View Benchmark, VB, Suncrest

Living in Draper, UT I have the luxury of being able to run some of the best trails closer to home than just about anywhere else in the country. Corner canyon and the Draper trail system allow me to run more than 40 miles without hardly running back over my footsteps. As a trail runner who also likes to hit the top of a mountain whenever I can, and often being unable to once the snow settles into the higher peaks, I'm grateful that several of the trails in Corner Canyon lead up to a local peak sitting above the housing community of Suncrest, located on the hill/mountain on the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.

View Benchmark, AKA VB or Suncrest Peak is a hill by local standards as it only sits at an elevation of 6682 above sea level. Most people wouldn't even consider it a mountain since the peak is only 1.5 miles and less than 300 vertical feet from the closest homes. At one point a developer owned much of the land and therefore there is a well maintained gravel road with sewer and water put in nearly up to the top of the peak itself. However, in a recent purchase the city of Draper has acquired the land and promised to not develop anything other than trails on it. History has proven that they will likely keep their word, making for future awesome trails to be created.

Because of its proximity to my home I regularly make the 5 min pilgrimage to one of the main trailheads and start towards the peak. Usually, if I'm running with my friend Scott, we start off of Vintage View Dr and head up Ann's Trail, then connect to the downhill mountain bike trail and up to the summit via the dirt roads. If I run solo I usually elect to take one of the other many trails that get me to the summit dirt roads - Canyon Hollow to Clark's and Eagle Crest or the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to Potato Hill and then to Ann's. If I want to run even longer distances I can loop around to some of the higher trails using many of the other options in Corner Canyon. Needless to say, in any given run I can get anywhere from 1500 to 2500 vertical feet of climbing in a single run of up to 8 - 10 miles and tag a local peak. Needless to say, I've done it a lot this year. And by a lot, I mean more than  30 times. Scott has done it around 50 times. This past week I did it three times, using two different trails, thus prompting the need to write this post. If you live in the Salt Lake or Utah valleys I would highly recommend checking out some of the trails in Draper and Corner Canyon, you won't regret it. If you want a tour of them, just comment on this post.

Here's a short video I made of one of mine and Scott's run up there a few weeks ago. Watch it in HD.