Running Up a Mountain

I'm in Colorado for a holiday vacation with my family and lets just say that the snow conditions are probably the worst that I can ever remember them. Clearly a far cry from the 70+ inches of base that was here last year at the same time. There is likely 4 feet less snow on the mountain and it is painfully apparent. The open groomed runs are getting a little crowded and I have had little interest in going into the trees to figure out what 20 inches of snow looks like...

So instead I have been doing a little mountain running. A couple days ago I ran from the base of the mountain up to the midpoint at the gondola house. I also went on a run to a shorter elevation. Having a little extra time and great warm weather today I decided to venture a little further up the mountain. In total I ran 7.2 miles, the first hour of which was entirely uphill.

Here is a picture of the overall course path that I took.

Here you can see the elevation change overall.

As I was on a mountain I was running in snow. Snow can be great when hard pack and tricky when soft. The soft snow felt as if I was running in sand, except there was no adjacent beach.

I paused to take a picture of the path that I took. You can see at the very top of the picture is the gondola house. That is the first peak on the elevation chart. I was also battling skiers.

The run was great, the constant climb was a great workout, and it was funny to hear all of the comments that people said on my way up the mountain. Some of my favorites were, "It is much easier to go down", "Way to make me feel bad" and "Be honest, how long has this taken you".

The fruit of the run was being able to take the gondola back down to the bottom of the mountain and enjoy a great sunset.