Thanksgiving and Zion Traverse

A few years ago we started a tradition of spending Thanksgiving in St. George with the Abbotts. We didn't do it last year, but we did it the two previous years before that. Sadly, this year Mom had a full sibling reunion in Florida, and couldn't be in two places at once, so she did not make it.

This year it was really warm, both here in Salt Lake, and there in St. George.

Thursday Scott, Ian, Tanner, and I rode the Zen trail. It took a long time to get going. We were getting ready to ride when I found out Scott and Ian both use Kim's shoes when they ride, we were short a pair of shoes. I took the pedals of Melissa's little bike and put them on Ian's so he would ride with normal shoes. Then we found Tanner's valve stem was leaking, so I took the stem out of Melissa's bike and put that in Tanner's bike. After that, the ride went well.

I was a little nervous watching them ride some of the drops, but no disasters occurred, and we had a fun ride.

After the ride, Kim, Rob, and I went went for a quick run in Green Valley. While running, we saw Chris Holley trying to fix a flat, which didn't look like it was going too well.

After the run, we had Thanksgiving dinner and played games.

Friday we drove out to a place called, "Sparkle Mountain" It is an old Gypsum mine out in the desert. Google maps took us on a pretty rough jeep road, which we drove in the 15 passenger van. That took a while. We even had to stop and find some hunters that had parked in the middle of the road (thus blocking it) and left to go hunt. Their vehicle was leaking oil, but they said they had fixed it already. When we got to the mine, we learned everyone else went a different way which was a much better road. Still, when we packed up to leave, we found Dusty and Leah had a flat tire!

Friday night we watched a slide show of old family photos.

Zion Traverse

Saturday Rob and I ran the Zion Traverse. Reed generously got up at 3:45 with us and dropped us off at the east entrance, so we started running right at the planned 6:00 am.

The first few hours breezed by as the sun came up and the temps warmed from about 30 F to eventually somewhere in the 60's or 70's. My bad kneed started bothering me unusually quickly despite our relaxed pace, but other than being painful, it never became a serious problem. By 20 miles, my feet and hams were sore, but this mostly only bothered me going down. Rob seemed fine the whole time, and never really complained about any problems other than a little chafing from his pack.

The first half of the run has most of the great scenery, but it was all good running and the weather was a perfect bluebird day. The second half had more sand and soft trail, which was nice on the sore limbs. The trail was crowded climbing up to Angel's Landing, but it was not a problem and the rest of the run we saw people only occasionally.

I ran with a full 80 oz in my pack, and I filled a bottle at the Angel's Landing trailhead. Reed also dropped off water for us at the Hop Valley trailhead, which was good because we were out by the time we got there. As we approached Hop Valley, we saw a car do a U-turn in the road, and Rob said, "Hey, that was my car!" Dad had driven up the road and missed us by 100 yards! It would have been fun to see him.

Rob had wanted to pace it well so that we'd manage the last climb without feeling too bad, and actually it went great. As the sun went down, temps cooled and we had a nice climb at a comfortable pace. Shortly after dark, during the climb, we ran into a couple who called out, "Hey are you Rob?"

"No, but he is."

"Oh, are you Rich? We met your family, but they left -- you are late!"

They had seen my family and dad dropping off the car. We were glad to know the car was there waiting for us to finish. We couldn't have done the run without all the logistical support.

As my longest run so far, I was really happy with how it all went, and it was great spending the day with Rob.

Funny looking selfie in the dark after 50-some miles.