Sunday, November 5, 2017

The hiking mixup

A friend told me about a great hike.  There's a fire service lookout tower at the top of the hike and it has incredible views.  It's such a fun hike.

Grab my NW Trails book and find "Lookout Mountain" so off I go.  As usual, I hike with a hydration pack, energy bars and assorted trail food, Kabar knife, emergency blanket, matches and lighter, firestarter, jacket in addition to what I am wearing.  I am pretty serious about not being "that guy" if something happens.


OK, nice steep beginning but that's OK.  I'm in decent shape.

Only it doesn't stop being steep.






I'm taking it fairly easy but it is a tough go.  Started out right behind a younger couple, felt bad passing them as I didn't want to go zooming by and then get passed right back when I realized that I was overdoing it.  Stopped a couple times to let them get ahead, but every time I started walking again I would catch them within five minutes.  Eventually just passed and never saw them again, so I assume they turned around.



Nice scenery.  If you like treed mountainsides.  Nothing in the way of views, but I do need to get up to the top where the tower and the great views are, so I keep climbing. 

Finally, I might be getting near the top.





Never mind.  It's just a clearing, and now, I keep going up.





After about two hours of climbing I realize that not only is it snowing/raining but I am starting to get tired enough to stumble on roots and rocks, and I have no idea when this hike might actually top out.  Not only that, it is snowing/raining which means that there most likely won't be any views at the top anyway. 

Discretion being the better part of valor I turn around and head back down to the car.  Two other people signed in after me but I never saw them, so presumably they started up and didn't make it as far as me before they decided this wasn't the place or the time.

Complained to my friend about the horrible, straight-up-the-mountain hike and he looked at me like I was crazy.  "No, the Hidden Lake hike is really nice and pretty easy".

Oh. 

Wrong lookout tower.  Needed to go another couple miles up the same road.  Maybe next year cause now it's cold and snowy.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's quite impressive!

heresolong said...

Not sure if you mean the mountainside, me for making it nearly two hours up said mountainside, or ... well, not sure what the "or" would be. Hopefully there will be more hikes as it is something I stopped doing when I got married (she hated hiking) and that I've been trying to find time to do since she has been gone (with minimal success due to a variety of factors).

Either way, thanks for stopping by.

Rev. James Cost said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rev. James Cost said...

Talking of hiking and country walks, I noticed a comment from you on the ‘Gentleman’s Gazette’ website, responding to his review of Tricker’s boots. You said they were ‘waaay’ out of your price range. I’m curious, how did you get on with those? Tricker’s have a website called ‘Tricker’s Outlet,’ that enables you to purchase their boots at a much reduced price. For example, the country boots for £275, reduced to £220 as part of the ‘Black Friday’ sales. Perhaps you could even have the VAT removed (as you are living outside the EU) and get them for under £185. Regards. :-)

heresolong said...

Thanks for stopping by James. I stopped by the Danner (high quality boots) store in Portland a couple years ago looking for hiking boots and on their clearance rack found a set of chukkas for about $120 US. Very high quality, good leather, probably not as nice as the Tricker's but reasonably affordable.