Horse Mountain Friday

One day last week, the winds shifted.  From the northern wind (typically summer), it came from the opposite direction, how it typically goes in the winter.  Rain fell and there it was: snow on the coastal hills.  Normally, it takes really low snow levels to see any from my home against the coastline.  It can be seen from other parts of town, but not mine.  Every time I was headed home from errands, the snow stared at me.  It was so close, but I couldn’t reach it.

Matt knew of a place that we could go and enjoy the snow.  A place called Horse Mountain.  He was lucky that I didn’t know how to get there, or I would have already gone without him.  I wasn’t sure what I’d find at Horse Mountain, was it one knob covered in snow?  Steep?  Or was it something to admire and build snowmen?  Rumors spread that it was a great place to go for snowmen and sledding, but nothing further.  

We stopped for coffee on the way there.  As we walked down the sidewalk into a swift wind, my hair swirling in a tornado above my head, we could only imagine what it would be like on the hills.  Something near 50mph, surely.

 

Driving the winding Hwy 299, we watched the landscape progress from coastal winter to the inland one.  It seemed that Horse Mountain was just on the cusp of being considered “inland” and bone dry. 

 

Lush trees had moss dangling from their branches while snow clung to the base.    The road was plowed only to a certain point.  After that, it was almost as good as a groomed trail.  The snow was laid evenly across the level road.  

  

We didn’t keep track of how far we went, but when we felt like meandering down a different vein of the fire road network upon this hill, we did.  We were out for almost three hours, so I was more than willing to let it take the place of a 10 mile run.  The Yolla Bollas, mini-mountains on the southern end of the Trinity Alps, were visible in the east.  The light changed as clouds moved in and provided an ever-evolving contrast to the mountains.

 

 

We had a relaxing lunch.  Sunshine blast upon us and reflected off every nearby surface.  The snow was about three feet deep beneath our snowshoes and it was impressive that with how warm it was, not more of it was melting.  Even icicles remained on the hillsides where runoff froze overnight.  

Still borrowing a second pair of snowshoes from Alex, we knew that once he heard about or trip, he’d want them back.  Matt reluctantly took them to work with him that night.  A few hours later, I get an email from Matt.  Our REI dividend and 20% off coupon just arrived!  Looks like we might have two pairs of snowshoes to ourselves soon!

Do you use cross training in place of a training run?  How do you determine its equivalent?
I love doing this.  It keeps my mind from getting stale.  If it is to trail running while I'm training on roads, I'll usually go with mileage.  If it is biking, hiking, or something completely different, I'll try to match the time it would take to run them.  This snowshoe trip was almost three hours and a run of 10 miles that I replaced would have taken about 90 minutes.  More than enough to count in my book.