Hiking

Starting off right

Well, today is the first day of 2015.  I’m not one to put a great deal of stock into marking the change from one year to the next.  Mostly the new year means I’ll spend a few weeks crossing off last year’s date and scribbling in 2015.  However, I tend to hardly write checks any more, so perhaps that hassle is fading away.

While the revolution of the planet causing us to flip the calendar over to the next year isn’t a huge event in my life, I do believe that mentally marking a change in one’s life is a positive things.  It helps to be able to draw a line in the sand when making a decision to do something.  But it is the deciding that is important; that is what allows one to move forward.

Weston Bend TrailSo, for me, this new year will include more hiking and camping.  I had planned to do several smaller trips last year, but things always came up and we just didn’t get around to do the trips.

To start this year out right, we went on a short 3 mile hike.  The picture here is where we were coming up onto a ridge.  The wind was a bit crisp and you could see the ice in the river, but with hats and gloves, we stayed warm even in the 36 degree weather.  (And we were not the only ones out there.  If fact, there were a more people than normal on the trail today).

My eventual goal will be to do some long through hikes.  Probably not in the next year or so (getting a couple of months straight to spend hiking takes a lot of work and planning), but within the next five years, I would like to do something like the John Muir Trail.  It’s just over 200 miles long.  Then at some point, I would love to do both the Appalachian Trail (2,200 miles) and the Pacific Crest Trail (2,663 miles).  I know, when you think about those distances, the hikes seem long.  But even out of shape, last year we did over 40 miles in the mountains with considerable changes in elevation.  So, this year I am drawing the line and will get myself fit enough to do three or four weeks a solid hiking so I can eventually knock out the JMT.