Up hill and down dale....

Adventures in The Ranch's open space today.
Ah, how quickly Thursday night rolls around. It means work looms again tomorrow. With this in my forbrain I find myself increasingly doing odd things on Thursdays. I guess it's to offset the time I cant get out during my 3-day work week.
Today I ventured into the open space trails on the East side of the valley. What is commonly known in these parts as The Hogback is really a misnomer. You have to be more specific than that as there are TWO Hogbacks (Hogsbacks, Hogs Backs?????). To the West side of the highway only one is visible, this is the Dakota Hogback. The other upthrust of land to the West of The Ranch is called the Lyons Hogback. Today's adventure took place on and around the Dakota.
I set out across the open space and the earth dam, a little like yesterday. Instead of turning up towards the equestrian center I went up the bank to the crash barrier at the roadside. I hopped it and set out down hill towards the ambiguously named Hogback Trail.
This is one of the lower points in the valley which means ITS ALL UPHILL FROM HERE. And it was.
As soon as I entered the trail, the world disappears. To the East is the ridge of the Dakota Hogback some 300 feet above. To the West, it the Lyons Hogback Ridge at around a hundred feet above you. This trail sits almost plumb between the two and climbs steadily some 150 feet. This is a nice gentle and constant hill to work against.
It was cooler again today. It was quiet with only the sounds of the birds twittering (where do they get cell phones from?), the chattering of the prairie dogs, the wheezing and the heavy Hippo-like footfalls of me. Fortunately the last two were masked by my companion, the MP3 player.
I made it to the top (it's about 1.5 miles long) and felt great. The trail is basically an infrequently used single track that only the Rangers can access. They do however gang-mow it to almost 3 times the width to allow horses and other users to pass safely. Quite a good thing as it allows people who have trail shoes but prefer NOT to slip-n-slide in the mud to keep clean and safe. I alternated between the center hump of the track and the flattest side I could find.
At the top I looked onwards and upwards. I headed into unknown territory of the more northern area of the valley. They are a little snooty up there so I minded my P's and Q's as I went. The trails followed the terrain and became mere foot tracks that had also been over mowed.
I eventually came to the end of the valleys main trail system. The even-more-northerly-valley (even snootier, it has it's own golf course - Purlease) beckoned. I entered an area that is Jeffco's but The Ranch's Rangers maintain it for them (at least that's what the signs say). I headed up up up to a place where I spotted some flattened grass that was an obvious trail that headed up the dizzying hights of the Dakota. I headed up it and began to climb quickly. That's another 400 feet in 6/10ths of a mile quickly. I reached the scrub line and turned to look South West. This was THE view of the Ranch I had been looking for. A perfect pic. Now if I had only had a camera :)
After taking this in I looked to the North and saw ugly clouds heading over the Lyons Hogback. I decided that I should not be on the highest ridge for miles as this looked like a storm front. (It wasn't). I turned South and West for home heading on as much trail as I could and avoiding the roads.
The stats: 6.83 miles in 1:54:44. Not fast but the trails were harder going. More walking than running but with that high BPM accompaniment of MP3's. The Garmin claimed 1413 Calories for the trip with the miles passing at a sluggish 16.48 pace. However despite these seemingly less than stellar stats I did complete over the distance of a 10k in less than 2 hours. Not too shabby for the state of things. The BGL afterwards was 98! I have even stood on the scale as I cam out of the shower. Down to 227, dripping wet.