Getting High ~ 10 Mile Trail Run

I am not usually a big trail runner.  I prefer the pavement. But my friend Jen is and I so I am glad when she invites me to go with her.  If it wasn't for her, I doubt I would do many trails.  I live right next to a mountain and so I have plenty of trails close by, but I will only run those if the season is right.

In the winter, there are mountain lions waiting to gobble me up for their din-din, and in the summer, there are rattlesnakes on the loose.  I am sure if I ever see one of those, I would die.  Not from the snake bite, but from a heart attack on the spot.  The best time to go is in the spring BEFORE the snakes and in the fall BEFORE the mountain lions.

But I do enjoy trails when I do them.  Mainly because the scenery is incredible!  

On this run we headed up to Perry Canyon and ran to the White Rock.  It is pretty much all uphill for the first four miles -a gain in elevation of 2,555 feet!  Talk about getting high! Yeah, we pretty much ran up a mountain.  Okay, we did a lot of hiking, but it was a workout.  Luckily it's winding trails and not straight up!   

 
The view is spectacular!  You can see White Rock in the distance.  We still had a long ways to go.

 Taking the Grizzly trail is 9 miles up.  We took that and then a detour over to White Rock making it a total of 10 miles.

 This homemade sign was telling us which trail to take. 
Today we didn't choose the right...
We went left.  Please don't tell the Bishop.



That's me running through some of the beautiful and breath taking scenery along the way.

 When we saw this little green box in a tree, I thought it was a Geocache box, but... N O P E!   It is a container with a little notebook inside that you can sign and write a note saying how far you are going after this spot.  It was cool!  You can leave treats in it or take any treats left inside.  We wrote in it too, (click or tap) but my hand was frozen and so my writing looks like a robot.  Runners and bikers are pretty decent people and so we would have eaten the treats, but sadly there were no treats!  =(  Let me repeat.  No. Treats.  No gum.  No candy.  No chocolate!  So we decided to make the world a better place and leave some Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids inside for the next crazy person that goes up that far.  Who knows...it might be us!  I was surprised there were not that many signatures in it.  That shouldn't have surprised me because not many people are crazy enough to go up that far.  Jen's was in there several times.  I guess someone left it there to motivate those that do go that far, to keep going! 

Although, the scenery does that on it's own! 

 

The most amazing thing of it all is that the every single one of the trails were done by one man.  Stan the man to be exact.  I was in awe at the thought that one man could make all these trails by himself!  It has taken him years.  He is now about 85 and is still making trails in other places.  It is just baffling to me.  And he did all with only hand tools.  The story is that he would ride his bike with his tools attached to it up to a point and work on the trail.  That is almost as inspiring, if not more so, than the beautiful scenery. Stan is the man for sure.  Wow!

The view is just unbelievable.  And no, I am not talking about my backside.  I wish...  The pictures really do not do it justice!
 

 There's our white rock!  It looks pretty small from this shot, but it was enormous!  There's Willard Bay.  If you look REALLY close, you can see the fish jumping. Or not.

 

 Getting closer!

Inside White Rock.  It was about 20 times this size....or MORE!  We had to ask Sasquatch to take this photo for us.  He was very accommodating.

Jen standing off to the side on some of the other rocks.  I think she is saluting to the sun.  Or to that rock in front of her.

Wonder woman biffs it coming down the trail!  Yep, I tripped on a mini tree stump and went flying!  Luckily I grabbed onto a tree branch as I was sailing through the air that helped break my fall!  Nope, that is not a tan line.  It's a dirt line.  Or a bruise line.  I was filthy from my toes to my knees.  The rest of me was pretty clean.  Especially my breath, after eating 2 million bugs! 

This is why I am not a huge trail runner!  Even though it's just "the skin" shed off some really BIG snake, I knew that he was lurking somewhere near.

Running through another awesome looking place.  This looked like a wheat field. 

The whole experience was great.  And I didn't trip again the entire rest of the run!  Go me!