June 15, 2010

Grandeur Peak (8299')



With the Colorado 14ers trip and John Muir Trail closer on the calendar than we realize most of the time, and the front range of the Wasatch only minutes away, Andrea and I are trying to tag some peaks on weekday evenings. Run in the morning, hike in the evenings... great way to keep the aerobic engine charged up, and work those muscles whose job is to take care of the vertical gain.

Grandeur Peak is one of the most notable peaks seen from Salt Lake (you can see it from almost everywhere in the city, including our condo), sitting at western end of the ridge between Parley's Canyon and Millcreek Canyon. From the trailhead at Church Fork, its an easy jaunt of 2340 feet over 3 miles (one-way) to the top. That's a little too easy, so we decided to meet at the free parking below the Millcreek toll station and run up to the trailhead, adding about 1000' and 3 miles of running. Rather than drive up and meet Andrea, I just ran up to our meeting spot, adding another 4 miles and 700'. Now we're talking... 10 miles and 4000 feet to the top.

Andrea and I met just below the toll station at 4:45 and got rolling... ran up to the trailhead, then did a combo of running and hiking up to the summit and back (about 1:45 roundtrip), then ran back down Millcreek canyon to the car. Fun little afternoon... 16 miles and 4000 vert for me, 12 miles and 3300 vert for Andrea. On top of an 11.5 mile run in the morning... that's the kind of volume I'm talking about!


Up near the summit


Andrea and I with the Wildcat Ridge behind us


Wildcat Ridge


Summit panoramic


Salt Lake City 4000' down below


My trail runner girlfriend way ahead of me on the descent


Running back down Millcreek Canyon

4 comments:

  1. Wow! You're 27.5 mile weekday surpasses what I've run in the past two months. Nasty! I'm loving the new blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks bro! I can't stay away from webmastering from too long. This will be a fun blog. Gotta log those 20-30 mile days right now... we're planning a 220+ mile hike through the California Sierra Nevadas at the end of July, which is gonna be tough.

    ReplyDelete
  3. your post inspired me to run this today(and hike it yesturday with my wife), and i presume from the pictures you started at the bottom of millcreek canyon which was what i did. not a bad run at all on a warm january day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a pretty nice trail. What time were you running it? This morning on our run we saw two headlights making it up to the peak and were trying to guess who it would be!

    ReplyDelete