I spent time over the holidays in Austin, Texas. Austin has some wonderful trails and greenways. I entered the Barton Springs Greenbelt at its Zilker Park trailhead, parking the car near the Barton Springs Pool facility.

I have to digress and mention that Zilker Park is just great. Children and adults alike can entertain themselves for hours. Besides the wide open spaces and nature trails, there is an awesome playground, ball fields, a train, and even climbing rocks. Notable events that happen there include the Zilker Park Kite Festival and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

So back to the running... I had not traveled very far along the trail before finding rocks sticking out of the path. At this point I was already glad that I had opted to wear my Altra Lone Peak trail shoes. It turns out that these scattered rocks were only a small taste of what was to come.



And then the trail became rockier...



Barton Creek runs through a small canyon of sorts, with steep cliffs on either side.





At times, the path splits and gives opportunities to cross back and forth across the creek bed. At one point I found myself running along a dry boulder field. The rock plate in my Altra Lone Peak trail shoes did an awesome job at protecting my feet. This is really the first trail I have run on that is worthy of the Lone Peak.



Some portions of trail were fenced with a zig-zag opening to allow foot traffic only. Bike traffic was diverted to nearby parallel trails.



I ran across a few cute little bridges.



Some sections were very narrow single track with slightly scary drop-offs below.



Most of the photos I took were of the more interesting and rocky terrain. However, there are also many long sections of packed dirt and smooth trail. Of the few people I saw, most of them were wearing conventional running shoes.

Trails are awesome and the Barton Springs Greenbelt was a lot of fun to run on, just be warned that you might want a real trail shoe like the Altra Lone Peak to tackle the rocky sections. If this were a review of the Lone Peak, I'd score it very well.

The Altra Lone Peak trail shoes may be available from a running store near you, or if not, you can order online from Altra's web site. Get 10% off and free shipping by clicking on the Altra Zero Drop ad on this page (the discounts will become visible during Checkout).