bad decision Joyce

Ahoy,

This past weekend, I made the monumentally bad decision of walking up the side of a mountain during high noon. This incident will forever go down in the record books as "the day Joyce decided it would be a good idea to walk up the side of a mountain during high noon." He let me pick what to do.

So I read some online reviews and guides and such and we thought this sounded like a cool hike. Just a little rigorous enough, but not boring and rewarding also. Clearly we're not very good at gauging what the online community regards as difficult or not difficult in terms of walking up the side of a mountain. Or we think a little too highly of our mountain conquering prowess.

We got to the bottom of the mountain and realized that it's a mountain (gulp). Not just a mountain, THE mountain I am always gawking at as we approach this area, because you can see it from miles and miles away. It is just always in the distance, a monumental facet of this idyllic California landscape.

As we approach the trailhead, we see normal looking people, families, not the most fit types, etc., so it's a little reassuring. But as we get further up the mountain, we encounter more and more folks of the serious hiker type - the walking sticks and hiking boots and giant backpacks probably carrying my weight in water. And we see less and less normal folks, and then we see less folks in general. The sun is beating down on us like Japanese Taiko drummers and there is no sign of relief because all the hiking in southern California consists of dusty narrow trails that go up a mountainside and have no trees. I applied 2 layers of sunscreen before we started, but I was pretty sure it was melting off of me. I couldn't reapply because I had left the bottle in the car (so well prepared I am). And because we tend to overestimate our athletic abilities, we also only brought the one bottle of water (that I carried, because I'm the pack mule in this relationship).

Nevertheless, we had no choice but to continue up because we are both too stubborn to admit defeat. Conversation, mostly consisting of whining, came to a halt and was replaced with serious (read: desperate) aerobic activity as we continued on a ~30% incline that seemed endless. Although, we did have time to make our personal hiking soundtrack:

1. Granddaddy Nature Anthem

2. Indiana Jones theme song

3. Ants go marching one by one...

But we did finally make it to the top, and it was definitely worth it. We saw 3 deer, 1 gecko(?), and a bunch of dogs on the way. There are the ruins of a former resort at the top. It was this 70 unit mansion with a train line between the valley and this mountain top. You can explore the leftover foundations and stone outlines of the buildings, and climb around the old train parts. Super cool.

Going down was a lot easier. We figured most of the people we saw at the beginning had turned around before going all the way up because we saw significantly fewer people the farther up. We stopped at a grocery store to chug our weight in water, and proceeded to get groceries and boba because we are responsible adults that know how to feed and hydrate ourselves. Also, neither of us got sunburned.

cheekily acmed,
jt