16th Training Hike - Mt. Adams team, Nesmith Point June 19th, 2010

It was pretty weird to be hiking without the rest of the RTS teammates today.  In fact, there were more training hike leaders/assistants than the climbers.  Joe the training supervisor took a survey earlier this month to see if we preferred to hike Nesmith Point or Ruckel Creek and apparently it was decided on hiking Nesmith Point again for today.

We met up at the parking lot of a nearby grocery store as usual and went through the ritual of splitting into groups, except that there were only two groups instead of three, the fast group and the faster group.  I let you guess which one I ended up in.  The weather was sort of misty and drizzly type for the entire duration.  Driving down I-84 to get to the trail head, we could only see the bases of the hills and the clouds blanketed the rest entirely.  Great!

Eric kicked off the hike by leading the faster group up the hill.  Having the thoughts in the back of our heads that it was going to be practically viewless had pretty much set the tone of this hike even before it got started - it's all about busting our respective butts up to the top as fast as we could. Actually, the last part of the training, re-hydrating at Edgefield, was all I remember thinking about to be honest.

And, we zoomed up the trail alright.  Including the three short breaks we took, we ascended 3,800 over 5 miles in 2:45.  That translated to roughly the sustained average vertical speed of 1,381' per hour.  Not bad!  In fact I was so zoned into it that I remembered to take no photo except for only one.  The rest of the hike is sort of a big blur. 

It had never disappointed me - there's nothing like that first sip! I ordered a tall cold pint of Rubby, one of the in-house brews at Edgefield, and a small pizza to replenish the calories I had just left on the hill.  Then another tall cold one for a good measure.  By the way, I had always admired the training leaders/assistants for their impeccable commitment to always finishing up the hikes in time for the happy hours.

Next weekend, we the Mt. Adams team will be going back to Mt. Hood, to go from the Timberline Lodge to Crater Rock at just over 10,000' in elevation, only 1,000' below its summit.  Some of the Mt. Hood climbers will be summiting that morning so we might run into them on their way down too.  I can't wait to see the photos they took and to hear about their climbs.  But, even if we don't get to see them for some reason, I will be congratulating them at the celebration party the following day!