Goblers Knob, in the summer?

So this week the fun mountain was Gobler's Knob. I've never been to it in the summer, in fact I didn't even know you could go, but as usual, I was wrong.

A good friend, lets say Kentucky, was in town and wanted to go for a run, so I headed blindly up Mill Creek Canyon to see what we could find that wasn't too hot or snowy. It was Saturday so we needed to think out of the box a little and the Alexander Basin trail came to mind. So we jump on it and started running for a very short period of time before 1.) it got really steep and 2.) Kentucky was having pulmonary tachycardia. We slowed to a crawl (actually faster than all of the other Saturday hikers) and continued upwards. The good news is that its a steep trail so no time is wasted and we where at Alexander Basin in no time. It is just as pretty in the summer as the winter.

We hit snow at about the bottom of the upper bowl and skirted it all the way to the saddle at the top of the North North East aspect of the bowl. We caught the trail again to the top of Goblers Knob and I got to see the geological survey mark, 10K feet. Then heading down into Mill A we caught Desolation trail 019 and finally got into a good clip to the East. The decent of of Goblers was a little hairy, but the perfect time between snow melt and overgrowth. We where able to glisade a good portion of the decent in our running shoes. It was the first glisade of the season and it started on a steep 30+ degree slope, but luckily my skills held together and I kept it upright for the whole decent. Kentucky decided to go with the sitting glisade with much success, and much humor for me.

We ran Deso trail 019 to Dog lake to see the 800 dogs, then quickly continued down to Little Water trail head, then back down the road to the Car. You can see the approximate route at: http://www.scribblemaps.com/#id=GoblersKnob