I Climbed a Mountain

Now, the title's a touch misleading, since I technically hiked. But it was a hike up about 5,000 feet, and there was a lot of incline, and there was some actual climbing, so I'm going to take it.

There were twelve of us who went out of the sixteen in the program, and two local students we play frisbee with guided the way.

Here's the town at the base of the mountain.

It was a cool and misty day for a hike. We felt like the Fellowship. There was a little bit of singing the Fellowship's theme.

A sample of some stairs we climbed. There were more. And steeper.

This moment was not among the most terror-inducing for those afraid of heights.

The whole trip wasn't stairs, however. Stairs and trails and inclines and slippery caves and bridges and ladders. The ladder was terrifying. It was built to be stairs but could not be climbed without use of the handrails, as the steps were vertical. It was in the cave, so I don't have a picture. Everything was wet. If one person fell, they would take everyone below them down with them the thirty or fifty feet to the bottom. That ladder also featured a ninety-degree turn that for me meant grabbing the second ladder and trying to scramble up onto it sideways.

I think those might be persimmons.

The Misty Mountains cold...

We were pretty high at this point and just kept on climbing. We got so high that the mountains looming over us in the town at the bottom looked like hills.

There were a couple of these bridges. Boy did they swing!

You had to lean pretty far to the side on these stairs.

The view as we descended into the cave.

Yep, I'm chilling on a little wall of rock before a pretty sheer drop. No big deal. Thanks for taking the picture, Mary!