Saturday night, July 8, was the Caballo Mountain Run in Los
Alamos, NM.  One of the tougher runs in the MTN RNR series, it
had been rescheduled from June 17, when it was cancelled due to
lightning.  This is a long trail run (26.5 miles, 6k' total
climb) with a twist: it starts at 5:45 pm, finishing (for most
people) in the wee hours of the morning.

Most of the local runners who otherwise would have been at
Hardrock showed up at the start at the rodeo grounds (about
7200').  I felt silly driving my car 2/3 of a mile from my house
to the start of an ultra, so I ran from my front door, missing
the trail briefing, but (barely) making the start.  It had been
unusually hot (around 90) in Los Alamos all week, but the heat of
the day was beginning to break a little as we started down the
horse trail into the Ponderosa filled canyon. There were eight of
us in all, two of whom planned to bail after 10 miles or so.
Through Bayo Canyon and down to the cemetary, we picked up a
steep up-and-down dirt road which would take us up to the Guaje
Ridge trail.  I dropped to the end of the pack to visit with
Aaron Goldman, who had just returned from a 3 week trip to
Turkey, Italy, and Greece, where (of course) he checked out the
ancient marathon course.  Aaron waved me ahead when we reached
the ridge, so I caught up with Dave Scudder, John Cappis, Bob
Reedy, and Sean Smith. That day happened to be Sean's wife's due
date, but no, it didn't happen during the run, thus sparing Sean
the dubious fame of having missed the birth of his first child to
run an ultra.

Guaje Ridge is a beautiful trail climbing 2000' through a fir and
aspen forest, alternately providing awesome views down to Los
Alamos and Santa Fe beyond (to remind us of how far we'd come),
and up toward Caballo Mountain, looming above us across the deep
Guaje Canyon (to remind us of how far we had still to go).  Near
the top, where the Guaje Ridge Trail meets Pipeline Road, I
caught up to Chris Kern and Heiki (?).  Chris nearly jumped out
of his skin when I spoke up behind him.  "Sorry Chris, I didn't
mean to startle you!".  "You didn't startle me near as much as
that bear a couple miles back!".  Perhaps most startled of all
had been the bear, which had taken off through the trees when
Chris and Heiki had appeared suddenly behind it.

At Pipeline Road I said goodby to Chris and Heiki, who were
heading down, back to Los Alamos.  Pipeline Road climbed
intermittently to a beautiful meadow, surrounded by aspens, at
about 10,000' elevation.  Most of the wildflowers were still
awaiting the summer rains, but the red Indian Paintbrush,
Penstemon, and Scarlet Gilia, and yellow Mustard and Perky Sue
were out in force.  The blue Wild Iris were a bit past their
prime, but still provided a nice contrast.  Far away to the
southeast a rainbow peeked from under a thundercloud near Santa
Fe.  Truely an inspiring view!

Pipeline Road dropped a few hundred feet and then ran through the
forest along the rim of the enormous Valle Grande caldera,
shortly thereafter beginning a steep descent into Guaje Canyon.
About a third of the way down into the canyon, the trail leads to
the sharp, bare point of a cliff.  The setting sun turned the
puffy white clouds above a warm golden color, and reddened the
deep green trees I'd been running through 45 minutes before,
above me now on Guaje Ridge.  Completing the descent to about
8600', I stopped to refill my water bottles in Guaje Creek,
stopping to watch small trout leap for the insects skimming the
water of small pond.

From this point on there was quite a bit of deadfall on the trail
as it continued a few hundred yards down Guaje Canyon and then
swung up to the left to begin the steep climb up Caballo.  I'd
done this run a month before for a workout, and had hoped that
someone might have cleared the trail of the largest trees.  No
such luck.  By now I'd been out nearly three hours, and it was
starting to get pretty dark below the forest canopy, so I dug out
my flashlight.  Two years ago (back when this run was held during
the day) I'd made it a point to try to run up this entire steep
section.  Now I ran when I could, walked when I had to - which
was most of the time.  Whether this was because I was smarter or
simply older, well, I guess I'd know at the end.

The trail stopped switchbacking and climbed straight up the side
of the mountain.  It got rocky and harder to follow.  Someone
(Dave Scudder, I later learned) had marked it with yellow tape,
which helped a lot.  Finally, the trail leveled, then suddenly
burst out of the trees into the summit meadow of Caballo Moutain,
at about 10,400'.  By now (9:15pm) it was completely dark, and
there was a refreshing cool breeze.  The view was incredible!
Unbelievably far below were the lights of Los Alamos.  Off in the
distance, the large patch of light that was Santa Fe.  Off to the
right, about 80 miles away as the crow flies, was Albuquerque.
To the left were small groups of lights that were towns such as
Truchas, nestled against the Sangre de Cristo mountains, across
the Rio Grande.  It was a view I could have stood and watched for
a long while.

I walked 100 yds across the meadow to a large, lone fir tree that
marks (for me) the jumping off point for finding the trail where
it begins in the woods at the lower end of the steep meadow,
several hundred yards below.  I suddenly smelled smoke - a
campfire.  I focused my flashlight and scanned around.  There,
about 100' away, was something that could be a large rock, or a
tent.  I decided to wander over and check it out.  Sure enough,
there were two tents, and I could hear voices.  I was still
debating whether to crash their party, but wanting to find out if
it was someone I knew, when I saw a person against the trees and
called out "Hello!".  The person answered, so I walked over to
their low campfire, and introduced myself to the three people
there.  When I explained what I was doing there, they were pretty
surprised!  They suggested I pull up a log and join them, but I
said "No thanks.  I've got people chasing me.", bid them
farewell, headed back to the big fir, and down the steep meadow.
As I left, I heard one of them comment "I thought we were in the
middle of nowhere, and we ended up being in the middle of a
race!"

As I picked my way down the rocky meadow, I could hear something
large crashing through the trees below and to my right.  Probably
a herd of deer or elk, although I couldn't illuminate them with
my flashlight.  Suddenly I stopped - there were two eyes ahead in
the trees glowing back at me when I caught them in my flashlight!
I had an anxious moment until I realized they didn't blink or
move, and appeared to be too far off for eyes to glow so
brightly.  I decided it was safe to see what they were.  It
turned out to be a couple bicycle reflectors nailed to the trees
where the trail began again.  I discovered later that they had
put them there after last year's Caballo Mountain run turned into
such a massacre (lost runners and broken bones, but that's
another story).

Heading into the trees I started running as fast as I felt safe.
This was going to be an interesting experiment: the only other
times I've run trails at night have been in 100 milers, when I
was feeling pretty zonked from already having run 16+ hours.  How
much easier would it be when I was relatively fresh?  Quite a bit
easier, it turned out!  Although the deadfall on the trail took
some careful climbing, even rocky sections, if clear, were easy
to run.  My worst fear was that I'd trip, and lose my flashlight
in the dark.  How would I ever find it again if it went out?
Luckily, I never had to test that scenario.

A half mile or so below the summit meadow I heard a growling
which stood my hair on end, until a voice said "Steady
boy... good evening!"  A couple people and a German Shepard were
camped beside the trail where they'd given up the climb when
darkness fell.  I explained that they could expect another five
people running by over the next couple hours.

The steep, narrow trail continued on down Vallecito de los
Caballos, dropping 3000' in the process.  The moon climbed high
enough to reach the bottom of the canyon through breaks in the
trees, producing a strange effect of brightly illuminating
occasional rocks and trees in your peripheral vision, which
seemed to disappear when you looked right at them.  As Dave
Scudder later put it "It was easy to imagine people chasing fairy
sprites around on such a night."

Finally the trail met the dirt road in Guaje Canyon.  It was
quite warm at this lower elevation - I was thirsty and really
sweating.  I followed the road another mile down the canyon, to
7200', before a spur crossed the stream (where I refilled my
water bottles) and began a steep climb back up to Guaje Ridge.
This climb topped out at about 7800', where I met the route we'd
taken up earlier this evening.  My legs were really starting to
get tired, but I pushed on along the open, moonlit road, still
hoping to beat five and a half hours.  Up and down, always
steeply, the road descended back to the cemetary, where I picked
up the trail which climbed for half a mile before dropping me
back into Bayo Canyon.  Up the short, steep horse trail out of
Bayo, and there was Dave's car, with the "check-out" sheet on the
back seat.  It was 11:20pm.  I felt 5:35 was a pretty respectable
time - 20 minutes slower than I'd run this during the day two
years ago, but 10 minutes faster than I'd done it earlier this
season.  The darkness had slowed me down some, but not nearly as
much as I had expected.  Finally, the short run home to shower
and get a really lousy night's sleep (my legs hurt).

The final results:

    Blake Wood     5:35
    Sean Smith     6:15
    Bob Reedy      6:31
    John Cappis    7:43
    Dave Scudder   7:43