I picked my sweetheart up from the airport
at 2:30 this morning. We came home and
went to sleep. She had been in San Antonio helping our 2nd daughter
with the aftermath of childbirth, so she is accustomed to the Central Time
Zone, and I am pretty well re-acclimated to Alaska time after our Eastern Time
Zone trip to Maryland to see our 4th daughter’s family. She woke up
before I did and had sorted 2 weeks’ worth of mail by the time I got up. I used
to take care of the mail, but she complained that she never got to see it. Now
she sees it all, and I only get the bills and statement I wanted to see in the
first place. A perfect solution.
She announced to me that she was
going downstairs to work out on the treadmill and, feeding off her enthusiasm
for exercise, I said that I had thought about climbing Baldy this morning. I
actually think about it every morning, but she had spurred into action and the
other fall pre-snow projects seemed to be under control, so I began to prepare
to follow through on my pronouncement.
It may seem odd to begin to
prepare, but preparation itself has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I first
had to dress for the mountain’s ascent which, in this season, is pretty easy.
Our October weather has been unseasonably warm and all I needed was a flannel
shirt, my hiking stick, and my boots. By the time I was dressed and had gone
outside, I noticed that all of the things that I had stacked on the front porch
as I cleaned up for winter were all over the driveway, stuck to the fence, and
in the branches of the trees. A crate of apples that had been on the porch was
upset with apples all over the place. You didn’t even need to listen to the
howling of the wind to guess that it had been blowing during the night.
I picked up all the paraphernalia and
put it away before I finally got my hiking stick, set my heart rate monitor on
my wrist, started the trip recorder on my phone, put on my headset, and started
the audiobook playing. I was finally ready at 10:44 and started up the trail.
The wind normally is not as fierce
climbing up through the woods as it is at the house. The house sits out on a
prominence where it gets the brunt of the wind and the storms that pass through
Meadow Creek Canyon, but once you start up through the woods, things quiet down
and the buffeting stops. That was partially true today, but the wind was gusty
and whipped around a lot on the way up. By the time I got to sit down at my
favorite overlook about 2/3 of the way to the top, I had spent a lot of time
picking and eating the High Bush Cranberries, the Blueberries, the Low Bush
Cranberries, and the Crowberries. I wasn’t in a hurry and my book was
entertaining and the autumn berries were a treat.
During the last 1/3 of the climb,
the wind picked up a bit. By picked up, I mean that it began howling like a
banshee. The closer I got to the top, the harder it blew. I knew it was serious
when I felt my hat was about to fly away and I took it off and threaded a
finger through the strap on the back. A bit further along and I could no longer
hear the book playing. That was because my headset had been blown off and I had
to backtrack to locate it by the side of the trail. It joined my hat
interwoven in my right hand’s fingers while my left hand was still occupied
with the hiking stick. My glasses were the next to feel like they were about to
leave me, so I took them off and hung the bow hinge over a button in my shirt
with the glasses under the shirt. By this time, I was nearing the top and the
wind had become awesome. I don’t remember every having been in wind that I
literally could not stand up in. To advance on the summit, I had to crouch low
or move forward on my hands and knees. What a surprise that there were no other
hikers on the trail!
Finally, instead of standing on the
very summit in victory, I reached up and touched the highest rock with my hand
before turning around and being blown to the ground, jamming my phone in the
mud, and scraping the heels of my hands.
Challenging? Yes. All in all, a
perfect day for a hike.
2 comments:
I remember a very strong wind on our drive up to Alaska the very first time. We were camping, as usual, and the wind was so strong. I got my blanket and stretched it out and then leaned into the wind and it held me up. Maybe not as awesome as your climb, but i don't think i was in danger of losing anything.
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