Brighton Marathon Loop

Saturday 8/20/11, Brighton Marathon loop with Jason Berry.

Jason picked me up at 4:15am and we drove up to Brighton, starting out for the first 60-90 minutes or so with our headlamps.  This course is run as an informal race in July but our goal today was just to accumulate some more miles and vertical before beginning the taper for the Wasatch 100 in 3 short weeks.  The loop course initially heads up on Great Western but quickly veers off at Dog Lake to climb first up to Snake Creek Pass then over the rocky top of Clayton Peak (we were greeted here with glimmers of the sunrise).  From Clayton you make a slow, bony descent to Guardsman's pass and then traverse the rolling single track along the Crest trail to Mill D which you descend down to eventually cross the road at Jordan Pines.  (We has stashed a couple gallons of water here).  The route then climbs up Day's Fork to the top of the ridge, traversing across to Twin Lakes Pass and then dropping back down to finish at Brighton.  25 miles, 6,200 vert by my Suunto t6c.  5:12 total time with some time spent early on doing some route finding in the dark.

Felt strong and steady all morning, although not particularly spritely given the approx. 45,000 ft cumulative vertical and 34 hours of running (what I really mean by this term is "running") over the last 2 weeks.

Taking the scamble-route up to the top of Day's Fork

Glad we weren't going down this slope...

Jason topping out.

Beautiful descent back to Brighton from Twin Lakes.

Wildflowers in full force.

On top of Clayton Peak, still pretty dark.

Doggies!