The Navy SEALS have a motto in that "the only easy day was yesterday." After the previous 7 mile trail and hearing lots of stories concerning the 'A-Hole trail' I was hesitant about doing it, but since I have yet not done a trail at an event, I decided to go ahead anyway. We hung around the hotel for a while as the hares took off and passed the time by playing 'butt scrable' that I won't further describe here but could be figured out if you view the weekend photos. The thing about trail is that you never know where it is going to go or how long it will be since that is generally the fun part of it. Trail started with some pretty tough climbing along the El Paso scenic drive that took us up and over the city. fortunately about 2 miles in there was a beer stop just before the tough climb. 
Since I was taking a lot of photos along the way, I tended to stay in the back of the pack, which worked out to my advantage when I saw the entire pack running back up the drive after previously reached the top and headed down the other side. Apparently there was a 'countback 69' that meant they had to turn around and count back 69 hash marks to find where the true trail veered off. This new trial went straight up the mountain along a service road for the local radio towers. Combined with the cold, it was definitely a pretty tough climb, although the views were great. The way up was along easy going roadway, however heading back down we were going along some pretty rocky foot trails.
When we got back to civilization, I thought that we would be done, but instead of going back towards the hotel, it just kept going down the valley. Further and further down we went through all kinds of different terrain, including the interstate roadside, though ditch culverts, and draining areas. We lost trail a couple of times, but thankfully the front runners were marking the path well enough for us to follow. We had a long distance along some active tracks so instead of dodging cars, we also had to keep checking back to make sure some train wasn't bearing down on us like a scene from 'Stand By Me'. At one point a passing train was going slow enough that I was able to jump on and hitch a ride for a few hundred yards before it finally stopped. That is something I've always wanted to do, so it was a neat, if not risky experience.
After going through a bit of the campus of the University of Texas: el Paso, we finally made it back to the hotel. The trail ended up being about 16.6 miles of tough, high elevation gain and loss, running and was definitely the toughest trial I had ever experienced. In all it took me just about 5 hours of continuous running and walking to make it to the end, but I did earn the coveted completion t-shirt. After a well needed shower, finding hot water was a huge challenge in itself, I relaxed for a while until a wonderful dinner was ready. The rest of the evening was spent in physical recover by playing games of 3-Man other other tests of skill and stature.Again, here is a blog by Bonsucker that will fill in the gaps: http://bonesucker.blogspot.com/2007/01/never-leave-camp.html
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