longer open to vehicles). Great views of the dry foothills to the southwest of town.
I went around this mesa on the west side, then veered off on a side trail to cross Goeglein Gulch Road and hit the Zipline Trail. At the intersection with Powerline Trail (which I did not take) I saw a small tarantula; out of respect for people who are all OMG SPIDER AIE I won't inline it, but here he is, next to my Garmin for scale. (For those of you who don't use Garmins, it's about 2x2 inches - the rubber slider on the strap is almost exactly an inch across. He's a pretty small tarantula.)
Zipline feeds into Horse Gulch, which is my trail-running and mountain-biking stomping ground. The easiest trail is called the Meadow Loop and is about 2.2 miles long. Here's a bit of it:
The trail goes up and off to the left, then turns right to cross in front of the hill before looping back. After running the Meadow Loop, I returned to Zipline, crossed Goeglein Gulch Road again, and back up the side of the mesa:
At the top of the mesa I turned right onto the continuation of the trail I had taken out (that is, this is where I stopped retracing my steps, so my route would become a sort of barbell-shape) and continued around the mesa, circling a construction site (new soccer fields, apparently) and crossing a couple of roads as I ran between Fort Lewis College and the golf course where I sometimes do a little xc skiing for cross-training. One more road to cross and I'm back on the Rim Trail, but north of the section I ran at the beginning of this route:
That symmetric snow-capped peak is called Silver Mountain (I've climbed it a couple of times, most recently two years ago) and here is a nice telephoto close-up in which it seems to hover over Durango:
And then I continued along the rim to where I originally came up from my house, and went back down and home again, home again. A beautiful day!
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Count me as one one of those (infinitely) grateful that you linked to the omg scary spider pic instead of putting it up mid-post. You are, indeed, a good person. *beams in your general direction*
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It's funny, I don't care for omg scary spiders, but tarantulas are different for me. They are almost just eight-legged animals, rather than spiders. I guess because they are furry, and they move slowly and non-threateningly. I mean, not exactly cute and aww, but I don't freak out the way I do with actual spiders.
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I recognize parts of that. Beautiful, as always! What camera is that? The zoom was nice.
Looks like you had a great run. What is your next event?
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And yes, the close-in loop part is the one we ran together!
I'm running the Winter Sun 10K in Moab on December 3rd, then the Houston Marathon January 15th.
Camera
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I am looking at some of those bushes and wonder if you ever wish you had a machete!
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I do like living here. It's a fairly small city (15,000 people) which is in a valley between two hilly/mountainous areas which have a lot of public land, so it's very easy to get out on trails without a car. The big mountains, though (like Silver) require a car.
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