another 30 mile weekend

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Susan and I ran 12.5 miles on Friday in Forest Park. Our route was Leif Erikson - Alder - Wild Wood - Maple - Leif Erikson. The last 4.25 miles was on Leif and that about killed my feet, I much prefer ending our runs on the soft trails than the rocky old fire lines / forest roads. Being Friday morning there were barley any people out there, it was very peaceful. I wish I could figure out a way for us to be able to do all our long runs on Friday mornings.
Saturday John and I took off for a quick one night backpacking trip. At the last minute we chose to do Badger Creek Wilderness due to the low snow level everywhere else. I gave John 2 options: hard and not as hard, of course he picked hard (yay!). We started at the Gumjuwac trail head and climbed about 3000 feet to Lookout Mountain. We had amazing view of Hood, Jefferson. Rainier, Adams, and Mt St. Helens, but the horseflies were bugging John so we didn't stick around long. We did hit a few patches of snow but nothing that kept you from finding the trail. We continued along trail 458 for a few miles until we came upon a TON of angry bees, someone must of upset their nest. I wasn't sure we were going to be able to pass them, because it appeared they were in the middle of the trail. After carefully assessing the situation we realized they were in the V part of the switchback and not the actual trail. I put on my mosquito net mask and ran for it. After a another mile we started down hill on trail 477. We thought this was going to be an easy down hill to our camp site. Oh no we had to climb over and under quite a few trees. A few hours later we finally made it to our camp site, tired and happy.
The hike out in the morning was only 5 miles, but the first 2 miles were up hill on another unmaintained trail. So again we were climbing over and under a lot of trees. My legs are pretty scratched up from our little adventure. Once we made it to car it was 11:30 am, we were 30 minutes from Hood River and there was no question where we were going to have lunch. Double Mountain!

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