Up, up, up the mountain.....

My history with Mt Monadnock go far back. I would see the mountain almost every weekend for the first 13 years of my life when we would go to my grandfather's for the weekend. I had an opportunity to hike it when I was at camp when I was 11, but I was too scared. My senior year in high school we had to hike it. I hiked it a couple more times in my early twenties, always being one of those ill-prepared hikers in jeans, very little water. When I was 29 I started dating someone and that was our first date and we hiked it many times, including New Year's Day several times. And in 2002 I hiked it every month, January - August in preparation to hike Mt Rainier. And I hadn't hiked it again until yesterday.

I had wanted to do it on Mother's Day but it was pouring, and every weekend since we've been busy or the weather has been bad. Yesterday was our last chance before my daughter goes to the same camp I went to at the base of the mountain. Of course it was going to be 90 degrees.

I also wanted to test out a lot of our gear to bring on our trip.

Father and Son, ready to go

Getting close to tree line

Still a ways to go to get to the top, but at least we can see it

A little hazy, but beautiful views

The hats kept our heads and faces out of the sun, but unfortunately we had major fails when it came it sunscreen and our shoulders.

We had some other fails yesterday
1) Not bringing enough variety of food - the picky kids wouldn't eat much of the Gorp I made, and thus didn't get enough food
2) Forgetting that we need to eat every hour, even if we aren't hungry - we wanted until it was too late
3) Camel-Baks are great, but despite us telling the kids not to drink too much, they very quickly ran out of water - I think we each need 2 bladder's when hiking in Utah

Going down was very, very rough. I don't remember the descent being so technically challenging. By the end my hips really hurt. Overall the trip took almost 5 hours, a lot longer than I expected. We stopped for burgers on the way home and after a long bath I crashed early.

Last week was a major fail over all. Just so much going on with end-of-school stuff. More of the same this week, but I am going to TRY to do better.