Zimmerman Trail is a steep and winding road that I have to run as part of this project but it’s narrow and not pedestrian friendly. I was hoping that snow and ice would necessitate a closure during the winter, something that occurs from time to time, giving me a chance to run it without competing with vehicles. While our recent winter wouldn’t be described as “mild,” the road remained open all season.
Depending on who you talk to, we’ve have had 3-6 inches of rain over the past 3 days and there is a fair amount of local flooding, mainly due to blocked storm drains with lots of the blockage because of accumulated litter. Litter is a problem in this city but that is a topic for a different blog.
It was announced on Saturday that Zimmerman Trail is closed, not for flooding, but because of falling rocks. This happens every couple years as the sandstone soaks up moisture and the winter’s freeze/thaw cycles loosen the rocks’ attachment to one another. The rocks fall and land on the highway and sometimes these amount to fairly large boulders. When I heard that it was closed I immediately planned to run it.
Shelley texted and wanted to know if I was going to do it and we agreed to meet at my place and run from there at 6:15am. We debated whether to just run and down it or to do a loop that included Myers Trail. We decided to just run there, about a mile and quarter, and figure it out from there.
Along the way I took some photos. It’s trying to rain again.
We headed on up and didn’t see any rocks on the road.
On the way up, Shelley pointed out some hardware installed in the rocks above the road. It looks like those are some kind of anchorage to keep the rocks in place.
We didn’t see any rocks on the road but there were lots of worms.
We got to the roundabout at the top and looked back.
Other views from the roundabout.
We decided that instead of running back down, we’d head out on Hwy 3 and follow it to where we could get on Myers Trail and take that back down to Rimrock Road. There is a new bike trail being constructed along the highway so we got to see the stages of its development. They are working from the airport toward the west so here, on the west end, we see the surveyor stakes and as we ran east we passed where they’ve made a first pass with a grader, to where they’ve brought in fill, to the placement of road mix. Beyond that, I’ve heard they are doing the concrete or asphalt work.
We ran on the shoulder, something that is usually a scary endeavor due to traffic but with the closure of Zimmerman Trail and the fact that it’s early on a Sunday morning, there were very few vehicles on the road.
I saw a snake, the good kind of snake.
We were getting close to a new industrial development that is west of the airport and we could see the new buildings and the new pond adjacent to them.
With the silence in this early morning, the sounds coming from that area was surprising. We thought, hey, it sounds like frogs, but it was so loud, could it really be frogs? We got up to the intersection of AJ Way and since it’s a street that needs to be run, we did it, and went along that flooded field. It was definitely frogs, lots of them.
Having had enough with the frogs, we finished running the streets in that development. There was an old barn across one of the fields, contrasted with the more modern barns.
We got back on the highway and headed to where Myers Trail comes up and meets the new bike trail. It was about here that it started raining again.
Because it was so muddy, we had to hike around a bit to find a way down that wasn’t a complete slippery mess. We did and got to Myers and headed down. It was like going through a rain forest as the trees, weeds, and shrubs have grown quite a bit and were soaked with the recent rains. It didn’t take long before my shoes were soaked and were making squishing sounds.
We arrived back at my place wet and satisfied with the run that turned out to be an adventure. Shelley played some fetch with Bart the Dog before heading out. Here’s our stats for the day.
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