Sunday, June 21, 2009

Who to hike with?

While Greg was gone in Georgia I had to find other people to go hiking with. Luckily I found a couple different people that were willing to go with me.

Raquel and I at Lower Bell Reservoir. Raquel's first hike!
Me, Holly and Landon at Adams Canyon
Adams Canyon Waterfall
Over the weekend I hung out with 2 legends in the hiking world.
Dean Molen and Ken Jones.
South Pequop - Nevada
Dean and Ken on Spruce Mountain - Nevada

Monday, June 1, 2009

A Memorable Memorial Day

FYI - I know in previous posts that I have done you haven't been able to enlarge the pictures. I think I fixed it now, so click on the picture to see the actual size. :-)

Ely, NV

Our first peak of the trip was Ward Mountain. There was a road that went to the top, but it was snowed in and we ended up hiking the snow covered road. The were storms brewing all around us, so we had to hurry to the top and hurry off the top. It started to hail on our way back to the car, but we didn't get too wet.

One of our many camp spots. There was a river that ran right by our camp spot, that we never expected to see in the desert.

We couldn't find very much fire wood at this spot, so Greg decided that it would be a great idea if I (because I was the one with sandals) crossed the river and got us a lot of fire wood so that we could cook our food. So me being the nice person that I am and wanting some dinner, decided that I would cross this river. The river was only about 6 inches high and 5 feet wide. So I started across the river, I was almost to the other side when all of the sudden my foot got stuck in the mud! I was yelling and worried about stepping outside the water, because I could see all the bugs and spiders crawling on the ground right outside of the water. Finally I decided to just step on the bugs with my barefoot. Then my shoe popped out of the mud and started floating down the river! I was yelling at Greg saying, "Get my shoe, get my shoe!" He just started laughing at me and told me to hurry and get it before it went down stream. Luckily for me, my shoe ended up getting stuck in some trees and I finally got it back. I also got lots of firewood on the other side of the river.

Currant Mountain - this was the hardest of all the peaks and this is the one I gave up on before the hike even started. :-) Good job Greg - I'm so proud of you!

I can't say very much about this peak since I didn't do it. I will try to hassle Greg and get him to add something to our blog. :-)

Troy Peak was another toughie. This was a very long slog up a huge mountain. When I finally got to the summit we could only stay a few minutes. At the top Greg put his hand by mine and shocked me. This is not normal for a mountain! After that we were taking summit shots and Greg looked at me and said, "Um, your hair is standing straight up." This photo was taken around 9:40 am - notice how nice the weather looks.

By noon, this is the cloud that we had above us on top of the peak. So, if you were wondering why my hair would be standing straight up, this cloud should explain it all.

We thought we were safe once we got off the summit. We started heading down the very steep slope and about 300 ft. below the summit Greg realized he had forgotten his GPS at the top. He had to ran back up and find his GPS. I felt very bad for him, because it was a steep bugger - I'm just glad it was him that forgot something and not me. ;-) Love you babe.

On our way home we stopped to see the Lunar Crater. It is about 300 ft. down and Greg decided he was going to hike it. I also passed on this hike, because I knew we still had one more peak to do before we were going to get home.

This picture was taken by Greg inside the crater, of me standing at the top of the crater - 300 ft. above him.

When Greg got back to the top he realized he had lost his expensive sunglasses somewhere along his hike. Which meant that he was going to have to do the whole hike over. The first time he hiked it, he had done a loop - he went down one spot and came up another. He headed back down into the crater and ended up finding them a little short of the bottom. It was a good work out for him. Even with him hiking the crater practically two times, he still kicked my butt up the mountain we did after visiting the Lunar Crater.

Our last peak of the trip and close to home. Becky Peak is near Wendover, NV. Greg had to hassle me to do this one, because I was being lazy and just wanted to go home. I'm really glad that I have a boyfriend that pushes me to do peaks - I wonder how many peaks I wouldn't have if I didn't have Greg there encouraging me to do them all. This turned out to be a cool, little hike. There were tons of wild horse trails all over the mountain. We didn't see any wild horses, but we have seen them around this area before.

A great memorial weekend as usual!