Colorado Springs Trail Running

I ran the Rampart Reservoir today. Parked at the trailhead at 8:30am. The trail leading down to the trail was icy snow packed but runnable. Some of the dirt path was visible and was obvious that lot's of freeze/thaw cycles had occurred. I saw many deep footprints in the dirt path, but they were frozen at this time of the morning. Sun was shining bright when I hit 1.5m (wooden bridge) and I ran clockwise. For the first 3m from the bridge it was only about 20% snow covered (packed snow). As I hit shady spots there was more snow (9 inches), but there were footprints (and a bike tire track) I could run in so it wasn't that much work. About 8.7 miles in I somehow lost the trail (I could no longer see footprints), so I hiked up and came upon the trail again. This is where I saw the parkinglot at the start of the dam (cinderblock bathrooms). So the part I missed must have been .5m that went around the last lip of the shoreline just prior to the dam. Anyhow, ran over the dam and the white gate was open. Then managed to find the trail again (near the two big pipe displays). This is where the running got tough. I could see the trail but there were no signs of footprints, just the occasional rabbit prints (and a few giant paw prints). There were several sections I was postholing up to mid-calf and it got rather cold (very shady) about 11m into run. There were two stream crossings that were frozen solid...these turned out to be the most interesting things I saw on the run. The water had frozen solid around some pretty large trees and was just one of those curiosities that made me double-take. By the time I got back to the wooden bridge I was tired of plowing snow and my feet were very wet. The trail back up to the trailhead was now thawing out and muddy in spots so I tried to leap over the mud and stay on the ice patches. I managed to get back to the trailhead and my GPS read 14.43 miles. Overall the trail was 55% runnable path, 25% packed snow, and 20% untouched snow (with my footprints now). I didn't wear treads (they wouldn't have helped anyway). The reservoir was solid ice and was making some cool cracking sounds from the ice expansion. Great overall run.

thanks for that report Scott. I have been tempted to go up there because I want to do some photo stuff in winter conditions. I would have opted to part at the dam but the road is closed in winter...c'est la vie...14-15 is a lot under those conditions. I had thought a bit about shorting the course by hitting the ice...Jerry would be an expert at that since he ice fishes a lot. I don't think I would opt to do that if I were alone.