Ah yes- Summer is here in the Kootenays

Summer in the Kootenays means different things to different people. It could mean heading to the beach playing Frisbee and having a couple of cold beers, a few smokes and some A&W, or a fun Mt. bike ride up and over Shannon Pass, or just a fun morning in the mountains running some trails before it gets too smokin' hot. Problem is- when your running partners are training for bigger runs than you can wrap your head around, our regular weekend runs are ramping up to a little more than a walk in the park. But I have to admit, being only 2 1/2 years into my running career, I never would have thought I'd have so much fun on our what's turning out to be normal 5-6 hour weekend big runs.
Today we left Mt Station at 7am to try and beat the heat to head up to do the Vein as our warm up loop. The long 2,000' descent straight down actually doeasn't seam so bad anymore that I've ran it 3 times in the past few weeks. We then headed out the tracks, under the second bridge and out to the Waldorf school where we caught the trail out to the end of Silverking road and hooked onto the Silverking trail. It  was so much better to get out to Giveout Creek Rd this way. We then ran up-up-up to Upper High-Baller were we already accumulated over 5,000' of climbing  in the first 4 hours of running, but we all felt great and excited to get back into some trail. It was an epic 3,500' descent down Upper High Baller, High Baller, Placenta, Illuminati, Oil Can, Pulninary and finishing up at Groman Narrows Park for a much need soak in the mighty cold Kootenay Lake.
All in all it was 6 hours, 5,500' of climbing and 6,000' of descending.
What a great Kootenay summer morning!

                                                                      Top of the Vein