Little Cottonwood Trail

So a friend asked the other day about this trail. I had only attempted this trail once and it was closed. That was about a month after the flooding earlier this year. I was a little surprised to see this sign at the trail head indicating that the trail was still closed. Since I didn't see any damage or trail blocks, I decided to go up to see where it was actually closed. I passed several people and then I didn't feel as bad about being on a trail that was supposedly closed. On this lower part of the trail I passed to places where the trail was actually closed. It looked like they had been doing some work to fix it up a bit. One section was closed for 200-300 yards and then another section was closed for about 50-100 yards. There was no one working on the trail, and I saw others going up, so I continued up the trail. I felt bad about this and so when I reached the top (Tanner Flat Campground) I went out onto the road so that I didn't have to run on the closed trail.

That's me on the lower section of the trail.

It was actually a very nice runnable trail for most of the way.

Like I said, most of the way. This was a short section towards the top before I got to Tanner Flat.

I love the fall colors that are now very prevalent in the canyon.

This is as I was leaving Tanner Flat Campground. The trail came into the camp on one of the loops. The upper portion of the trail looked a bit newer than the rest of the trail, but it was still a well developed trail. Even though the trail was closed in a couple places, it still seems like a popular trail. I saw many mountain bike tracks and foot prints. I saw a couple of people hiking, and a couple of mountain bikes too.

I like getting pictures of me as proof that I've actually been somewhere. This is where I came off the trail and down the road. I drove this portion to measure how far it was and my car said 4.1 miles down the road. I'm guessing it was a little more, like 4.5, on the trail, I'm not really sure, but that seems about right.

I thought that this run on the road down the canyon would prepare me a bit for the Halloween Half marathon that comes down Provo Canyon. My pace coming down was about 7:20, my pace going up was about 11:30 if it was only 4.5 miles. I guess that is about right.

I like the view down the canyon into the Salt Lake Valley.

That was a pretty good run overall. I won't be back thought until they fix that trail. It seems like they are taking there time getting it fixed up. It seems like it would be a good trail for snowshoeing in the winter. They just need to get it fixed. I wonder if the trail continues up the canyon on the other side of Tanner Flat Campground. I was a little surprised to see that it was still open. There was a sign that said the campground is open until October 11th. Maybe I'll come up here with my family before it closes. Probably not though.

Last night I was reading about this crazy run that people do in the Grand Canyon. They call it a R2R2R, which means rim to rim to rim. It is about fifty miles and they start from one rim of the Grand Canyon, go down to the Colorado River and back up the other side, then they turn around and do it again the other direction. I really want to do it. I think it would be a good training run for the Moab 100. I am still planning on running that in March. I just hope I am still here to run it. I might actually be gone and if that is the case, I just might go down there and run it on my own. I got so excited that I could hardly sleep. I just kept thinking about getting out of bed and going for a run. I could have ran all night. I finally fell asleep about two hours after lying down in bed. I plan to run either the R2R2R run or a Zion traverse (from one end to the other in Zion National Park, also about 50 miles) in November with a running friend of mine.