This summer, I’ve been mainly focused on parenting my son, commercial photography and filmmaking work, and visiting family all around New England. This hasn’t left quite as much time as usual for spontaneous big days out in the mountains but tomorrow I’m headed to Baxter for the first time for trail running adventures with Kellan, Emma (not Scudder), and Arlin. I’m learning how to plan ahead I guess?

Most of my running has been on the muddy trails and flat roads of Portland, ME so I’m excited to give my legs a real challenge and hopefully we see a moose.

Here’s a look back through a Presidential Traverse I did back in June with Alex and Tanner.

The weather had been all over the place the week of the run with bad air quality days, record high temperatures in the White Mountains, and then the day after we ran, big snow showers. We made the not-generally-recommendable plan to meet up in the afternoon for the rocky 18.5 mile traverse across the Presis with more than 8,500′ of elevation gain. Late afternoon trail runs are my favorite strategy to avoid crowded trails because hikers generally start early and summit midday.

We had never run together before but made consistently good time across the challenging route, having every summit except Mt. Madison to ourselves. We all were pretty hot and a little hungry and thirsty but made it back to our cars at Crawford ~8 hours later just barely able to make it down the trail without turning on our headlamps. I’m always happy to have my headlamp but not have to use it. It’s such a wonderful route and I can’t wait to run it again!