Dirt!

I found some and it wasn't muddy or covered in ice and snow. This last weekend the family packed the car and headed down south for Zion. Leading up to the weekend I didn't have a lot of time to plan a run so I looked on Utah Mountain Biking for some ideas. The other factor I had to consider was that it was a family trip and I didn't want my run plan to dominate our time. That pretty much eliminated running in Zion National Park and Gooseberry Mesa, my 1st and 2nd choices, since we were staying in Hurricane. That left a couple of options that were close to town, the JEM, Hurricane Rim, and Gould trails.

Since I would be starting in the dark I decided to start at the Hurricane Rim trailhead and run up the road 4 miles to the JEM trailhead. From that point on I could complete a loop, with a short out and back on the far end on DIRT utilizing the JEM and Hurricane Rim trails for 21 miles of sweet singletrack. In hindsight I should have included the Gould trail but I had no idea how well the trails would be marked. Turns out the mountain bikers down there have done an impeccable job of building and marking an excellent set of trails.

At any rate, I ended up getting in 21 miles in a little over 3 hours. The road section pretty much sucked but it only lasted 35 minutes or so before I was on true singletrack.

The family made sure to give me the full workout by hiking Angel's Landing and the Upper Emerald Pool, which was completely frozen, good times.