Irene and Dana joined us again this year for our Southwest Harbor weekend which means we took full advantage and dropped Sam off at their room at 7:00 am this morning (yes, she has already been up for an hour...) and headed out for a short pre-breakfast mountain running adventure. It was an insanely gorgeous morning with brilliant blue skies, lupines lining the roadside, beautiful mountain views and quiet trails.
We ran roads out to the West Ridge trailhead for Beech Mountain, up to the summit, then down the South Ridge Trail.
We then took the Valley Trail up around the Canada Cliff Trail to Echo Lake Road.
Valley Trail was pretty sweet with big boulders and fun runnable trail.
We ran along Rt 102 for a short ways before heading up the St Saveur Trail to St Sauveur peak and Valley Peak before descending on the Valley Peak Trail to the old fire road that leads out to Valley Cove/back to the Flying Mtn parking lot. Very nice views and some fun running (and hiking).
Back at the parking lot, we booked it back to the hotel at 8:30 pace for three miles (ow!) to get back in time for breakfast :) 11.4 miles of fun and nice to be out on the trails with Ryan!
After breakfast, we got the troops packed up and headed back to that parking lot to hike Flying Mountain. Always fun to be out on the trails with family!
A really nice loop that yielded 1.7 miles in about two hours with all our stops. Well worth the effort with some great views along the way!
Flora and fauna notes: saw an black throated green warbler climbing Beech this morning and another stop Flying Mountain. Neat warbler! Also saw a milk snake on the old fire road finishing up our hike this afternoon. Saw one lone lady slipper, sheep laurel blooming, a few bunchberries and a few starflowers. Lots of lupine down low - so pretty!
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Running log note: Friday, before dropping Sam and school and then running around getting the house ready for my parents to arrive at the end of the weekend, I got in a nice six miles on the cart paths.
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