Postholing in October

Annie and I set out to run a bit up AF while we were waiting for it to get warm so we could climb. We set out from the Summit trailhead to check out the Lame Horse(055) trail that heads down to Aspen Grove where the standard Timp trail starts. We were having so much fun in the beautiful colors and brisk air and feeling the need to exercise since we'd both been sitting a lot the past few days, we started up the AG trail thinking "we'd go till we felt like turning back".

We ended up at Emerald Lake and decided to complete a loop as loops are always cooler than out and backs. We headed towards the Timpanokee trail, and soon encountered a transition from minimal snow to full on postholing.  I was in shorts and a T-shirt and got super cold. We didn't have any plans to summit, so we didn't, and thankfully there is a 2nd trail that heads down earlier than the TK summit trail which requires running up to the saddle. We skied our way down the TK trail to the parking lot, where we were both quite tired, dehydrated, and hungry having not brought any food and one water bottle each since we had originally planned on running for an hour or two. We took trail 150 and 159 back up to the summit trailhead, completing the awesome loop in 4.5 hours, roughly 16 miles and 4k gain.

Map of our loop. Intersection of Timp/TK cut off at bottom

Our cutoff is the first right after Emerald Lake

Adding the summit and no snow to this loop would make it 5/5 stars as there is 0% road running, spectacular colors, runnable terrain, and gets you tired. I need to bring the camera on all our "short runs" in case they turn into more memorable runs. We didn't get any climbing in but it was definitely one of the best loops in the Wasatch I've done this year.