Snowshoe Hike in New Snow

Saturday Jan 21, 2017

It snowed last night, and my plan was to head up American Fork Canyon to Tibble Fork Reservoir and do some longer hill repeats. The road was unplowed and if not for the construction trucks heading up and down for the dam repair project, there wouldn't even be a path. Fortunately I managed to get my SUV up to the lake parking and took off up the trail.

Even snowmobiles hadn't made it up yet in any great numbers so the trail was really loose, even in the one snowmobile track there. I kept sliding out of the track and up to my knees. No running today. So I quick switched out of my New Balance Leadville shoes and Kahtoola Microspikes and into my Salomon S-Lap X-Alp Carbon and my backpacking snowshoes. Yeah, you don't run in backpacking snowshoes.

It was "smooth" going to say the least. It was good work heading up the hill and since I was way off on getting anything on Strava [Strava for this report HERE] I just forked into Granite Flats campground to check out the path up the ridge of Box Elder Peak that I could see in previous runs up here. I really want to do that. Not today though. The path was narrow and not tracked out at all. Sank up to my knees and tipped into the creek bottom, even on snowshoes.

I ran into some 12 year old Boy Scouts hauling sleds down toward the parking lot. They were a bit miserable what with the heavy snow and all. Seriously over 2' up here. Amazing good fun digging snow caves and hauling sleds. Great to see the young ones hard at work up here.

On the way downhill I met another runner heading up in smaller, lighter, faster snowshoes. He had come up planning on running just as I had, but had a backup plan handy (snowshoes) and was going to make a 2 hour workout his new plan for the day.

In spite of the storm it was actually quite warm, around 24F. I wore my Saxx Subzero wind front boxers, Underarmour windstopper tights, TNF base layer, and Pearl Izumi hybrid softshell fleece hoodie. I got in 2.5 miles in a decent, but certainly not fast time. Overall, great fun in a beautiful setting. I got in a rather gentle workout, and over the previous 7 days nearly 20 miles.

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Trail Running in the Snow

This week on Wednesday I did 2 miles, on Thursday I did 4 miles, and the plan was to do at least 6 today, Friday, 11 October. Tonight is our G+ Hangouts-on-Air for #ELBRUSRACECHAT, that we posted pretty heavily on our FACEBOOK PAGE. We have a slew of good questions to answer, and hope to have the YouTube recording and transcripts up pretty quickly after it's done.

Yesterday for Summit County Colorado there was a "Winter Storm Warning" with as much as 20" of snow predicted. At least at the lower elevations, below 11,000' there wasn't all that much snow. Maybe 4". I decided to go out for my run this morning after Angie left for her skating lesson with Todd. I felt like Mr. Pearl Izumi, with a PI windpro hoodie, windpro tights, and Trail N2 shoes.

The lower section of Keystone Gulch Road was pretty bare, with snow only in the shadows. Some of this was quite sloppy muddy wet, and I did some sliding around. About 2 miles up it was covered entirely with snow. There were puddles of muddy slush hidden under the snow surface. The maintenance trucks for Keystone Resort left icy tracks of packed snow. Overall it was a ton of fun. At 3 miles I decided I was good for one more uphill mile, so I went up to 4 miles.

Here's a little Instagram Video I made in Vine showing the surface I was running in, and the surrounding snow-covered trees.

One of my goals today was to work hard on keeping a consistent smooth even pace, up and down. These Strava Stats show that especially on the way uphill I was pretty smooth at 15:00 pacing.

On the way down the snow felt great underfoot and I just cut loose, relatively. I did a couple of pretty fast mile splits, then for the 7th mile I took a little walking break to hydrate and catch my breath. Then I picked the pace back up for the final mile.

Running in the snow is great training for Elbrus Race. It's what you'll be running on in Russia. Eight miles is a good training distance, since the Classic Race is a little over 9 miles round trip. Four miles up and down with about 1000' of elevation gain and loss is good. Training at 9,300' and up is great.

I'm pretty stoked about how fast I did this in slippery wet and cold conditions. Of course, now I have to dry out my shoes ...