A few weeks ago my Hubs and I were talking about hiking. Now keep in mind we are real hiking die-hards, but we do like an adventure and since we live so close to so many amazing mountains, how could we not like "taking a walk"! My Hubs brought up Mount Si, This is of course is a 3500 foot elevation hike almost 4 miles to the summit known as the "Hay stack". this is not for the faint of heart, and I'm thinking with three young kids and only one day to do it, is he crazy?! But I figured what the heck, we could at least go halfway and see how we feel, right?....
We picked a mild Saturday and prayed it wouldn't bee too hot. It was only a 45 minute drive and the kids were brave and excited. This is our before the big hike pic, note our unprepared happy faces, Yeah another family memory making adventure!
We hiked, and hiked, and hiked. it was nothing but semi steep switch backs....At least 40! No joke.
This tree fell along the trail is was at least 75 feet long, at the bottom of the tree is one of the trails we had already hiked up.
The halfway mark, and lunch time! Sandwiches, cookies, water, and carrot sticks.
Back on the trail, and we hiked, and hiked and hiked! The kids at the last 1/3 mile to the summit started talking about what would be at the top. We all named our favorite foods, as though there would be an all you can eat, free buffet waiting for us, and then of course since we would be full, a helicopter to take us back down! Lol, I'm sure the other hikers around us were thinking these people are crazy! We found some unusual and pretty mountain flowers.
At the top! Hallelujah!!! The clouds opened just as we came through the trees and we could see almost the whole world to quote a child.
We had a snack and enjoyed the view. I was really proud of us, we made it to the summit in 2 hours 31 minutes!
Then the hike down, of which felt much faster than going up. We took more photos heading down since we were so happy we did it. This rock face was so tall.
I think this is that same mountain flower....huh. This one looks better anyways.
So sad story. We were almost halfway down the mountain, I put lil man on my back, and we all started to jog down, nothing crazy or that fast. We got about 2/3 of a mile down, and I slowed down to a walk because there were several roots and big rocks, I'm thinking I don't want to fall right?...I take exactly 5 walking steps and clip my left toe on a rock, and I fall forward, fast! It felt like in slow motion, seriously, because I have lil man on my back he starts going forward over me and were both going to fall down the steep side if the trail (again this felt like in slow motion!) I drop to my hands and knees as fast as I can and try to shift my weight back so I'm sitting back on my feet. This is the scariest feeling by the way, because I'm thinking if we don't stop we will both go tumbling down the mountain, and we could die! I'm able to stop and I'm now sitting there with my heart racing, the Adrenalin kicking in, lil man gets off my back and asks if we could do it again!
I'm not sure if I'm going to throw up or pass out. My hands are scratched up pretty bad, I bent my right pinkie finger, it's throbbing, and then I check my knees, I knew I hit rocks when I dropped and boy, that sucked! My right knee and scratched, but no blood, my left knee is really bad! I carved up my capris, it hurts alot and is bleeding in like three places, I'm checking to make sure I didn't break or dislocate my knee cap. By this point my Hubs is right by me asking if I'm ok, and the kids are all concerned, I told them I needed a minute, and then I hobbled the rest of the way down.
We did it, we're all proud of ourselves.We did the whole thing up and down in just over 4 hours, a total of 8 miles! Minus my fall we make it safely and we will definitely do it again. Our after photo, tired, slightly sweaty, and glad we did it!
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