Miller Peak

I survived the Zane Grey 50 mile race outside of Payson in late April - just barely. It took me over 14 hours to get the finish line about 3.5 hours slower than I was on this course 10 years ago. Now I am training for another 50 Miler coming up on May 17 in Los Alamos, NM. Should be a great course and I am looking forward to meeting my friends from Carson City NV for the race. I don't think I will go out fast from the start on this one - the trails might be much better than Zane Grey but the climbs and descents are longer and steeper.

I went up Miller Peak Friday afternoon - gets in 4000+ feet of climbing in a little over 6 miles. The aspen are greening up - there is a great section of trail that runs through the aspen. I decided to take illegal immigrant route for the descent. This route is more direct but being an immigrant route I knew there would be some brush and very steep sections involved. It was definitely steep but the route was very well used - even the trunks of the aspens were discolored from people grabbing on to keep from sliding down the hill. There was also a lot of trash - one pile just a 150 feet below the summit of Miller Peak - in an aspen grove and several others along the ridge line on the way down. I don't think I will get to these piles - out of site out of mind. It would be a tough haul to get the trash off the mountain.

Here is some of the trash - just below the summit is the pile seen on the right and further down is this pile on the left. About 2 months ago when I was up on the summit - I saw a few immigrants just below the summit. It is a long tough climb up Miller Peak from the south. I am guessing that the route is popular because the Forest Service land extends all the way to the highway within Hunter Canyon whereas some of the other canyons have a number of homes.

Below is a pic of the descent - note the aspens used as handholds for the steep descent. The Google Earth image shows the route up Miller Canyon and then back down the ridge line. The open space near the start is the Beatty property which has an apple orchard and at least one guest cabin - I would love to have this kind of running out of my back door. I guess I cannot complain too much about a 20 minute drive to the trail head.

Hauling Bags

I ran up Ramsey Canyon about 3 miles to get a trash bag I left during the clean-up weekend. I found that I can keep a decent downhill trot using two bags tethered on a branch across my shoulders - if only I could get paid for portering trash out of the mountains. My next run I was going to haul out a bag at the end of an 18 mile training run, but ran short on time. So I went back to Comfort Spring a few days later. This was an uphill haul that kicked my butt. Instead of making a short run in and out - I added extra miles by starting at Ramsey. The run in was fine but after hauling the bags 3/4 of a mile uphill I was spent and struggled on the 5 miles of downhill. It tells me that my 50 miler in two weeks should probably start out as a hike rather than a run. Between my back problems and being sick I missed about 3 weeks of training and have quickly realized I cannot pick-up where I left off.

On both of these runs I ran into illegals hiking out through Ramsey Canyon. Busy week on the trails - more trash accumulates.