Last weekend I got out of the house! Steve spent the day (Happy Father's Day!) with the girls while I drove up to Mt Hood with my sister to run the Mt Hood Scramble. This is a crazy crazy cross country race on the mountain. The first year we did this we had no idea what we were getting into and "ran" the whole thing in utter shock. Think scrambling up snow cliffs on hands and knees, fording spring snow-melt rivers and mucking through mud, mud, mud. They don't call this "The Grandfather of Filth" for nothing!
This year there was a brand new course. So, for fun, they add an extra mile to the course - they like to do surprises like that... It was 6.9 miles long. They also put the most elevation loss and gain ever into the course - to kill us!
We also spent miles upon miles mucking our way through red silt swamps. You can tell who has never done this race before when you get to thigh deep mud (if their nice running shoes haven't given them away already. I'd been saving my old pair just for this race and now they're in the trash.) They try to find a way around it, everyone else just plunges in and tries not to lose their shoes in the deep.
Now I know that both of these photos show us out in the open but don't be fooled. Those were the only two openings for the photographers this year. The rest of the time we were fighting our way through brush, climbing over and under huge logs and trying not to fall face first into the endless streams and mud flats (when not clawing our way out of the swamp). I have the bruises and cuts to prove it!
And with all that I'll still tell you that this race is so fun! I'm totally signing up for next year!
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