wow. what an incredible day. what a route. wow.
started this route up mill d to desolation lake. i was cruising and reached the peak in 1:34, my goal was 1:30 but I stopped to filter at deso lake which turned out to be a good decision. there were so many bikers on the wasatch crest trail which coupled with a spill near scotts hill absolutely killed my time on this split. guardsmans pass by 3:09. I stretched out, and then started up clayton peak, reaching the summit around 3:50? ish? I took another long break, ate some pita, downed some honey, and drank a redbull. this was the halfway mark of the route and i was ready to throw in the towel, i decided to go down towards the parking lot and just see if i feel better or not.
it was a good decision, after a half mile on the east end of the canyon i was back to cruising. i stumbled upon a treehouse as i was going around dog lake (the most pointless section of the route, don't understand why it was there (the trail, not the treehouse. the treehouse made perfect sense.) i hit lake mary, skirted around the west side, and was making a good time to twin lake when i ran out of water. i reached the spillway on the northeast side of the lake and started to filter. filtering took to long, i spent 15 minutes filtering and left twin lake about an hour past my goal mark.
the next stretch i had built up in my head as much harder than it truly was. i thought it was going to take my 1:30, however it really only took me 45 minutes. this got me back to only being 15 minutes behind my goal. I took a detour to go up and over davenport hill, adding distance and elevation but bagging a 10er. i went up and down to drop into day fork canyon (i think thats what its called, im too tired to check). this is what i thought was going to be the easiest section and yet it turned out so frustrating and difficult. the trail had been built directly next to the stream all the way down the 4 mile canyon. the problem with this is that water goes to the lowest part of the canyon (physics) and we had a massive snow year (meteorology).
the entire trail was wiped out by avalanche debris which added so much time, elevation and mileage. lost 45 minutes by the time i reached the road. ran along the road for half a mile or so until i got back to my car with an end time of 9:05.