As usual, when we decided to do this run, I believe Juns words were something to the effect of "every step of this is runnable...". I 'm pretty sure he must have been referring to the summertime, for today that was certainly not the case. We started of in the shadows of the mountains as the sun was rising, and worked our way on the Draper BST over to Corner Canyon. The trail was fairly well traveled, and while the powdery snow was annoying (like running in sand) it wasn't too bad. When we got up to the Ghost falls trail turn off the tracks we had been following went down that trail, and not up further where we were heading. About 100 yards up, though, we could see some tracks appearing in the snow and after some debate decided to hike up to them and hope they were good. Well they were cross country ski tracks and they weren't good, but we continued to follow them anyway. At this point there was no hope of running, so we just hiked for the next few miles. Finally made it to the road by SunCrest and headed towards View Benchmark. Were able to run a good part of that trail, again only hiking the parts where we were breaking through the snow. Summited at just over 9 miles. We headed back down after a brief break with no real idea where we were headed - we knew what trail we wanted to get to, just weren't quite sure how to get there. We found a road/trail they were building off a neighborhood and it led us right down to a trail that would take us down. We were following the trail of 1 or 2 snowshoers, and Craigs skinny butt was able to float on top of the tracks, so he could pretty much run the whole thing. I, on the other hand, kept breaking through to knee deep snow anytime I tried to run, so I just tried to hike fast to keep up. Some parts were quite fun though, as you plow down a hill in the deep snow. We made it back to the road a few miles south of the Draper Temple, and decided to stick with the road until we could hit the Coyote something or other trailhead. It was nice to be back on a well traveled, albeit mostly still snowy trail. Back on the BST Craig started to pull ahead as my energy was certainly starting to go down. It was fun as we passed the 16 mile mark to know that every step I took was further than I had ever run. Craig made the mistake of telling me he was going to walk the big hill that hits with about 2 miles to go, because once he said that I knew I had to try and run it! :) He had a decent lead on me, but I was able to get fairly close on this hill as I slowly ran it. When I got to the top, however, Craig was already at the bottom and headed back out on the flat. Those last couple of miles were killer - mostly because the snow offered no grip, and just slid around everywhere - literally sucking the energy straight from your legs. I was able to run (very slowly) the remaining climbs. I could see Craig finishing as I had about a half mile to go. This was a brutal, but super fun run, with at least 5 miles of deep snow hiking that we had expected to be running. While I felt plenty tired and worked, my legs felt good with no pain. 18.67 - 3500 ft - 3:52:52
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