"A nice 6 or 7 miler..." - Thats how Jun described our planned run before we started. I had run most of what we were going to do, so I was familiar, but it was the second half that I wasn't too sure about. We started at the flight park in Draper, and hit the BST heading north along the base of the hillside. That trail is a really nice, relatively flat trail with some rollers before it picks up a little vert as it hits the saddle at the mouth of the canyon. We were a little surprised to see the trail end into a massive pile of dirt with construction equipment scattered about. It looked like they were putting in a water tank. We bushwacked up the hill, skirting the construction, then ran down the other side until we hit the new trail that makes its way up towards Suncrest. This trail is a very gradual climb that snakes its way in and out of the small canyons. We had fun trying (unsuccessfully) to stay out of the mud that got worse the higher we went. Just before the trail abruptly ends, there is a little mountain bike trail that turns sharply and steeply up the hill. We carefully hiked up it to avoid slip sliding our way back down. We had anticipated having to run a short section through a neighborhood on the road, but were happy to see another switchbacked trail that headed in the direction that we wanted, and it literally dropped us out just yards from the View Benchmark trailhead, just where we wanted to be! We ran up that road, and the wind began to pick up and get even colder. We waded through some snow for a few feet as we made the turn to head up to the peak. There were some muddy sections here, we often ran right up the middle of a little stream that had formed in the road, simply because it had exposed the rocks which provided the best traction. We hit the summit and didn't spend long up there as the bitterly cold wind bit in to any exposed skin. The bushes looked really cool as they had a inch of frozen wind blown ice covering them. We bombed our way down the trail heading back, luckily not slipping in the mud. This time we crossed the snow and instead of going back the way we came, we headed further southwest towards the South Mountain ridgeline. A couple of small climbs here and then we dropped off this crazy steep and winding trail, dubbed "the Wild Mouse" with all of its steep, sharp turns. More rollers and then we came to a massively steep climb to the South Mountain summit that we hiked up. As I looked up the hill I literally felt like I was walking up a wall! Got to the summit to be greeted with a steep dropoff, followed by a few more steep inclines preceding the steep decent down the other side. Then it was just a lot of steep downhill - geez how many times have I said steep? These are the kind of downhills that are just really hard to run down because you'll either go way to fast and eat it, or you'll go to slow or pound your knees to hard keeping yourself slow. Either way it was fun. :) Speaking of eating it, on one of the flat sections between drop offs, I toed a rock which sent me forward - normally not a big deal, but when I quickly brought my leg forward to catch myself, it cramped up so I ended up with one knee and one hand on the ground as I quickly kept going. So, still not a big deal. Gotta have a little blood every now and then. We were now above the gravel pit area and I knew from the map that we were supposed to just run this ridgeline all the way down to the end, and then run back to the park, but then Craig made a sharp switchback like turn down the hill, and then went straight down! The dirt was soft, so it was actually quite fun bounding down this super steep hill to the road. This dropped us just inside a "Construction Zone" gate, so I figured that's why Craig took us down early. Had a nice jog back to the car on a pretty flat section of dirt, my legs had kind of forgotten what that felt like. It was a brutally fun run, made even more so by the bitter cold winds and snow flurries that should NOT be happening this time of year...We'll just hope it gets better, it usually does. :)
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