So after a wonderfully exciting week of finals, patients, and a substantially small amount of sleep I decided it would be a good idea to procrastinate packing
until the last night,,, good choice Jesse... not! So after heading to bed at 2 AM I woke up at 6 to head out to the airport. Friday was a long, long day. We left
Loma Linda at 7 and arrived in Anchorage at 11 PM! Airports and planes; cool. Screaming babies; NOT COOL!!! Things rapidly improved once we were picked up by Shelli's cousin Jared and he took us to the
Moose's Tooth restaurant. The reason for the improvement was due to the
enormous size of the pizza pie which was placed directly in front of me shortly after I ordered it :) Saturday morning we woke up and went and grabbed some coffee and breakfast and then headed out for our Day 1 adventure. On an
interesting side note, I discovered that FedEx has developed some special techniques for bringing in extra money up here in the far North.
Jared decided to take us to Flat Top, which is a quick several mile jaunt straight up the side of a
mtn until you reach,,, you guessed it, a flat top. I quickly realized that the fun level of this hike was going to be directly proportional to the weight of the hiker, and also to the condition of his feet. Shelli and Jared are thin and have feet that could walk over hot coals and not blister. Me on the other hand, I tend to run a bit on the,,,, um,,,
Campbell's-
chunky-chicken-noodle-soup side of things, and as for my feet, well, my feet will blister if i so much as let a ceiling fan blow directly on them for longer than a few
minutes. After several stops to attend to my footie wounds I reached the top (the 'flat top') a mere half an hour after Shelli and Jared.
I was
ecstatic. Once we took our pics at the top and rested up a bit, i figured that we would head back like the rest of the crowd did.... I was mistaken. No, we were going to continue on to Peak 2 and Peak 3, which, I assume were named so because they were pointy instead of flat, and because they were lined up in a linear fashion...
Alaskan names are so cleverly creative. Anyway, after several more straight ups and straight downs along some impressively thinly edged ridges, we arrived at P2, and then a bit later P3.
Shelli and I were both quite excited once we reached the final peak, Shelli, of course, was elated to be getting such a 'great workout' and i was pleasantly pleased that i had not fallen off any cliffs. The views were majestic, and short lived
because the clouds rolled in and out really fast. Then we turned around and headed out.
All said and done, it was about 4 hrs of hiking a lot of vertical in the rain. Shelli had a lot of fun and I had shortness of breath, and got some cool pics so it was all good. We went back to the house and
Jared had a bunch of people over and we made pizza, which was so good. The people were rad and the pizza tasty. It was a good way to finish off the day.
I was ecstatic. Once we took our pics at the top and rested up a bit, i figured that we would head back like the rest of the crowd did.... I was mistaken. No, we were going to continue on to Peak 2 and Peak 3, which, I assume were named so because they were pointy instead of flat, and because they were lined up in a linear fashion... Alaskan names are so cleverly creative. Anyway, after several more straight ups and straight downs along some impressively thinly edged ridges, we arrived at P2, and then a bit later P3.
Shelli and I were both quite excited once we reached the final peak, Shelli, of course, was elated to be getting such a 'great workout' and i was pleasantly pleased that i had not fallen off any cliffs. The views were majestic, and short lived because the clouds rolled in and out really fast. Then we turned around and headed out.
All said and done, it was about 4 hrs of hiking a lot of vertical in the rain. Shelli had a lot of fun and I had shortness of breath, and got some cool pics so it was all good. We went back to the house and Jared had a bunch of people over and we made pizza, which was so good. The people were rad and the pizza tasty. It was a good way to finish off the day.
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