It's always good to test out equipment you are going to use in a race. Even if I'm tired, it's mind over matter, right? I had just done Mt. Timpanogos the day before, but I wanted to get a little time on the trails at night, so Karen and I did Grandeur Peak as the sun was setting. We brought our dogs Q and Spot for some entertainment, and to scare away anything bigger than we were.
Grandeur is a steep and rocky little trail about 7 miles long with a couple thousand feet of vert. We got some nice views of the fall colors on the trees and then darkness fell quickly. We could see the trail for quite a while still, but the days are getting shorter and by 8 is was totally dark.
I really wanted to push the quit button about halfway up, as my legs and brain were tired and wanted to go to sleep, but I knew the views from the top looking at the valley would be nice. Plus the whole reason why I was doing this was to trail myself for a 24 hour race in a couple of weeks. If I couldn't do 2 hikes in 2 days then I was pathetic indeed!
The weather was perfect, the last nice warm night before a cool, windy, wet weather front came in. We hiked up in a Tshirt, and I tested out a new pack that I would use for the big race. It's a Nathan 12L TrailMix if anyone is curious.
The views were spectacular and the dogs were really well behaved. They stuck to us like glue for the most part, when the sun went down. After the first few minutes on the trail, we never saw another soul, and it was very dark and very quiet on the descent. Our main goal was to not stumble on a rock in the dark...even with two lights, the shadows were deceiving. I sort of but not quite twisted my ankle, but don't worry, it's already feeling better so nothing horrible.
The round trip took us about 3 1/2 hours, and Spot was really to go to bed when we got down about 10:30 pm. I was headed to sleep for my first night in an Altitude tent, (more on that in a future post), and hoped being quite tired would help me fall asleep in it.
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