Snoqualmie running

It's amazing how different trails look and how hard they are to follow (stay on) when covered in 3-4 feet of snow. There are no snow bridges in the summer!




My pacer and I went up to the pass to get some hill training in. I love to run in the snow so I figured I'd get up in it before it all melted away.
We went to Easton and started running around dawn. We ran on fire roads for a few miles then went off onto single track trail #1304.




I "led" the way.
I lost the trail after the first switchback, found it again and immediately lost it. Found it, lost it, found it, lost it, thought I found it and lost that, found the real one and then lost it for good. I decided to just go straight up for a while then, knowing I wasn't going to be able to get to my original destination, turned around and followed our tracks back and then about halfway I saw where the trail really went and took it but after a few hundred yards it looked like we were not going to be able to follow this part of the trail either so we went back to the fire road where the trail began. We were on trail #1304 for about an hour, it seemed a lot longer at the time. We took the fire road uphill and then when it split, took the steeper road. We "ran" (post holing sometimes as deep as our knees) up the fire road for what seemed like a long time before it finally dwindled down to nothing.




At that point I just pointed my feet straight up for about 1000 feet of elevation gain until we reached the ridge line at 4265 ft. We took a quick break just long enough to have a snack and take a couple pictures. It didn't take long to get chilled exposed to the wind. We started back down before I even finished my Mocha.




The trip back down was fast and so much fun. At times I was just taking the biggest possible strides just to free fall a little longer. On the way up it was 1 step up and then slide a half a step back, and it seemed like I was taking a break every 20 yards.


But with the fast pace and longer strides I ended up getting a few small bruises on my shins where they were hitting the 1 1/2" thick top layer of crusty frozen snow. Another thing that's more fun on the downhill is that I got in 3 good slides where the slope was so steep I was able to lock my legs and become a human toboggan even though I was sinking 6 to 12 inches into the snow.

Even the bunnies were sinking in the snow.

I saw mice or chipmunk, rabbit, coyote, and deer tracks but no actual animals.

We made it back to the car in just under 4 hours. I have no idea how far we went because post-holing makes the accelerometer on my foot pod useless. It said I went nearly 9 miles. I burned 2650 calories which is about equal to 2 Dumb-Ass loops (12 miles) or about 20 miles of road running.

Shawn "don't point that thing at me" Lawson.