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hiking

Hike

Sunday 8 September 2024

We headed to Paris Mountain State Park today for a warm-up hike for the coming fall hiking season. E and I, we prefer mountain biking. K enjoys it as well, but she prefers hiking, and she’s got a goal for this season: the Dismal Loop. Today’s hike was much less daunting:

We tried to talk the Girl into going with us, but she was intent on studying at the library. Of all of us, she definitely has the most negative opinion of hiking.

We’ve been to this lake several times, and we’ve even got pictures of L tottering about the place as a toddler.

The Boy managed fine, but he’s insisting that he’s outgrown these hiking boots — which he wore daily just this summer at Scout Camp. Is it possibe? And they’re the Girl’s boots, not his own boots.

Two signs of how our kids are changing: our daughter elects to go study at the library (I’m sure there was a fair amount of socializing as well — that’s how I studied at the library in high school), and our son is approaching full size with alarming rapidity, with a full-size appetite developing and a full-size teenage attitude emerging.

We decided to come head back next Sunday, and the Boy and I will ride while K takes the dog for a walk. The Boy, by the way, now rides K’s mountain bike whenever he gets the chance.

So that means we’re also looking for yet another bike for him. He’s not quite outgrown his bike physically, but he’s already putting demands on it that the poor bike can’t handle. He’s broken a chain once and gotten more pinch-punctures than I care to recall.

Once we got back and had some dinner, K did what she always does: she found some chore or other she felt she should have accomplished ealier and gets to work.

I graded articles of the week for my honors kids and snapped a picture of K, noticing once I’d converted it to black and white how awful our front yard looks.

Black Balsam Knob

Sunday 9 October 2022

We took a quick drive (well, not quick for the Boy — it was two hours) over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for an afternoon hike today. The Girl stayed home because she had volleyball practice — open gym for the club team she’s signed with this year. And she doesn’t really like hiking. And she’s almost 16 and is starting to have her own life — though it pains me to admit it. How did she get so big so fast?

Be all that as it may, we headed a little further south on the Parkway than we usually go and ended up hiking along ridges with gorgeous views.

K took some pictures with her phone.

K’s pictures

We both took some pictures with the Nikon.

Pictures from the Nikon

And we arrived home exhausted and hungry.

“We really should do this more often,” K said.

Babia Gora

Wednesday 13 July 2022

I lived at the base of Babia Gora for seven years and only once tried to reach the summit. Shortly after that, I injured my knee while hiking in the Tatra Mountains. Some time after that, when my knee had healed, I injured the other knee. And so I never made it to the top of Babia. Until today.

Here’s some video showing just how windy it was at the top.

Trzy Korony

Sunday 3 July 2022

Climbing mountains is something my mind loves but my body questions. Ever since I seriously injured my knee about 25 years ago hiking in the Tatra Mountains, I’ve been wary of mountains. The way up is not the issue. In fact, it’s a great relief sometimes to be heading up. No, it’s the way down – that crash! crash! crash! against the knees. Almost 190 pounds dropping on knees time and time again.

So when we started our trek up to Trzy Korony today, I was a little concerned about the effect it might have on my knee. I was more concerned when I saw just how steep it was. Fortunately, we all made it fine.

And I’m so exhausted that I can’t say much more than that about the whole day.

Saturday Hike

Saturday 9 January 2021

When the Girl hears that we’re thinking about a family hike, the reaction is seldom positive. When we’re on the hike, there can be a bit of complaining, a bit of whining, a bit of “I’m sooo tired”-ing. We get it: hiking is not her thing. But it’s K’s thing — by far her favorite outdoor activity. And I love it, too. Probably not as much as K, but I love K, so I love it more than I probably would without her.

But when her oldest friend asks her if she wants to go on a hike with him and his family, the boots come back looking like this, and there’s only positive words about the hike.

I guess we need to invite him along for our next family hike.

Raven Cliff Falls

Sunday 9 August 2020

Today was the last Sunday before the school year starts, so we made the most of it with a hike that was supposed to be 5 miles total but ended up being 8. A lot packed into that sentence.

Starting school. What does that even mean this year? For weeks we’ve been wondering about what the year will look like. When our average daily new C-19 statewide case number was 100-200, we ended the school year in March and spent the rest of the year online babysitting for the most part. Now our daily numbers are 1,000+, and they have been for weeks. And we’re talking about going back to school? It seems like madness. But we’ve got a Republican governor and a staunch Trump supporter to boot, so science be damned — let’s send those kids back to school. (Our governor pointed out that there’s little risk in school-age children dying from this. When asked about the risks to teachers and their families, our fine governor said, “Well, they signed up for the job” — as if he were talking about police officers or infantry soldiers.)

As for the 8-mile-should-have-been-5-mile hike — what can we say? We used AllTrails.com to calculate the distance and didn’t realize it was only calculating the portion of the hike that was on the red trail, neglecting the portion of the blue and pink trails we had to go on to reach Raven Cliff Falls. One would think that “Raven Cliff Falls Trail” leads to — guess — RCF. But it only gets you so far — the rest is whatever the blue and pink portions were called.

But all the kids made it — with minimal complaining. Well, “minimal” is often so very relative…