Recent Hike

So cousin Gary and his grandson Jason decided they wanted to go for a little hike this weekend. We got about four miles in, having seen some beatiful spring flowers and came to the highest part of the trail. Gary points up a steep and slippery slope to the top of the nearby ridge-line and says,' Let's go up there.' I said I didn't think that was a good idea, thinking of their inexperience as climbers. They had done well as hikers but this was a whole other challenge. I could tell they really wanted to get to the top, so we started off up the slippery slope with me in the lead kicking steps into the dirt and making switchbacks, trying to not disturb the flowers along the way. The further up we got, the steeper the slope got. We had to push our way through burned bushes and my jeans got painted with a lot of charcoal marks. Well, we finally got to the top after going over the ridge and beating our way throughmore bush on the other side. We were very happy to get to the top and took some time to get our breath back.... and Jason took a few pictures. We then looked back down where we had come up and decided we did not want to go back down the route we had taken up. It seamed steeper on the way down.
Then the adventure started. We hiked along the ridge line for half a mile or so looking a long way down toward the trail we had started from below and found that, mostly, the slope below us got steeper and more hostile. However, on the back side of the ridge, there was a big wide open meadow leading down into a hidden canyon that I could see would eventually join up with the trail back to the car. We started down, treking through some beautiful spring flowers. We eventually rounded the bend to see that the meadow turned in to a steep, narrow, rocky canyon. We had no choice but to make our way down through the bush to the water course at the bottom of the canyon and do a lot of rock hopping along the strean bed. We needed to do a fair amount of chimneying, where you put your feet on the opposite wall and your back against the near wall and move sideways and downward to get to the ground below the rock walls. We had to do that a few times but not very far vertically. Eventually we made it down through the bush that filled the canyon to what I thought was a main trail in the big canyon bottom that our side canyon led to. It turned out it was a water course and not a trail but was relatively open and flat with no more rock climbing. We did have to do a little wading, but it eventually led to the actual trail we had started up on earlier in the morning. That was a welcome site.
We were all glad to get back to the car and meet my wife for lunch. My iced tea was very welcome. I'm surprised that we are all in great shape today after our trek. Jason took some great pictures on the way down the side canyon and I'll post then as soon as he e-mails them to me.
In walking along the main trail, we stopped to talk to a couple of mountain bikers heading up, who informed us that a mountain lion was in the area we had come through and it had taken a deer two days before. I'm glad it had a full stomach and wonder if it had actually been any where near us on our trek.