On July 12 I went out for a short hike with Todd Gilles. Remember we went together for Orizaba, and then to Elbrus Race 2013 [BUY BOOK HERE]
We went up Mount Olympus, a Salt Lake City classic that I’ve done quite a few times over my life. I’ve used Strava for some of my hikes and trail runs over the past handful of years now, and for this one I would use it for tracking, but not really work too hard for a PR or anything. I set a 10K PR in Frisco Colorado in early June. I climbed Mount Rainier via the Emmons route in late June [PHOTOS HERE]. I did a slew of PR’s on Quandary just the week before, July 4 [PHOTOS HERE]. All in all I was pretty wasted and not fully recovered. We were going to just have fun.
Todd was staying with us on a trip as a figure skating coach to train my wife and others here in Utah. We took off around 5:30 and got to the trailhead off Wasatch Blvd and hit the trail around 6:30. It was still twilight and cool. We took it really slow up to near the creek crossing, then booked it up the rough section and up to the saddle. There we slowed down again for the scramble to the summit. In spite of our casual pace down low I got a handful of 2nd and 3rd best times to the saddle. Imagine if I booked it some down low too? I guess that’s next.
Todd Gilles and I did a Salt Lake City classic today. Mount Olympus. After this brief pause at the saddle we climbed the 600' class 3 scramble to the summit. I should have more pics and videos in the next few days. Posted by Seven Summits Quest on Sunday, July 12, 2015
We hung around up top for only a few minutes then returned to the saddle for our trail lunch. I had two bottles with me. The Ultimate Direction 20oz in my front pocket, and a Platypus 1 liter in the back pocket. I used the larger one to fill the smaller one, and chugged the rest. It was going to get hot soon. Then we took off downhill carefully and slowly. Todd was beat from skating and I was beat from setting a downhill PR on Quandary, knocking off nearly 30 minutes from my previous best. Downhill beats me up pretty bad so I normally don't run that fast downhill anyway. We discussed and shared tunes and stories and plans. Our big plan at the moment is a possible return to Rainier for me to get in a second summit this year with Todd. We'll see how that goes. We have a few hurdles to leap for that one. If you want to stay in the loop and possibly give us a hand, or at least cheer us on, please subscribe to our newsletter [CLICK HERE]. [gallery link="file" size="medium" columns="2" ids="1146,1147,1148,1149,1150,1151,1152,1153,1154,1155,1156,1157,1158,1159,1160,1161,1162"]