Run and Hike in the La Sal Mountains
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I recently made a trip out to Utah for my first 100 mile race, so this isn’t my typical trip report. In fact, I had stopped writing any of them for about a year, but I’m making a conscious effort to get back to doing that.
The La Sal range is not one I had been in before. It was more reminiscent of the Sierras than “Utah” (I’m comparing to the Wasatch range for example). We first visited Arches after arriving in Moab.
I was up there for a 100 mile trail race called the Ute 100. This is the first year it has been run, and the course looked beautiful. I signed up for it about a year ago. I never exactly got around to training, but I was in decent enough condition that I figured I could slog through, or at least curious enough to try.
We camped in a dusty area out in Old La Sal. The weather was unusually hot at elevation for the time of year. Here’s a view of the mountains we’d be running up into from where we camped…
There were some gorgeous trails up there, lots of aspen groves and greenery. There’s an extensive trail network out there and it makes me want to go back for some backpacking! Sigh, the world just keeps getting bigger.
Mann’s Peak was our high point of the course. We’d get up to about 12,300 ft there. It was a tough climb, but worth the views! The race director left us a little music to pump us up, haha, then he para-glided off! That’s different! This definitely ain’t your usual ultralight backpacking trip :)
All of these images were taken with my cell phone. There was just no way I was going to carry even a small camera like the RX100… gotta save those ounces! Eventually the sun went down, but before it did I snagged this shot of Monument Valley.
After running through the night, I didn’t have a lot of energy for photos the next day. This was just a super, super cool area to explore, and I was totally pumped to make it my first 100 miler! I have a full report up on my blog, with some life perspective and what not too, if anyone is interested.
http://hikeitlikeit.com/2018/the-ute-100/
After about a year, I decided I would put my blog back on the web (it’s been down, for those who never knew of it’s existence to begin with) and removed all of the gear reviews. It’s just trip reports now, and that’s what I’m going to stick with moving forward, as well as getting back to the mountains more. I miss them.
Thanks for reading!
Jacob.
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