Missionary Run

Jeni and I have been covering for one another with the new addition in the household, and both of us have been able to have a pretty effective and fun exercise routine.  When Friday came around it was Jeni's rest day, and I weighed driving to Cortez to ride Phil's World or doing a big run in town.  

The run won out, and it turned out to be quite epic.  

I had recently wanted to run up to the top of Missionary Ridge from my house, and this side of the ridge looked clear enough.  So I took off down the street and descended Bread Express to Florida Road and ran that out to the Pioneer Trail.

 Pioneer was a great shape and quite a few people have been on it recently.  From here it was onto Silver Ridge Road, FR 071 right into the USFS land.  Once past the gate the normally closed road had a semi-groomed snow path - someone took an ATV and dragged a snow rake behind or it looked like it at least.  This made the running really easy as I did not punch through the snow, and there were some other runners up there as well.  From there, I took the veer off to Missionary Ridge Trail, which had a nice path cut in from snowshoes and hikers.

 When I got to Haflin Creek Trail, it was clear that no one yet had taken the upper part of the trail.  However, I knew that people hiked from the bottom, so eventully I would find a beaten path.  

 The trail descends about 2500-ft vertical and it is usually full of dead fall from the Missionary Ridge Fire.  There was a lot of snow post holing at first, which was not bad as it was only upper calf deep.  However, I was running in knickers with calves exposed so it stung.  The dead fall was pretty bad so I ran on logs, climbed over them where possible, etc.

 Haflin was much longer than I remembered, or at least the post holing and tree climbing slowed things down.  The middle part was deep in the canyon and out of the sun so it had a lot of snow and was a bit cool.  Eventually I made it back into the warm sun, albeit at near sunset.  The red earth section of this trail is so pretty.

 This photo shows the contrast of sunny side vs. shady side.

From here I had to run back to town on CR 250 and then up North College.  The sunlight disappeared and fortunately the full moon popped out to guide me home.  I started this one a tad too late, but the adventure turned out to be worth it.  The running loop ended up being a nice 20-mile, 3600-ft of climbing route.  Jeni cooked some awesome pizza and along with some New Belgium beer this capped a nice day.

The dry winter has yielded some amazing adventures right out the front door.  We were in the 50s all week with nothing but sunshine.  Lets hope though we get some moisture sometime, because the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire was the result of a very dry winter.