Monday, November 08, 2004
Top o' the world
Off work this week.
No run today, but I did take a hike. I drove to a place south of Longview, that I've visited a couple of times this year. Where I parked was 2021 metres above sea level. The hike was 5.29 km, and lasted 2 hours 38 minutes (2:38:08.06). At the highest, my GPS said 2167 metres. If I did the math right, that's just over 490 feet vertical.
I took about 60 pictures, of nothing but terrain, of course. Here's one:
What an awesome place. Most of it is bare ground, rock or grasses, lots of lichens. You can stand on the ridge and look east down the valley for easily a hundred miles.
The only troublesome part was the wind. It was easily gusting over 80 kmh. A couple of times I got down on all fours, just to keep from getting blown over. But it lessened considerably after about a kilometre. It was really strange, as there were pockets of complete calm, and ten steps farther, I was in gale force winds again. Or the wind would just stop for a minute, then pick up to high intensity again. Sometimes I could hear the gust coming through the trees downslope.
I had bought hiking shoes on Saturday just for today, and they were perfect. Just a tiny blister on my right heel toward the end of the hike. Even my knees were behaving well, not hurting at all, though they did let me know they exist.
All that, and home by 2:30 in the afternoon. What a morning!
No run today, but I did take a hike. I drove to a place south of Longview, that I've visited a couple of times this year. Where I parked was 2021 metres above sea level. The hike was 5.29 km, and lasted 2 hours 38 minutes (2:38:08.06). At the highest, my GPS said 2167 metres. If I did the math right, that's just over 490 feet vertical.
I took about 60 pictures, of nothing but terrain, of course. Here's one:
What an awesome place. Most of it is bare ground, rock or grasses, lots of lichens. You can stand on the ridge and look east down the valley for easily a hundred miles.
The only troublesome part was the wind. It was easily gusting over 80 kmh. A couple of times I got down on all fours, just to keep from getting blown over. But it lessened considerably after about a kilometre. It was really strange, as there were pockets of complete calm, and ten steps farther, I was in gale force winds again. Or the wind would just stop for a minute, then pick up to high intensity again. Sometimes I could hear the gust coming through the trees downslope.
I had bought hiking shoes on Saturday just for today, and they were perfect. Just a tiny blister on my right heel toward the end of the hike. Even my knees were behaving well, not hurting at all, though they did let me know they exist.
All that, and home by 2:30 in the afternoon. What a morning!
# posted by Kelly @ 4:49 p.m. 
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