SPECTACULAR POCATERROR!

Today was a real live oxymoron! How can something so spectacular be terrorizing at the same time! That's how I found today's trek along Pocaterra Ridge to be. This is a portion of the ridge (that starts in the middle and veers to the left making what looks like a C) we climbed to and then followed for hours. Pretty spectacular wouldn't you say? Then the terror started! I wanted a nice photo in amongst what was left of the colorful larch trees not realizing my buddies had other plans for what else should be in the photo! They bombarded me with snowballs! And I call them buddies!

We hit five summits today! Here I am on one of the most spectacular ones. I tried to do my summit jump but may have to think of a different dance of joy for the winter season because with all the layers on along with icers, I can't jump very far off the ground.

To reach each summit after the initial one, we had to descend first, which was sketchy at times. I have to admit though, I would rather the panting effort of ascending instead of descending in conditions like this. I want to descend at my own controlled pace not looking to set records here.

In every direction I looked today, I had scenes that looked like this! Even with low lying cloud, we could still see the mountain ranges far off in the distance. I think with a bit of snow, the detailing on the mountains is more vivid.

We had rain, we had wind, and we had sunshine off and on, but more off then on. As we settled down for a lunch break, I had a very short window of opportunity to bare my arms. Lunch time came three hours into the hike and after only 2.5 km. It was well deserved! I devoured it! I didn't ration it! I should have! We had more summits to summit!

Once all the summits were checked off the list, it was time to find our way down. This was not an out and back but a one way that involved car shuttling. You can see in this photo what we needed to come down to get to the road below. This is when you need to be in the company of mountain savvy people and that was the case today. We had a wide open area at first then into the trees for bushwhacking through the dense, steep forest. We needed the most direct but yet safe route down. This meant numerous times changing direction to left or right or even climbing back up only to find a better route down.
What was less then a kilometer and would normally take 15 minutes took about an hour. It was later then expected when we came down off the ridge and out of the forest. We were all hungry and spent and very thankful to reach the end and thankful for such a "spectacular" day. That's how appreciative I am, I kissed the ground!

I am beginning to believe I enjoy being scared! I have been in situations where I have been petrified and terrorized yet I keep coming back for more! I guess the scenery, being with fun folks and the exercise far outweighs the being scared!

I hope to be a part of a Halloween hike in two weeks! Now that should be really scary!