Over the Boot Penetration
The hike on Saturday was awesome. We started at 4am with headlamps and it was cold but beautiful. I had to free climb over a 50’ rock face in the dark without any rope (there were tons footholds-photos will be up soon) and we got to the top of our first summit at about 5:30am in the pitch black. (Thanks to Walter who gave me extra headlamp batteries!) We summited the next peak at about 6:30am where we stayed and watched the sun rise. This is where things went bad. It started to snow. And snow, and snow, and then rain. Then 30 mph winds. We summited the next peak at about 9am in the pouring rain and had no views and did not even stay on the summit it was so cold and windy. At 11ish we got to the spot where were suppose to meet Dorothy and we were 2 hours late and she left us a not that she had left. This should have been a sign. We summited the 4th peak at about noon, about a full hour behind schedule since it was so difficult to cross the terrain being so wet.
By 1:30 we had completed about 18 miles and 4 peaks and called it a day since it had now been raining/snowing for 7 straight hours and by now our gore-tex was failing Ned had stepped in mud so deep that the mud had reached “over the boot penetration”. Anyway, 18 miles, two summits in the dark, 4 peaks total and great conversation on the trail with friends made it an awesome day.
Since we finished early, I was able to attend a family gathering in the area for my Grandmother’s 85th Birthday. So it turns out that like everyone in my family reads my blog. (That fact alone is scary.) What is really funny is that they first say that “oh I just stumbled across it, I skimmed it, it is stupid anyway." But then they spent time telling me how I spelled this word wrong on this day and how this entry was stupid, etc. Hummm, I guess they were doing something more than skimming. :) It was great to see everyone.
