AR Ramblings

A week or so ago I came across a posting for a trail run called the Dupont Waterfall Bonanza – an approximately 22 mile tour of waterfalls in the Dupont State Forest. Matthew Johnson organized the run and put together a map and cue sheet for the five of us that showed up on Saturday. I haven’t spent much time at Dupont and was surprised at the variety of trails and awesome waterfalls. We started from the Hooker Falls parking area and ran up the road to Sheep Mountain Trail and made our way around to Corn Mill Shoals Trail with a stop along the way to cool off (and get our shoes wet) at a stream crossing. Then it was on to Bridal Veil Falls which provided a nice, refreshingly cool shower and was probably my favorite of the falls we visited. I think we probably spent 30 minutes hanging out and cooling off there. It was at this point I realized that I should really get around to buying some new batteries for my digital camera. I probably could have gotten a few cool shots, and this blog stuff would be a lot better with pics, I think.

I forget the sequence of trails we took after leaving Bridal Veil (cue sheets tend to fall apart after taking showers in waterfalls, BTW). Various waterfalls and stream crossings kept our feet wet, and a thunderstorm rolled in for the last hour or two of the run, ensuring we stayed throughly soaked. The cooler temps were nice, but I would have been happier without the lightning.

I was actually kind of glad about all the rain and stream crossings. “Wet shoe runs” are good for toughing up the feet and are good prep for adventure races and other long distance events. I haven’t done one in a long time and only had a very slight hot-spot starting to form on my heel when we finished…not too bad.

After we finished, Beth shared a watermelon she had brought along…Watermelon rocks on a hot training day! Yum!

It was a fun day on some new trails with some cool folks. Big thanks to Matthew for organizing it!

I suspected early on that my attempts at blogging would be a complete failure.  I just never seem to find the time (or motivation) to sit down and write this stuff.  But, I think I’ll try resurrecting this thing and giving it one more try.  If you don’t see another post on here in the next week, that probably means that attempt #2 failed as well.