It's good to be getting back into hiking. I'd only been up to the hills once last season, which is a far cry from my twice-a-month average during the five years prior. This year, I've been out six times so far.
Yesterday, Ali, Abby (our Lab mix) and I tagged Mt. Osceola. It's an easy 4,000-footer, but since this was Abby's 2nd mountain, we wanted to stack the deck in favor of her success. Plus, neither Ali nor I had done Osceola before, and we were eager to check off another 4,000-footer from the list. So far, I've done 26 out of the 48 (9 in Winter). Ali's on her ninth, I believe (I had a several-year head start).
Osceola's (via Mt. Osceola Trail, from Tripoli Rd.) a nice hike. The trail is a constant, easy grade, gaining 2200' over 3.2 miles. If you view it in profile, it looks like the hypotenuse of a perfect triangle. The summit views are unparalleled.
Perhaps the biggest impediment to hiking more often is the fact that we now live 1/2 hr. farther away from the Whites than we used to. Now it takes a solid three hours to reach the closest mountains, and that's if we don't stop too many times along the way. This can create quite an inertial barrier, but once we're in the hills, all of that driving proves to be well worth it.
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