Sunrise Peak Finally, Mt. Olympus

Ever since I ran up to the Salt Lake Twin Peaks earlier this summer I've wanted to run up to Sunrise Peak.  Weather and time constraints prevented me from that goal week after week and I had to settle for other shorter pursuits.  One day I even made it up to the saddle but was just completely out of time.  Last week I had a particularly stressful day at work and really needed to run it off and stand on a new peak.  The weather was cold but likely no snow on the route up to Sunrise.  I go to the gym to lift weights several times a week and sometimes that overlaps with my running schedule.  Running up mountains after a bunch of squatting and other leg lifts the night before really sucks!  I was so unbelievably tired when I was about as far as the picture below.

Realizing how many more vertical feet I had to go and how my legs felt, I was ready to give up and go for it next year.  But I knew I would be so mad at myself later if I didn't push through that mental barrier.  I always pray before I run in the mountains for protection and strength, but at this point I decided to pray again and remind the Lord how important it was for me to finish this and how I knew I couldn't do that without His help.  From that point on I felt much better and I actually ended up making it to the summit within my goal time.  It was so cold up there that my phone just turned itself off when I was on the top.  Luckily I got some pictures first.

On Saturday I went running in the snow at Alta.  It was great because it wasn't icy at all and just about 3 inches. I'm really excited about skinning up many of these same mountains this winter and skiing down!

On Sunday morning I took advantage of daylight savings and went up Mount Olympus.  After my leg lifts and running the past two days, my legs were not too happy with me and it took me about 10 minutes longer to the summit than last year which was a bummer but still really fun!  Mount Olympus is definitely very steep with about 4,000 feet of elevation gain over about 3.5 miles.

Oh and I forgot that last week I also went up to Sunset Peak which was a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to continuing down that ridgeline next time.