mtn.goat
New member
It's a little late but it took me a while to work on the photos from this trip.
Well a friend of mine has been asking me when I would take him on a hike in the high peaks seeing as I'm up there so much lately. I finally relented warning him that my hikes are never easy and that we would be doing about 15-16mi over 5 peaks (counting Pyramid) but that they would be some of the best views in the HP (in my own opinion). Woke up that saturday to crystal clear skies and a forecast of temps in the 70's... PERFECT hiking weather. Hiked in from the Ausable club to the dam at the lower Ausable Lake. Looking at how clear everything was as I gazed down the lake I knew it was going to be one amazing day. I was pumped!
I had decided to take the "scenic trail" up to sawteeth. While it had some amazing views I wasn't too keen on the large amount of scrambling/boulder hopping at the bottom. Soon enough we started the climb and I let my friend know that this would probably be the hardest part of the day (little did I know that the scenic trail even by my standards was quite steep! ). We started up it stopping to take pictures and just kept trucking along. I explained my philosophy on taking it easy and how i'd found that just trucking along at a slow but steady pace seemed to work best. He was sucking wind a bit and started to slow down so we seperated a bit. I stopped at the top and waited for him to catch up. We laughed about how either of our friends back home would've given up halfway up that climb and enjoyed the view. It was amazing! The only time I've seen clarity like this was in the winter. The quote of the day was from my friend... "Wow.. the mountains never seem to end.. I can see forever." Only his second time in the HP and you couldn't get better weather.
We made our way up over pyramid and over to gothics enjoying the views along the way. There were 5-10 people on Gothics. Relaxing on Gothics I laid down and took a cat nap and enjoyed the sun for a half hour or more and the fact that there was NO WIND! I tried to explain that the lack of wind was very rare for the HP but I'm not sure my friend understood how rare it really was. We continued on over Armstrong and UWJ and then descended down to the Ausable club. The last few miles seemed to take forever but I finished feeling good and enjoying having only taken a nice "easy" hike (by my standards ). I was pretty happy with how well he had handled the hike (I told him he had passed my "test" and could go on longer harder hikes with me now). Only later that night did he inform me that "I died like 4 times going up to Sawteeth.".... hmmm... why is that a common quote I hear when I take people on hikes...
What a perfect day! Here's some pics from the day.
Note: You'll have to forgive me on the quality of some of the pics. I let webshots resize them and they don't seem to do quite a good job at it.
Well a friend of mine has been asking me when I would take him on a hike in the high peaks seeing as I'm up there so much lately. I finally relented warning him that my hikes are never easy and that we would be doing about 15-16mi over 5 peaks (counting Pyramid) but that they would be some of the best views in the HP (in my own opinion). Woke up that saturday to crystal clear skies and a forecast of temps in the 70's... PERFECT hiking weather. Hiked in from the Ausable club to the dam at the lower Ausable Lake. Looking at how clear everything was as I gazed down the lake I knew it was going to be one amazing day. I was pumped!
I had decided to take the "scenic trail" up to sawteeth. While it had some amazing views I wasn't too keen on the large amount of scrambling/boulder hopping at the bottom. Soon enough we started the climb and I let my friend know that this would probably be the hardest part of the day (little did I know that the scenic trail even by my standards was quite steep! ). We started up it stopping to take pictures and just kept trucking along. I explained my philosophy on taking it easy and how i'd found that just trucking along at a slow but steady pace seemed to work best. He was sucking wind a bit and started to slow down so we seperated a bit. I stopped at the top and waited for him to catch up. We laughed about how either of our friends back home would've given up halfway up that climb and enjoyed the view. It was amazing! The only time I've seen clarity like this was in the winter. The quote of the day was from my friend... "Wow.. the mountains never seem to end.. I can see forever." Only his second time in the HP and you couldn't get better weather. We made our way up over pyramid and over to gothics enjoying the views along the way. There were 5-10 people on Gothics. Relaxing on Gothics I laid down and took a cat nap and enjoyed the sun for a half hour or more and the fact that there was NO WIND! I tried to explain that the lack of wind was very rare for the HP but I'm not sure my friend understood how rare it really was. We continued on over Armstrong and UWJ and then descended down to the Ausable club. The last few miles seemed to take forever but I finished feeling good and enjoying having only taken a nice "easy" hike (by my standards
). I was pretty happy with how well he had handled the hike (I told him he had passed my "test" and could go on longer harder hikes with me now). Only later that night did he inform me that "I died like 4 times going up to Sawteeth.".... hmmm... why is that a common quote I hear when I take people on hikes... What a perfect day! Here's some pics from the day.
Note: You'll have to forgive me on the quality of some of the pics. I let webshots resize them and they don't seem to do quite a good job at it.
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