This morning I met up with Trail Fridays “at the dirt” on Rocky Canyon Road.
“The dirt” is where the paved road turns into a narrow, dusty, unpaved road that isn’t made for low clearance vehicles, and where it would be ill-advised to drive in most winter months without a four wheel drive car or truck. We don’t (yet) own a car or truck that’s made for this kind of trekking, so my explorations “past the dirt” on Rocky Canyon have taken place on foot, or in our minivan long before or long after the snow.
I’ve enjoyed these excursions as they do provide direct access to some of the more remote (and stunning) foothills trails. But my first time navigating to one of the farthest trailheads was definitely a little nerve wracking in my minivan. I wasn’t always sure that there'd be enough clearance for two cars wide if I encountered a driver traveling opposite me, and I definitely wasn’t sure that I’d be able to pull off a three point turn if and when I needed to turn around. (Fortunately I *did* make it to my intended trail head, and there was indeed a small parking area there which enabled an easy turn-around when required as well.) I’ve also now negotiated a few opposite direction passes, and it wasn’t as intimidating as I was imagining.
So now that I’ve learned how to relax and enjoy the long and slow trek out to some of these trailheads, I do like a good Rocky Canyon Road adventure.
Today, I ran from “the dirt” to Shane’s Loop, then west on Three Bears, back down to Rocky Canyon Road, and back to my vehicle.
This map from my Garmin uses color to show pace. You can see where the hills are as my paces are intermittently slow (blue) and moderate (green, yellow, orange), and then where the continuous downhill begins—it’s all red, which is how Garmin denotes the fastest paces of my run. This is one of the beauties of Rocky Canyon Road; if you park east from where you plan to emerge from the trails, the journey back to your car is all downhill. Which, in my opinion, is one of the most glorious ways to end a trail run! The particular route I did today is extra glorious because the downhill begins long before I hit Rocky Canyon Road. You can see that my path starts turning orange and red as soon as I turned south on the Three Bears trail. It’s a long, beautiful single track path that winds all the way down to the road. Someday I will have to capture this glorious downhill on video—this is why trail runners run trails.
But it was something else that captured my video footage today.
See that blue interruption in my glorious single track descent?
Here’s the hold up:
This snake stopped me in my tracks. This is decidedly *not* why I trail run. I not only stopped, but I backtracked. I observed. Waited. Then when it was clear that this guy was not going to just slither across the path without some external motivation, I collected some pebbles, and started tossing them his way. It took a few minutes, but eventually he decided to move along. It took long enough, though, that I had plenty of time to get video footage.
Not likely poisonous, but honestly, there’s no need for me to go about testing this hypothesis. I will let that little blue mark on my glorious descent back to Rocky Canyon Road stand as is.
There were no other snake sightings on my run back, thank goodness, but if they’re had been, the road does offer lots of options for going around. It’s narrow, but it’s definitely not single track. If you look closely, though, you’ll see another stop on the way back to my car.
This time it was a view. I stopped to capture it in a photo because it’s one of my favorite parts of Rocky Canyon Road.
The first time I appreciated this kind of view, I was driving back from a run last fall, just as golden hour was approaching in the evening. I don’t usually take videos or pictures while driving, but this was an exception. Not only was the light and landscape exceptionally breathtaking, but the speed at which I was driving was exceptionally slow, *and* I happened to be trailing another slow moving vehicle, so I had some confidence that I wouldn’t be met by any fast moving head-on traffic with said car as a buffer.
Anyway, check it out:
Swoon.
Honestly neither the video (nor the minivan windshield) do what I witnessed that day any justice.
Maybe you can imagine it as a fully immersive cinematic experience, minus the minivan?
Or maybe you should join me on a Rocky Canyon Road outing one day. It’s never exactly the same, but it’s always beautiful. I can’t promise there will always be a snake sighting, though.