If you accidentally delete your recorded track, did you even hike?!

I forgot to stop the recording until we were at a restaurant for lunch. You can crop them, and while I did, somehow, poof. Gone. Sigh. Anyway.

My hiking friends wanted to hike and I invited the gym squad along. It ended up being myself, Rainbow, Right Turn, Susan, and Thoreau. Mt. Israel for my 28th 52 With a View.

We met at 9AM at the trailhead, which is also the Mead Conservation Center.

Right Turn, Rainbow, and I were on the struggle bus today. It’s not a particularly difficult hike, but for some reason (each different), we had a rough time of it. Lots of stopping and starting. Some talk of turning back. It was warmer and more humid than I think any of us were expecting. Was that it? Probably not, but it makes for a good excuse. It IS nearly 2000 feet of elevation gain in two miles, so that didn’t help.

It was a great day for creatures and mushrooms!

TIL about toads versus frogs. First, all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Second, if you dare, you can tell them apart by their skin. Toads are dry and frogs are wet. Toads have short, stubbier legs and bulging eyes, while frogs have longer legs and more subtle eyes. All toads are poisonous, while not all frogs are.

TIL I also learned that snakes don’t hibernate, they brumate, which is similar to hibernating, but not as deeply asleep.

Anyway, back to the hike. It was a fairly nice trail. A few parts were rocky, but many parts weren’t bad, and there were even a few stairs.

There is a nice outlook before the summit.

Then there was an annoying false summit. Then the actual summit.

We didn’t ditch Right Turn. Well, we kinda did. As I said, “No man left behind, unless it’s Right Turn”. She wasn’t feeling 100%, so she hung out at the view point while we headed up to the summit. Normally, I would never leave someone behind, but there were several factors that made it ok. She’s done this trail before and was going to wait for us to come back down, meaning she wasn’t wandering off by herself. She’s an experienced hiker that has solo hiked many times, if needed. The weather was nice (aka I would never split up in winter). She has a Garmin InReach, if there were any issues.

There were tons of dragonflies at the summit. Sadly I couldn’t get a good photo of any of them.

We had a snack and headed back down to the viewpoint, and picked up Right Turn.

Then it was just a hike back down to our cars. Despite our earlier struggle bus, we had a great time!

• Distance: 4.2 miles
• Elevation gain: 1,700 feet
• Total time: 4 hours, 45 minutes
• Moving time: Who knows because I deleted the track. 😦