Red Mountain Traverse, Snow Canyon State Park

My favorite trails are always the ones with a challenge.   The first challenge of doing this trail was figuring out if it was possible.  I troll quite a few trail map Apps, and only one of them (onXBackcountry) even showed that this was doable.    So we did it.  

Karen and Limhi had stayed with Jim and I a couple of days in St. George after our night backpacking in Kolob Canyon.   As promised, the weather was warm and nice, and we did this hike in a T-shirt and shorts.  Amazing.  

Snow Canyon State Park, NW of St. George Utah, is a great place to visit and there are plenty of trails in the main park that are shorter and more scenic than this one.    To start, we dropped a car at the Toe Trail at the southern end of the plateau overlooking Snow Canyon to the West.  Then we drove through the park and exited the north end, parking at the Snow Canyon Overlook Trail.  Plenty of people were doing this shorter option, which was a rocky trail to an overlook at the north end of Snow Canyon.  It was spectacular.   We continued on, catching a few more glimpses of the valley below us.   

The route was supposed to be 11 miles total, mostly flatish but with a very steep descent to the car down a cliff.   About 4 miles in, the trail turned into deep sand, and looked like nothing more or less than a perfectly straight sand dune by the ocean.  Except we were on top of a plateau with a few scrubby cedar trees and a lot of rabbit tracks.    

When the dune ran out, so did any semblance of trail.  Soon we were down to just one set of fresh tracks in the sand, which the guys named after a prominent Mormon pioneer.   Weird or not, the tracks kept going mostly South, so we followed them.   We were soon off the recommended GPS track as well, but the top of the plateau wasn't terribly cliffy, so it didn't really matter.    It became a game to keep following the tracks through sand, rock and scrub.   It was a beautiful, desolate place, and I'm happy I had a GPS to show our location rather than relying just on a map and compass.  It's so easy to get off course with nothing to go by.  

We meandered through winding dry washes, over slickrock, and through more dunes.   Finally the cliff down came into view, along with more tracks and an actual trail leading down.  It was really steep, but rocks rather than scree, and I didn't hate it.   We finished at the car in 5 hours and almost exactly 11 miles, which Jim called a miracle.  He claims my mileage is usually underestimated.  I have no idea why he would say that!

Kolob Canyon Winter Backpacking, Feb 17, 2022

My friends Karen and Limhi were between jobs and itching to go do something interesting.   Winter backpacking fit that bill, so we got a $5 reservation for a permit to camp on La Verkin Creek Trail down by Kolob Arch in the National Park.   It's hard to get a permit for this in the summer, but on a Thursday in the middle of winter, I'm pretty sure that we were the only group camping in the entire valley, which can hold up to about 50 people a night.   The only really screwy part is that although the reservation is done online, the Permit needed to be picked up at the main Zion HQ office before the hike, since Kolob is part of Zion.   Yeah, 2 hours of extra driving to go pick up a piece of paper that could have been emailed to us.  Your federal government at work.  Ask us privately if we actually did that.  Ha.

The weather smiled on us, literally, and it was COLD and a little windy, but otherwise not very wintery at all.  The trails were mostly dry and not snowy, with just a little mud that was frozen on our way out the next morning.   The trail starts at about 6000 feet of elevation and descends down to about 5000, so it was a nice easy trail, with some red cliffs along the side that did look like they should be part of Zion NP.   Otherwise, the trail wasn't terribly exciting, and probably not one that I would fight for to do again.  

About 2/3 of the way to our campsite (#8), we picked up a glacier-colored stream which was really beautiful.  And cold.  Keeping our feet dry meant not going beyond the side trail to Kolob Arch.  But that turned out fine since time was slipping away and the days were still short.  

We dropped our packs at #8 and headed up to the arch.  It wasn't much more than a goat track along a nice stream, heading up into towering cliffs.  The arch itself may have been the largest arch in the world, but it was thousands of feet above us and rather...underwhelming.  That's ok, this trip wasn't about the destination, but the journey.  

See that really big arch...which looks tiny cuz it's really far away

Back at our packs, we left campsite 8 and wandered back to 6.   This wouldn't have been possible in the crowded summer, but we really were the only ones down there that night.  More rule breaking, oh no!    #8 would have been a nice shady cool place in the summer, but #6 was a sunny spot right on the stream and perfect for a winter day. 

What was exciting were the mountain lion tracks we found in multiple locations around our campsite that evening.   They seemed pretty big, too.   Karen and Limhi were both awake in the early morning and say they heard what sounded like a child screaming.  Typical mountain lion sound I guess.  I'm happy enough that I slept through that!

For a one night trip our packs were rather large, but winter camping is no joke.   Karen brewed us up some apple cider drink mix with a splash of Fireball, and we added clothes as the sun and heat went out of the canyon.   Jim had insisted I bring his down sleeping pad and mummy bag, and I wasn't sad I did.    We all heated water for our Nalgene bottles to throw in our sleeping bags, and put on all our clothing to watch the stars come out.   Limhi put on some down pants that were warm if not fashionable (!) and I brought out a puffy jacket that was 3 sizes too large but who cares I was cozy.  

I may have been the only one to get a decent nights sleep, but we were all happy when the sun finally came up in the morning.   I was warm enough until I put my frozen hiking shoes on, and then I lost the battle of heat, and walked the first couple of miles with frozen extremities.   More cat tracks later, we finally hit a patch of sun, and it's amazing how fast we were removing layers.   Add some uphill trail back in, and we finished in a t-shirt.   Although we still marveled at the ice crystals coating the tiny stream as we made multiple crossings of what wasn't much more than a trickle of water.  

All in all I would say I do prefer a nice warm day to a cold night.

Book Review: Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson

I read a lot of books.  I don't usually review them.  Perhaps partly because many are not worthy of a review, but mostly I am not in the business of reviewing books.  Plus this is an ultrarunning blog, so reviewing a random book on world history wouldn't be appropriate.   So... it's a small window, and this book is definitely worth a mention.  

https://www.amazon.com/Endure-Curiously-Elastic-Limits-Performance/dp/006249998X

I've followed Alex Hutchinson for a couple of years now.  He sends out a Sweat Science Digest every couple of months, which is a compilation of the articles he's written for various publications during that time.  They are short yet interesting and thought provoking articles about some form of endurance research, and they only show up occasionally, unlike those spammy companies who send you an email EVERY DANG DAY until you almost certainly Unsubscribe because it's so annoying.  Alex, thanks for not being that person.  

Endure is a book about new research about the mind's limitations of the body's ability to push your limits.  We can do more than we think we can, and yet our mind sets sharp limits on what is possible because it wants us to "not die" doing what we are doing.  Imagine that.

I happened to be reading this book in the days leading up to my 24 hour Spartan Race, and found it quite fascinating as I got ready to push my own endurance limits in strength, speed, cold, and sleep deprivation.  

Some of you may remember a time in Ultrarunning when you got weighed before and during a race.  The thinking was that if you lost too much of a percentage of your body weight, you were too dehydrated to continue.   In such cases, if you failed to make the weight, as it were, on the scale, you would have to stop and drink and eat until you brought your weight back up to an acceptable amount to continue on.   This seems like it's now longer in vogue, perhaps because of the research mentioned in this book.  

It turns out that for every molecule of glucose that is stored in your muscles waiting to be used, three molecules of water are stored with it.  This water can only be accessed if the glucose is used, meaning that as you exercise, that water is also available, and is used up in turn.  So your weight will naturally go down as these emergency water stores become accessible, yet your hydration level is independent of it.    To really understand the science you'll need to read this book, and this was just part of a chapter anyway.  

There's a lot of money and effort going into the science of pushing our boundaries.  But oddly enough, the best yet cheapest way to go faster, is just to smile and tell yourself that you are feeling great and having fun!   Yup, really!  Lol.