HR 52
Wow. Probably the zenith of my trail running adventures. Me and my friends are up here at Josh's house in Idaho, and he knows lots of cool trails to run. So we decided to do a trail called the hurricane pass, and it traverses the grand Teton range and passed between the grand Teton and middle Teton. We got to the trailhead at about 9:30, and the people running were me, Matt, Boston, Josh, and Scott (who hasn't ran a real run in 6 months!!). We started the run and it was beautiful, the elevation started at about 6800 feet. We ran on a nice single track, and about .5 in I looked to my right and saw a moose, and it was a lil scary because it was just a calf and it's mom could be around, but we had no trouble with that. Beautiful views all around, and we got to about 7500 feet and there was a thing which we named watermelon snow; apparently some mineral turns the snow red and it smells and tastes just like watermelon, so we feasted on that. Then disaster struck. Exactly 7 miles in, Boston hit his shin HARD on a rock and split it right open, we could see bone and everything. It stopped bleeding luckily, Josh put a tourniquet on it and we kept going; at this point we had 13 miles left so it was a little scary but he's a trooper. Kept climbing, until we get to the base of a ridge beyond the tree line; and it turned out Josh led us astray so we had to backtrack up the ridge and across to the pass. Got up to about 10,300 at this point. Running was very slow because Boston could only hobble along with his sliced leg. Had to scramble down loose rock cliffs and slid down hundreds of feet of good snow, like we were on skis but just our feet, add me on snap @thesageducote for details (yes we had LTE at some points). After we got through the pass, we just coasted down the snow to the canyon that leads out to the lake where the parking lot is. But the problem was that bostons leg was hurting really bad at this point, so from about mile 11 to 13.5, it was really slow walking. Also, a thunderstorm was rolling in and we had to go quick, but it was hard with Boston. So me and Matt ran ahead to meet with Josh's mom so she could get a ferry across the lake for Boston, at this point it was lightning and thunder all around. We met Josh's mom and told her what happened; and as we were saying how far back Boston and the others were, they showed up; apparently Boston started feeling better once the Lightning started, it gave him some extra adrenaline lol, so we didn't get a ferry and we just ran the rest of the trail around the lake to the parking lot. Watch died at about mile 16 so that sucked, but Josh had us at 20 about. First 20 miler in the books! About 3900 feet of vertical over the run. Really great time in a beautiful place with my best friends. Boston is an animal for making it out of there after his accident, that's really commendable. He'll probly have to get stitches. Also Scott is a complete animal, his first run in 6 months (besides squaw peak I guess) was a 20 miler! This was just a great experience, and it's only day 2 of our post senior trip. Also, Josh's mom set us up with two amazing girls; I got the 18 year old and Boston got the 20 year old lol, they're on a long road trip of like every national park, and they'll be at Zion too so I got her snap and we're gonna meet up. Good stuff from everyone today
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