Sunday, April 3, 2011

BoSho Opening Day

In the Wasatch we get a few trails that are situated at a low enough elevation and right aspect to allow running nearly all year long. One of those trails is the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

The BST, or BoSho contours along the Wasatch from Logan to Springville and while it's not continuous from beginning to end it has to be the most used trail in the Great Basin and Saturday was opening day. Two days of dry weather in the middle of the week followed by a 70 degree Saturday brought runners, hikers and bikers out in droves. I joined Greg, Peter and Jay for a stroll along one of our favorite routes on the BoSho (We plan on doing this again on April 23rd at 7am) except we decided to skip the opening southern loop around Red Butte. I finally brought the camera along to document our run, something I need to get better at this year. For those interested in stats we did about 22 miles and 5,000' vert.

Jay in "dry" fork before the sun came up

On our way up "Unkle" or Black Mountain Ridge as the sun is coming up

On top of Black Mountain Ridge looking east. Grandview Peak is just left of center, between Black Mountain and the City Creek Ridge

Peter is using his neon arm to show us where we'll be running in another ~10 miles

A bit of snow can still be found along the Black Mountain Ridge

Peter and Greg running up the trail from City Creek on the west side of the canyon

Greg, running over to the radio towers amidst the dormant scrub oak

Peter demonstrating perfect form for throwing rocks at our favorite target. Hit the target and 3 mins are deducted from your time, or if you're like me you'll end up with a sore arm and 3 mins behind...

Peter leading Greg up to the North Salt Lake bench

Up above the gravel pits in North Salt Lake (L-R) Peter, Jay and Greg look out at Antelope Island on the horizon

Topping out on Meridian Peak

At the top of City Creek just before the "Drop"

Peter pointing out our location ~10 miles ago
Just before we hit the bottom of City Creek Canyon

6 comments:

Jay said...

Great run gents! Christian, thanks for the map of the route. It will be useful when for when we run this course again on the 23rd.

peter said...

While I may have been the only one to hit the target, I don't think that 3 minutes was enough to even the table at the end of the run. Frankly, I was surprised that you all hadn't gone home and showered by the time I got back to the cars. Thanks to Jay for passing the poles around, without (the poles) I might not have been able to hold on to the "first loop" climb. No more tapering during the week for me.

Anonymous said...

Peter,
Have you moved on from the Hokas?
If yes just curious why.

peter said...

I am still wearing the Hokas occaisonally. I developed an achilles tendonitis last fall while wearing the Hokas. Incidentally this was on the side that the foam collapsed during the Wasatch 100. I am also having a hard time parting with $170 for a single pair of running shoes.

peter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Thanks for getting back...your answer was the exact reason I asked.... I am currently running in some and I like them just fine but $170 fine I don't know.
Nick