Shawangunk Ridge Run: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 08:07:03

This weekend was my last opportunity to have my last run before my trip to Chamonix, France. At this point I still had no Schengen Visa but I tried to keep my hope alive and kept training. My plan was to do a long easy run with less or non technical trail run. We headed out to the Shawangunk Ridge, it was the home for rock climber in North East of US, probably more than a hundreds route on these long ridge of rocks.

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We parked at the information center because the West Trap parking lot was not open early. We had to hiked up a little to get into the junction, on our left was the Minnewaska Lake loop, and on out right was the undercliff and overcliff loop to the Mohonk House. We decided to cover the flat course first before going to do a little scrambling.

The Minewaska Lake loop was an easy flat gravel road with some easy rolling hills. First, we arrived at an amazing waterfall, then we continued to run over the top of the waterfall.

After a few miles, we passed a parking lot and the trail continued on our left side to the Lake Minnewaska. The trail was pretty much straight forward. On every junction, there was a map board, which showed the route name and the trail marked color. The funny thing about this trail was the color that they used, why on earth they used black and some fancy color codes like in art class. Lake Minewaska was a very family friendly. People could actually drive up here to enjoy the lake and its beach. I saw there was a dock and also restroom facility.

From Lake Minewaska, we were running on the edge of the rock, and the view was a carpet of trees and town beyond the horizon.

At the end of the ridge line, we met a junction and we took the trail on the left side and went to the bigger lake, Lake Awosting. It was pretty big that I could not see the end of the lake. We were a bit high up from the lake. From far a way, I saw there was a beach area on the bottom of the lake. I wished I had time to explore more, but we had more miles to cover. We had only a quarter way of our running route. The running back to the junction of the Lake Minewaska loop and the Mohonk House Loop was much faster, at least that what I felt.

When we got back to that junction, where there was a big boulder, we took the left turn to run through the overcliff route first, as I remembered it would be more steep compare to the undercliff. We ran for a few miles before we found a bridge, we turned left, headed to tower and Mohonk House. From this point, the run was getting a bit hairy, since it was going up and up and up. The dangerous part was it was not steep enough that I thought I could run it, but it was just kept going. I was out of breathe when the uphill was over and barely walking. If not because of Chang running with me, I might had give up. Then we saw the lake and the Mohonk House from far away. And I remember that I needed to take the trail path and find the red marking to go to the scrambling area. I always love this scrambling area, but the problem was, there were always so many people at the boulders and always took forever to pass the Lemon Squeeze behind a group of family.

After we got to the top, we headed down to the Mohonk House to re-fill our water and got some Coke. The running back to the parking lot was pretty easy and fast since it was only down hill. I missed calculate the distance, I thought I would be running 30 mile-ish, but ended up with only 27 miles. Oh well!

 

  • Activity: Running
  • Distance: 27.8 mi
  • Duration: 06:13:34
  • Average Speed: 4.47 mph
  • Average Pace: 13:26 min/mi
  • Calories Burned: 2996
  • Start Time: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 08:07:03