Twenty-Twenty-Four Recap

 2024 was a big year for me.  It started out full of stress and anxiety—maybe the worst I’ve experienced in my entire life—but it has ended on a much different note than it began.  While I don’t think anyone wants to read a detailed chronicle of my year long journey, I think it bears noting some milestones.

In desperation I forced a turning point.  In February, only a couple of weeks after I turned fifty, I realized I was in dire straits.  I found out I had low testosterone, I was at war at work, battling an endless cycle of manipulation and abuse, and I’d found out some startling family news.  I wrote in my journal: “I need to find a way to make peace with all this or it’s going to eat me up.”

The immediate answer was a hardcore regime of self-care.  I began alternating steam and cold baths.  I began a daily routine of reading first thing in the morning, focusing heavily on Taoist writings.  I started hiking more.  I started being intentional in my photography, even buying some black and white film to shoot in my old Pentax K-1000.  I hiked into the backcountry of the Red River Gorge to rediscover an old path to adventure (sadly that adventure is still unrealized, but soon!)  I started putting myself and my well-being first.

I began backpacking in earnest again, taking three good overnight trips.  It began with an out and back on Rough Trail in the Gorge, and then my first jaunt on the Pine Mountain Trail (more on that shortly), and finally an overnight trip in the Bighorn Mountains/Cloud Peak Wilderness in Wyoming.  I visited twenty-seven states total, and three new ones (I only have four left to visit).  I summited sixteen new state high points for a total of thirty.  I became comfortable scrambling old favorite rocks at home again.  I visited New York City at Christmas and saw my first Broadway show. 

I spent the last couple of months trying to develop/redevelop an old favorite bouldering area.  I added close to thirty new problems up to V2.  There are so many more to do yet.  I also spent a little time in the climbing gym in Lexington and have realized I’m not as out of shape as I thought.

The Pine Mountain Trail trip was a huge turning point.  I believe that was truly the fulcrum of the year.  After that trip I posted a selfie on Instagram with a long caption and said: “Despite feeling out of shape, stressed out, and overwhelmed by the oppressive heat I was unreasonably happy” and concluded by saying: “I pushed through a lot of inner turmoil and pushed past a lot of physical and mental obstacles to reach this spot.”  I kept pushing myself forward through fear and doubt through uncertain outcomes and ended up having a fantastic trip.  It inspired and informed the rest of my year.

Immediately after I got back from Pine Mountain I began planning a big peakbagging trip for September.  I changed my focus from the Grand Teton to Cloud Peak in Wyoming and tacked on six state highpoints for a 4,100 mile solo road trip over ten days.  I summitted Cloud Peak—a remote Thirteener I had dreamed about for well over twenty years.  I also visited a new state on that trip.  Just before I left, I had an interview for a big new job.  While I was on the trip, I got a call with a job offer.  And I accepted.

Taking the new job afforded me the opportunity of a second big road trip between the old job and the new job, so I quickly planned a New England trip to try to bag the seven remaining state high points I needed in the Northeast.  I reached six, with the road to Mount Washington, New Hampshire being closed due to inclement weather.  I drove just shy of 3,000 miles on that trip, visited two new states, ticked four state high points in a day, three big high points in three days and had the second trip of a lifetime in less than two months.

For Christmas, my daughter asked for me to take her to see Swept Away on Broadway.  I was reluctant at first, but once I was able to sit down and plan it out I realized with the new job I was more than able to afford the trip, and ended up taking both of my kids for a three day trip to New York City the weekend before Christmas.

Between those three trips and an earlier southern high point/beach trip in the summer I drove over 10,000 miles on road trips in 2024.  The majority of those miles I did solo.  All of those miles were amazing.  I had taken control of my life, started being responsible for myself, and I stepped onto a whole new path in life.

I began realizing some of the things I saw and read earlier in the year when I was trying to find a way out of the darkness and despair:

“…there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” ~ Morpheus, The Matrix

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” ~ Dutch philosopher Aart van der Leeuw (and also quoted in Frank Herbert’s Dune)

“Decide what kind of life you really want…and then say no to everything that isn’t that.” ~ unknown

And finally:

“Don’t try to reclaim your youth and go back to what you were, try to fully be the person you fantasized you’d be now.” ~ again, unknown

The last quote is the one that had the biggest impact on me in 2024.  I had been distinctly guilty of trying to be the person I had been before I got married in 2000.  I felt like if I could recreate the conditions I’d experienced when I was last single then maybe I could pick up where I left off.  However, when I saw that quote on some random meme, I realized that was the better path.  When I was younger, I often did fantasize about who I would be when I was older.  The startling thing to me was that in many ways I was exactly that person.  Where I lacked connection to the person I dreamed I would someday be was in the fears and mental chains that had held me back.  And so, I made the attempt to cast all of that off, beginning on a hot, hot July day on Pine Mountain.  So much changed in my life for the better because I stepped through those barriers of fear and doubt.  

The actor John Barrymore said: “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”  My life had been full of regrets.  I had felt the weight of all my years.  And then I let go of the regrets and embraced new dreams.  And here I am.

Somehow my year of being 50 was the best year of my life.  And maybe the best is still to come.

Blitzpeak Bop: Epilogue

2024 has been a turning point year for me.  I entered into the new year bombarded with stressors, tumbling through the void cut loose from all confidence and contentment.  Despite that, this was my first journal entry of the year:

I’m alive.  This is a gift many don’t receive.  I should not squander it on worry and regret.  I should not impede living fully by doubting myself or fearing the outcome of any decision I make.

I’ve seen the coming of one more year.  I could not have predicted this with any certainty even one day ago. It’s a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, a new minute and a new second of life.

This is the only moment I can touch and experience—right NOW.  Regret is decay of the past.  Worry is the decay of the future.  I must not let either of them take hold or they will decay the present as well.

It was a startlingly positive entry considering my state of mind at the time, but I was channeling the change I wanted in my life.  Even as I felt myself being pulled down into the cold darkness I was crying out “I will swim!”

At the time, people were angry with me for doing my job well.  I was struggling to stay afloat financially.  Things quickly went downhill from there.  I found myself bound up with social anxiety, hardly able to drag myself off the couch and cringing at any kind of human interaction.

At the same time my professional life was full of chaos and strife I found out that the last big piece of my ancestral land will potentially be sold off and most likely it will be turned into vacation rentals serving the Red River Gorge area.  The world was coming down hard on me last winter.

I was also meditating on this passage from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman:

"When you become fully responsible for your life, you can become fully human; once you become human, you may discover what it means to be a warrior.”  I was deciding I would take responsibility for my fate, and stop being a victim in my own life.

“…there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

~ Morpheus, The Matrix

I had known most of my years what I needed to do to live an actualized life.  I had been brave enough to do it, but too impulsive to hold true to the path.  I was too easily distracted.

“…losing all hope was freedom.” ~ Jack, Fight Club

As January wore on the weight of my despair dragged me under, and I sank into the depths and seemingly would find no bottom.  I felt myself losing the strength of will to fight to save myself.  In mere days I would turn fifty years old.  Ten years earlier I had found myself with my toes hanging over a precipice, and I was struggling with the anniversary of that, and that I had been a rock climber for thirty years.  And that my body seemed to be failing—my warranty expired and all my parts corroded.  A family secret with terrible implications…

On February 19 I wrote: “I need to find a way to make peace with all this or it’s going to eat me up.”  That is when my life truly began to change for the better.  That was the ultimate turning point.

My research in desperation kept coming back to one theme: meditation—spiritual connection—letting go of stress and negativity—taoism.  I began reading The Tao Te Ching.  I reread Notes to Myself by Hugh Prather.  And oddly, I began rereading Frank Herbert’s Dune in anticipation of the second part being released in theaters.  I also began reading Alan Watts, particularly Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: a Mountain Journal.  Interestingly I found a passage in common between Dune and Watts:

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced” ultimately attributed to the Dutch philosopher Aart van der Leeuw.  That helped me to see the value of living in the moment over trying to analyze the past.

Then I found this:

“In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.” ~ Andrea Dykstra

That was something I struggled with.

I always love a good Willi Unsoeld quote:

“It doesn't matter what it is, you have to have something to fight. Doesn't have to be a mountain, but it has to be something. And it isn't important whether you win or lose. Only that you keep fighting.”

The whole process of learning, searching, meditating, and wrestling with the universe gave me the courage to traverse the summer spine of Pine Mountain.  That—in turn—strengthened my constitution enough to provide me passage to the summit of Cloud Peak in September and a wondrous circuit of midwestern state high points.  And all of that together set me up for the trip of a lifetime…the journey beyond healing…discovering enigma and truth…the New England state high point blitz of 2024.

I experienced the mystery of life…lost in Baxter State Park…in the quietest, darkest place I’ve ever been in my life.

Each day of your life is like a wave on the ocean. It comes in and crashes. There’s a peak and a trough, day and night, with regular frequency, and it’s totally different from one day to the next.  Each one is completely different from the one before and the one after and can never be re-created just as it is. It can only be seen as it exists, and once it’s gone, it’s nothing but a memory, and until it happens you can only guess what it might be like.

I surfed the waves of uncertainty, doubt, risk, and ruin.  I found joy in the experience.

"The Way is more than the cycle of any individual life. We rise, flourish, fail. The Way never fails. We are waves. It is the sea."

~ commentary by Ursula K. Le Guin in her translation of the Tao Te Ching

That's a profound image-that each soul is one of innumerable waves on the sea. You look out and see them all, and you can watch one rise, crest, crash, and fall and be gone. But as many as crash and fall, the waves never run out.

Without trying…without realizing what I was doing…I set myself up to step into a new chapter of my life from a place of strength.  After years of trauma and tragedy the story has taken a turn toward triumph.

It’s taken me longer than normal to chronicle this adventure because I have been wrapped up in a new job.  I took a huge step out of my comfort zone.  I broke through the barrier of things I thought I would never do.  I let go of fear.  I embraced my potential.  I stepped onto a new path leading to…potential greatness.  I could never have made this change without the strengthening of my heart and soul that’s occurred over the course of this year.  As I climbed and descended so many mountains I gathered to myself the talismans of power, the icons of strength—I armored myself against the doubt, and guilt, and shame I had lived with for a long time.  

There was a purpose to my indulgence.  I didn’t simply take a trip to tick more points on a map.  That was the vehicle for my journey, but the quest was one of the spirit, across the landscape of my soul, and into the labyrinth of my heart.  I proved to myself what I needed to prove.  I passed the test.  I found my courage.

I won’t soon forget this trip.  I’ve hung a photo of myself standing at the summit of Katadhin in my new office; I don’t usually display photos of myself.  I added a large photo of Cloud Peak behind my desk.  I brought two sparse black and white prints from photos I took on Cloudsplitter back in the spring.  I’ve surrounded myself with the pictographs of the spiritual places in my life, of the sacred mountains where I’ve gone.  And hiding in the furthest corner from my desk is one last mountain image—the Grand Teton.

And in closing, sometime during the year I read this Alan Watts quote, and I think it sums up the New England trip perfectly:

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."

Blitzpeak Bop: Part V, The Marcy Inclination

The cold is merciless but righteous. 

~ Wim Hof

For the entire New England trip I allowed flexibility in the plan and itinerary.  Other than being thwarted in visiting Mount Washington I ticked off each destination in turn without much heartburn.  So I was delayed a day longer than I intended on Katadhin?  So my impromptu side trip to Acadia left me angry?  So Mount Mansfield taxed the connective tissues in my knees?  I did it all with a big stupid grin on my face.

When I was a little uncertain about how long I was going to be delayed in summiting Katadhin—I was never sure of the weather would cooperate—I allowed I might drop the high point in New York from the end of the trip.  And at one point early on considered dropping Katadhin hoping the weather would be more favorable the farther west (and slightly south) that I went.

I stayed true to my plan and everything worked out through the ascent of Mount Mansfield in Vermont.  As I left Stowe with a belly full of pizza and drove toward a Walmart parking lot in Ticonderoga, New York a couple hours southwest at the southern tip of Lake Champlain I pondered my options.  I’d climbed Katadhin on Tuesday—almost ten miles out and back and over 4,000’ of gain—and Mansfield Wednesday with five more miles of hiking and roughly 2,600’ of gain.  I knew Mount Marcy was going to require a solid effort with fourteen miles out and back and 3,100’ of gain.  I had enough time I could rest a day and go for Marcy on Friday and drive home Saturday, or I could go for the tight trifecta and hit Marcy the next day with no rest. My body was screaming for it, but my heart and mind were telling me to just go on, pull down a three fer, and get on back home.

I got to the Walmart early enough to buy a couple of small things which distinctly improved my car sleeping: two sets of cheap, dark pillowcases and a box of binder clips.  Once I was settled in I fell asleep quickly and soundly.

In the morning I woke and went through my routine of cleaning up and getting dressed.  I ate a bagel and an apple and moved on toward the Adirondack Loj.  It was about an hour and a half drive from Ticonderoga. 

the road to Marcy

Here’s my journal entry for that morning:

The forecast for Lake Placid has improved.  I’m going to go for Marcy.  I’m sure my knees will hate me for it, but how cool will it be to have wrapped this trip up with a three day blitz and top it off with that one?  Assuming I make it.  But I think I will.  Fingers crossed.

Time to make the donuts.

The theme of my trip out west a few weeks before had been healing and moving on from the traumas of my past.  I had a lot of alone time in the car to work through it, and I took full advantage.  The theme of the New England trip seemed more to be more about accepting of what is, being in the moment, and letting go.

Shortly before I left I read something to the effect of: “you can’t love yourself if you hate the experiences that made you.”  And of course there are numerous iterations of that out there.  I reached the point in my life where that became distinctly relevant.

The other angle I had been meditating on the whole trip was something else I’d read: don’t keep trying to be your younger self, be the person you fantasized you’d become when you were younger.  As incredible as the Western trip in September had been, I hadn’t fully felt like I had become that person. Somewhere deep in Baxter I fully realized I had become that person.  Dammit, I was him.  I am him.

Around 8:00am I went into the ranger station to pay for my day parking for Marcy.  The nice Ranger told me the forecast for the summit was a windchill of 11°.  She said microspikes shouldn’t be necessary because the snow wasn’t deep enough.  Yet.  I assured her I had the right gear.  She gave me my parking pass, and I made my way to the trailhead.  I signed in at the trail right about 8:30.  A gentleman signed in behind me, and as I shouldered my pack he spoke:

“You going to Marcy?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “You?”

“Not sure yet,” he said as we started walking down the trail.

Rick from P.A. hiked a long way with me.  We had a great conversation as we made the long, steady grade.  A couple of times Rick expressed doubt in going all the way to the summit, but he kept talking himself into going farther.

We crossed a stream on a wooden bridge at 10:15.  There was snow on the bridge.  At 10:35 we stopped for a quick rest and realized the trees above us were holding snow.  At 10:45 we crossed the line where the snow had begun sticking to the ground.  The wet stuff was heavy on everything at five til eleven.  The temperature was distinctly colder as we walked through the winter wonderland.

Finally, Rick announced he wasn’t going to go on.  We bade each other farewell, and around 11:00am I struck out alone.  The trail got steeper.  In some ways it was like a cross between the Katadhin hike and the ridiculous ascent of Mansfield but with snow.  It was a a beautiful hike, but I was feeling the days and miles and elevation pulled down in my knees and bones.  I was tired.  I was hungry.  But at that point there was nothing short of unconsciousness that would have kept me from the summit of Mount Marcy.  No doubt lingered in my mind.  I would go as far as I could go.  To the summit or to a trail too icy to traverse.

At noon I reached the final trail junction.  The sign indicated 1.2 miles left to the summit.  I took a quick rest, swapped my thin shell for my puffy jacket, and as I shouldered up to head on a young couple came from the direction of the summit.  They had ice rimming their faces, their hair white with wisps of rime.

I asked if they’d come from the summit and what were the conditions.  They said it was cold and windy.  I asked if it was doable.  The guy just grinned.  Then they moved on down the trail.  And I turned toward the summit.

Just before 1:00 I reached the base of a black wet slab, skirted by thick, wet piles of snow.  Mansfield had given me the confidence to scramble over snowy rock, so I just moved upward into the white wilderness of the high Adirondacks.  The further I went the more snow clung to the stone.  The higher I climbed the less protection there was from the wind.  I stayed warm in my jacket, and my feet stayed sure as they sought purchase on the crust of rime ice shrouding the summit.  

Approaching the summit of Mount Marcy wasn’t the singular alpine experience of my life, but it was without a doubt the most hardcore mountain experience I’d ever had.  

I was seven miles deep into the Adirondacks climbing up icy slabs, pummeled by the wind, and grinning like a fiend.  My hands and feet found every hold and I kept moving through the high grained landscape, blurred and scoured.

At 1:20 I saw an ice crusted plaque.

Cloudsplitter.  Going way back in my life…Cloudsplitter—the massive sandstone dome in the heart of the Red River Gorge—was an important place to me.  My spirit dwelt there in twilight, I visited it when I wanted to feel something deeper, I traversed it to find the depths of the unknown and my most secret places of power.

Then I took the final steps to reach the highest point in the state of New York.  Much like the summit of Katadhin, I saw Marcy as some far off dream I might reach someday.  I stood there, the fifty year old man I thought I might be someday.  And someday had finally come.  

I laughed into the howling wind.  I stood there, taking in the view that was no view, standing on frozen stone, miles and miles and days and days behind me, sixteen state high points since July, thirty total in my half century, a lifetime of adventure, and satisfying my restless soul, of love, and joy, and pain, and trauma, and working, and traveling, and fighting, and crying, and laughing, and faking it until I made it. I stood on the summit of Mount Marcy fully myself, fully in the moment, fully actualized and fully content.  Katadhin had been a spiritual peak for me.  Tahawus was the summit of my heart.  It was visceral.  I was connected to the earth through that high place, anchored through my bones, enveloped by the spirit of the wind.  When I climbed down from the summit of Marcy I was whole.

It was a long walk back into the twilight of autumn, the crisp golden dusk that comes in the north a few weeks sooner than at home.  I ached in my hips and knees.  My breath was heavy from going for days and days.  My belly grumbled for fuel.  It was time to get back to caring for my body, to stop pushing it so hard.  Despite my exhaustion, my hunger, and the distance ahead of me to return home I still had a big stupid grin on my face.

Blitzpeak Bop: Part IV, Vermoten

I’d laid out an ambitious plan to tag eight New England state high points in a week.  By the fourth full day of the trip I had bagged five.  My itinerary showed the two on day five: Mount Washington, New Hampshire and Mount Mansfield, Vermont.  It seemed a chill day, as I was just planning to drive up Mount Washington and Mansfield looked like a short (if somewhat steep) hike from a roadside trailhead.

From Katadhin Stream Trailhead I drove to Skowhegan, Maine where I got a room in the Towne Motel for the night.  It was nice to stretch out in a bed, and eat and drink plenty of water, and be on wifi for a little while.  I showered in the morning and discovered that a block away was Alice’s Restaurant (no relation), so I just had to grab breakfast there.  It was so worth it.

I rolled out of Skowhegan by 9am and pushed on toward Mount Washington.  It was just shy of three hours of driving, and when I turned south in Gorham it was overcast and dreary.  That all turned to rain before I reached the toll gate at the Mount Washington Auto Road where in a thrift of speech a gentleman informed me the road was closed due to ice and would not reopen that day.  His tone made me think the road may never open again.  Seeing as how I had no real say in the matter I made a u-turn and headed on for Mount Mansfield three more hours west.  The Presidentials were obscured by clouds and barred from being part of my road trip in any capacity save as a huge void in my experience.

The peak I seriously underestimated was Mount Mansfield.  On the map it seems innocuous.  I had a hard time finding a definitive distance for the Hellbrook Trail which I had opted for as my route to the summit.  I believe someone somewhere online recommended it as the preferred route.  After Katadhin I didn’t expect Mansfield to be hard at all.  Marcy on the other hand—the high point of New York—still kept a shadow of attention in my mind.  It’s a fourteen mile out and back.  But even that seemed doable after Katadhin.  The only hesitation I had was in relation to the weather forecast which I had paid little attention to until I was shut down at the base of Mount Washington. 

I rolled through Stowe, Vermont and easily found the Hellbrook trailhead along the road to Smugglers Notch.  I threw together a day pack, made sure I had a headlamp because I really didn’t know how long it was going to take, and I quickly changed into my thicker baselayer for pants and grabbed my rain jacket.  Within a few short minutes I was crossing the road and stepping into the woods.

I passed a sign that said “Hellbrook Trail” with no other information, and I continued up the steepening path beyond.  And steepening.  And steepening.

To take my mind off the absurdity of the climb I began texting Reynaldo.

[Unprintable]

New England: switchbacks are against our religion.

And they should be against yours too.

The closest thing I saw to a switchback was a 90 degree bend because…a boulder.

I'm surprised they didn't just make the trail go over it.

Wouldn't have been as steep.

Brutal doesn't describe this.

Sadistic comes close.

[additional unprintable statements]

It's like it was an ice climb and some donkeychonk decided it would make a good summer hike.

I'm soloing up a waterfall with blue blazes!

This is no trail.

There is a sign at the bottom that says trail.  I didn’t know the brook and the trail were one and the same.  And it’s all hell.

It's an actual criminal offense against humanity.

I believe in the death penalty for whomever planned this route.

Illegitimate New Englander raised by wild fellatio adepts!

The name of the trail is Hellbrook. Weel %#?! me. I should have known it was a slog up a steep creek.  

Dan Osman would have fallen off this b.s.

Bunch of pig headed goat [redacted] can go take long step off Chimney Top.

I made myself chuckle, which was my ultimate goal.  The climb up to gain the ridge north of Mansfield’s summit was ridiculous by any standard.

After what seemed an eternity of high-stepping and hand-grabbing I was abruptly on a flat trail.  According to my gps tracker I was almost two miles in.  I knew from the map I still had a little ways to go.  So this hike would be at least five miles out and back?  And not three and a half?  As I continued south on the ridge the landscape became distinctly more alpine, and within a few minutes the forest opened up and I could see what I believed was the summit dome of Mansfield, wreathed in a diaphanous veil of blowing snow.  I just laughed.

I had been hiking for an hour and a half, and I had about two hours until dark.  One thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to descend Hell Brook in the dark.

I felt a sense of urgency, but it wasn’t the pressure to finish this task and move onto the next one.  The urgency of the mountains tells you that for your own good you need to keep moving and not linger and let conditions deteriorate around you. I was also excited to make the climb to the summit from the ridge.  I passed the last trail junction and could see the route ahead through the swirling snow and I made my way to the base of the rocky, bulbous, summit massif.  

The first challenge was a short chimney and then the climb evolved into a more exposed and aesthetic route over easy ledges.  Despite the heavy skies, the views to the north and east were amazing.  The climbing was smooth and enjoyable.  It didn’t take long before I reached what seemed like the summit plateau.  I began striding south across the bare rock, scattered with puddles of snow.  The wind was stiff, cold, and laden with stinging snow.

And then I was at the summit.  I found a benchmark and a triangle carved into the living stone.  I looked around laughing and checked the map on my phone.  I was definitely at the summit.

I wasn’t there long when I noticed the snow had seemed to be falling lower on the route than it had been when I came up.  I couldn’t really see the route back down.  The rocks around me were starting to get wet.  And just maybe the snow was starting to stick a little bit.

With that knowledge I moved back across the summit toward the descent.  From above the route down looked much more dramatic and difficult, but I knew it was mellow.  I laughed as I began picking my way down and the snow seemed maybe to be picking up.

The rocky scrambling went easy despite an increase in moisture on the rocks.  The views were still incredible despite the…atmosphere.  Once back in the alpine trees I paused to look back at the summit and found it almost completely obscured by blowing snow.  There was distinct accumulation on the trees.  After a short pause I turned toward the car and began making my way down.  Heavy flakes fell as I began descending below the crest of the ridge.  My knees had begun to ache a little.  I consistently found good footing as I goat-stepped down the ledgy gully trying to be a trail.  I was aware that any misstep could be disastrous; considering the steepness a trip up could be catastrophic.

The descent seemed to go on forever.  When I’d gone down enough I didn’t think I could manage anymore I would look out and see the slope across the valley, the base of which is where I parked, and mark the elevation still to pass.

Light faded from the sky.  Fat snow turned to light drizzle and then fizzled out.  The ridiculousness failed to fade.  I knew from recent experience that the trail would not ease up before it terminated in asphalt.  Down and down and down.

It became a race between reaching the trailhead and having to break out the headlamp.  I’m happy to report no headlamps were harmed in the bagging of said peak.

I began to hear traffic on the road.  It was hard to hear over the rumble in my belly.  I tried to move faster, but I didn’t want to risk rolling an ankle.

And then I was back.  The trailhead was empty except for my car.  It wasn’t full dark, but it was cold and damp.  I stretched while the Jeep warmed up despite the void in my stomach.  I needed food.

Mount Mansfield was down.  It was time to move on toward Mount Marcy in New York.