30 x 30: #2 – Take a day hike

If you want to find out how in or out of shape you are, go for a hike. Seriously, I knew I’d been lazy recently, but holy hell! I was hoping to cross four things off my list this week but only got to three, but YAY! Nine out of thirty (30%) done.

I’m still not sure that the sign was right, because our trackers definitely said longer than 2.5 miles, but I’m glad I did it! My friend Peter hiked a bunch of mountains last year and asked me a bunch of times and I always said no. When I was making my list I knew I needed to add it to the list and I did, but sheesh it was freaking exhausting. It was about a two-hour drive up and we hiked Mt. Tecumseh, 4003 ft/1,220m in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and it took a little under four hours (up and down).

Thankfully, there were tons of markers, above left, for the trail as I was convinced Peter had NO idea where we were going, but he did a great job taking us around and dealing with my slowness/whininess. It wasn’t really that bad, but we took a lot of rests. I was concerned about my ankle from a bad spill I took earlier in the week, but thankfully it, and my knees, held up. It’s hard to decide which was worse on my knees/ankles, going up or coming down. You’ll see in a bit that we came down the ski slopes and those were STEEP! The one bonus was that we went a hell of a lot faster down than we did up. There were a lot of creeks and water pools, above right, and my shoes got soaked at one point so of course I was an ass for quite a while because I was grumpy and my feet were wet.

Thankfully there were quite a few view points that gave a good excuse to rest. Don’t you love that the “view” sign is pointing at the view—hardy har har. The views were beautiful and we got to look out over the ski slopes we took down later, but of course the most exciting part was the summit:

That’s the view from the summit. (You should click on it and look at it, it’s really pretty.) That idiot man in the picture nearly fell off on the up-trail when we were walking and scared the crap out of both of us. It was a stunning view! I wish we could’ve spent a bit more time up there, but the bugs were atrocious so we were only there for a few minutes. On the way up thankfully, Peter chose the best route up because the route we took down from the summit was RIDICULOUS. The photo on the bottom left of the collage is looking back up at the summit of Mt. Tecumseh from the ski slopes and the sign we took a photo of on the way out.

Once we passed the summit we headed toward the slopes for our down trip and right before we got there it felt like we were on the forest moon of Endor. It was really weird to all of a sudden see these giant cell towers through the woods. Thankfully as soon as we turned the corner there was a building and the top of one of the ski lifts.

As I mentioned the way down was pretty rough too as we had to walk down mostly blue trails and the steepness was enough to bother my ankles and knees. It didn’t help that as soon as my shoes got wet I started to slip and I slipped a couple of times on the way down. Thankfully, I didn’t hurt anything just got grumpier each time. I took a few photos on the way down:

That’s the damn slope we walked down. It seriously felt like it took FOREVER, but that’s because I was so grumpy at slipping and the bugs were bad. It was kind of neat though to see what’s under the snow when you walk down the trails. The photo on the right is another photo of Mt. Tecumseh’s summit that we’d been on less than an hour before.

I’m not sure I’ll hike any more mountains in the near future, but it was a lot of fun!