Last week I reignited
my blinding obsession with the desert. So this Tues. Todd (Curza lawyer)
convinced me we should go down south over the weekend for a relatively long
run. A simple internet search through the irunfar database led me to the Poison
Spider Jeep Trail. I was vaguely amused, compounded with a 60% chance of
thunderstorms I really had no desire to stray too far from the Wasatch. But
Todd was persistent and he’d never been to Moab nor any of the southern deserts
and got me to accompany him.
As it happens too often my trepidation was completely
unwarranted. We started off at the Poison Spider Jeep Trailhead, temperatures
were perfect with a light rain falling, right alongside the canyons of the
Colorado and the Colorado itself, we climbed 800 vert and then were on glorious
slickrock for roughly 10-15 miles, which we took to further to the Golden Spike
trail to round out our round trip distance at about 20 miles.
Most of the trail we had largely to ourselves, and when encountered the 4x4's and modern dune buggies provided both entertainment and motivation, as most of the passengers were constantly cheering us on as we passed. On that note if you're in any shape whatsoever I strongly suggest doing this as a run as online somewhere it says traveling by 4x4 takes roughly 10 hrs we were done in a leisurely 4.
Todd starting out
Sandy running through various oasis'
Slickrock
The Corona Arch off in the distance (dead center of the photo...it's hard to see) (those are railroad tracks far below)
Small canyon exploration
Jeeps negotiating some pretty hairy terrain
