Last weekend was a busy one with friends in town and lots of holiday events going on, but one of my favorite parts was a quick hike I did with my girlfriend on Sunday morning since we were both kid-free for the day. We had gone out the night before, and we both decided that it wasn’t a great idea to drink, smoke (ugh, I know, I’m quitting because even just having one when I drink is becoming too much), and get only a few hours of sleep before hiking. Ha!

It took us about 1h40 to ascend 1,800 vertical feet up to over 12,000′, we spent about 15 minutes on top eating our lunch, and it took us 1h to go back down to the truck. That made it a whirlwind 4 mile hike, and the vertical nature of it got our hearts really pumping, but DAMN was it worth it!

These top two photos are panoramic photos from the top of the peak we climbed. You can see my dog in the left of the first one and the right of the second one.

This third photo is just a regular photo looking slightly north and mostly west towards town. If you look right along the center of the photos, you can see my little town about 1/3 of the way in from the left edge of the photo, and you can see the reservoir that I wake surf in about 1/3 of the way in from the right edge of the photo!

Just for reference, town and the water are about 5 minutes apart, but they’re both on the highway. It was a 20 mile drive to the trail head, but it’s a rural gravel road so it took us about 40 minutes to get there. Without posting a map of exactly where I live, it’s really hard to explain the valley, but we are almost completely surrounded by two different mountain ranges and a mesa. It’s amazing because we get over 300 sunny days a year in town – the clouds tend to “bump off” the mountains and leave our valley alone. Pretty neat, eh? 🙂