Vail Trail Run

This run was 14.6 miles, with a starting elevation of 8,200 feet, a maximum of 11,200 feet, and a total gain of 3,500 feet (including ups/downs). If you've skied at Vail, it was from the main base area up to Buffalo's, the lodge at the top of Vail Mountain where lifts 4, 5 and 11 meet.


I struck gold in more ways than one during this outing: it was a perfect 65-70 degrees in Vail, with cloudless blue skies, and the aspens were midway through their conversion from green to gold. In fact, I could barely keep running because I had to stop and look, and ended up taking 271 photos! As a result I took 2.5 hours to get to the top.


Access to the hiking trails is free in the summer, and so is the parking garage (instead of the $25 I pay during ski season -- ouch!). This is typical of resorts in the summer, and it's a great bargain outing.

The trails themselves are nicely surfaced but were challenging due to the nearly constant uphill; even with a 5% grade, there was barely any relief in the 7.3 mile ascent. However, the surface was great, and consisted mostly of dirt through pine woods


combined with open traverses of the ski slopes:


It's fun to see this environment in a different season, with the whole place practically to myself; I only saw 4 groups of hikers all afternoon. Vail employees were doing maintenance, zooming around on the dirt roads in trucks, running the lifts, and servicing the chair lift towers. Along the way was this fleet of snowmobiles on their summer break:


As I ascended, the terrain changed from aspen to pine, and at around 10,500 feet, I started to see snow in the woods and in the shadows. I'm relishing the last bits of summer, but I'll embrace winter whenever it arrives. Time to take the skis for a tune!


At the top are sweeping views of the Gore Range to the north, the Vail Back Bowls to the south, and if you maneuver around the woods, the Mount of the Holy Cross area to the southwest. That's the Gore Range in the background:


I've enjoyed the mountains' namesake brewery in Edwards on several occasions.

Below is China Bowl, where I've had more fun that I can describe. Coming from the east where there really wasn't powder to speak of, I learned to ski deep snow mostly at Vail and Loveland. On a powder day here, I go until the very last chair lift, worrying if I'm going to get stuck after the lift closes so that I have to hike out by myself :) I don't want it to end.


The only other person up high on the mountain was a lone worker manning the chair lift, which would periodically move a bit so that workers on the chairs could access the next lift tower.

I was only half done at this point, so after a short snack I hit the trails again and made a fairly quick descent, minus time for more photos. When I passed through the aspens in the middle of the mountain, my pace slowed to a crawl since I was so distracted. The late afternoon light from the cloudless sky was lighting up the aspen leaves like stained glass. If you've walked through an autumn forest you know that it fills your surroundings with a colored glow. I'm lucky I didn't take a header into a tree as I was gawking at the colors while trying to run. Here's a photo for the road: