Just what I needed

At 6am on Saturday Peter and Greg met me at the mouth of Emigration for a trail run. I didn't care what the conditions were like I was not going to run on the road. The plan was to do a route I call short and steep, it's only 16 miles but it packs in 5000' worth of climbing. We usually start by going up the south face of Mt. Wire but we knew that it would be pretty ugly going up that way so we opted for George's hollow instead. There was a light rain as we left the parking lot and flipped on our headlamps and started climbing the frozen snow covered trail. As we made our ascent up Mt Wire the wind picked up and it started snowing ever so lightly on us. We hit the saddle before the last little climb to the top and lost the trail. It's not a big deal as it just makes a slight uphill traverse across a west facing slope then up to the summit. I decided to take a slightly lower line than Peter and Greg that ended up being a frustrating for me, funny for them. When I was about 1/4 of the way across I lost traction and started sliding down about 10'. I took a couple of steps up then slid another 10'. Pattern repeated itself until I had lost a good 40' of from where I started. The funny part was that I couldn't stop myself once I would start sliding. The snow underneath was so hard I couldn't even kick my shoes into it. Eventually I just backtracked and took the higher line, good times. We finally made the summit, snapped a pic, and downed some food before we started the descent.

(Greg and Peter on Mt Wire, Airway beacon constructed in 1942 in the background)

Next we headed over to the living room then picked our way down to the back of Red Butte gardens and over to the mouth of Red Butte canyon. Up to Mt VanCott, down to the shoreline and back to the parking lot. We decided to cut out Dry Creek since we would get 3 hours without it and we were all feeling good. What a blast! I felt rejuvenated even if the conditions weren't ideal. My only regret on this run was that I didn't use the screw shoe and the conditions couldn't have been better for them. Maybe next weekend...