East Rim Trail

Today we checked out the third entrance of the park, the east side by catching a ride from one of the out door companies.  In route we saw a big horn sheep which was pretty cool. We were dropped at the East Rim Trail head.

Jeff and I were light on gear (camel backs only) and decided to switch between trail running and hiking. This plan worked really well the first 6 miles.  The terrain was not particularly spectacular and the trail was wide and sandy.  There were some ups and downs (more ups) but nothing too crazy.

After the first 6 miles the trail got much steeper, narrower and rockier and much more down.  We slowed it down at this point and pretty much kept the pace to hiking speed.  The trail at this point went through a narrow canyon (Echo Canyon) and spit us out in the main canyon.  It was really quite spectacular.  At one point there was a completely vertical cliff next to the trail that shot up about 1500 ft.  Amazing!

We finished our 11 mile trek by finding an ice cream shop and eating hot fudge sundaes.  Now that is vacation!

Ready to run!


The east side of the park.

Jeff on a cool quiet section of trail.

The bottom of Echo Canyon

Joining up with the main canyon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iceland day 2!

Image
Day 2 started with a beautiful sunrise. The b&b we were staying at had horses that we could pet.  Many people have these stocky, shaggy horses.  They are mostly uses for "hobby and tourists" but the also have various horseman competitions and the are sometimes used for farm work to get around or help heard sheep or cattle.  The agriculture is pretty much grass to feed the sheep and cows in the winter.  It seems like they bring the sheep and cows into barns durring the worst of the weather in winter.  In summer the sheep are left to roam free all over Iceland and "everything it covered in sheep".  The sheep outnumber the people by quite a bit.  At the end of summer everyone helps gather up all the sheep and then they are sorted and returned to their owners based on their ear tags.   After saying hello to the horses we set off to see waterfalls. Waterfalls in Iceland end in "foss".  This is Urridafoss. Here is a closeup of the gigantic hole...
Read more

Ahhhh... Time for a little relaxation!

Image
Yesterday we had a pleasant morning in Porto Notalles.  It started pooring rain which made me so glad that we had such good weather for out trip.   We got some fancy hot chocolates, second time to this shop.  We went once befoe the hike, it was so good, we went back. We took a bus to Puntas Arenas and flew to Santiago.  By the time we got the rental car, made a few u-turns and found the hotel it was pretty late.  We had dinner around standard Chilean time for once which was about midnight. After sleeping in, we did a little exploring in Santiago, picked up a couple souvenirs for friends and family and drove to Santa Cruz (yep, there is one in Chile and a San Francisco too!).  We are in the Colchagua valley which makes great red wine.  We had an amazing dinner (and wine) and are ready to call it a night...
Read more

Vino!

Image
I did it!  I actually relaxed all day today!!!  Aren't you proud? The day started with sleeping in followed by loafing and reading my book.   We were picked up by a driver for a vineyard tour at 11:30 and lucked out.  The other 8 english speakers didnt show up for the tour so Jeff and i got a private tour.  The best part was that part of the tour was done from horse drawn buggies. The tour and tasting was great.  We had lunch at the resturant at the winery and then went to a second winery for another tasting. We then had our pleasantly wined selves driven back to our B and B and relaxed for a couple hours.  I read, Jeff pretended to read and took a nap. We ended the evening by going in to town.  They are having a 4 day music festival where they close down the street, have a few craft venders in the main square and a ton of food venders and set up a stage and have free music.  We had street food for dinner and icecream and enjoyed the band. ...
Read more