The Fitness Adventures of Warlord Blade: Christmas and Lake Mountain!!

I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas!

I know I did!

From my wife AND from my brother - I got Slacklines!! I'm SO excited for the weather to warm up so I can get tied onto a tree and work on my balance. Now I have a VERY long (25m!) Red Gibbon Classic Slackline and an ENO Slackwire Slackline with carry case. (Affiliate links) I'm looking forward to taking that one with me all over the place

I also got my boys Daisy Red Ryder BB guns which will help me get THEM out and interested in the mountains and outdoorsy-type stuff.

This morning I woke up early and we drove way down South, ultimately to the West side of Utah Lake.

It was a blizzard! Finally Winter!

Although in a lot of ways - I'm not that excited about that... I've been liking the warm and dry season!

We met up with the Crew in American Fork and drove out to Saratoga Springs to head up to the top of Lake Mountain (2nd picture there on the Wiki was where we ended - it did NOT look like that!)

The past few trips I have taken a hat and didn't use it. This morning I didn't take a hat.

I would DEFINITELY have used it!

Matt had a hat I could use - but it was just a baseball-type hat, so no ear coverings.

For the first mile or so I had one hand up blocking my ear so the wind and snow wouldn't get in! If not for the blustery snow, my ears would have been cold but not unbearably so!

Once we got up past the mouth of the canyon, the wind didn't bite as much - but we were still trudging through close to 2 feet of snow - or more - the entire way up.

The wind was CRAZY at the top, and I had major beard-cicles going on!

Once we made it up - we were VERY quickly ready to head down.

Downhill was FUN! Also very difficult because it was like running on sand, so finding proper footing was interesting. (I'm in the red hat... Credit to Craig for the vid, although Blogger KILLED the quality... his is better sheesh)

I only fell 2 times, not counting the purposeful fall after "PARKOUR!!"-ing over a gate near the end.

While I feel like I was extremely slow trudging UP the mountain - I made up for it on the way back!

My watch died before we even started, so I was unable to get an accurate measurement of my own overall pace, but others measures put us at 8.4 miles in 2 hours and 25 minutes, which is not too bad considering the weather! 7,645 feet is the peak. Another Peak! Yay!

Now, Behold!

The Beardcicle! AKA IceBeard!!