30 Years on Mailbox Peak
We thought we were in shape.
We were wrong.
The plan had been to get up and down the infamous hill outside of North Bend in around four hours, but it did end up taking just a bit longer than that. Carpooling to the trailhead, Dean, Mark, Beetle and I started up the gated road in a slight mist. The weather forecast wasn’t spectacular, but it was nice enough that we didn’t need to Gore-Tex™ up quite yet. The pace was fairly slow to start out with, but only because that’s as fast as we could go. The trail was almost instantly steep once we left the logging road, and didn’t relent until we reached the summit two hours later in a strong wind and enveloped in fog.
Happy 30th Birthday to me…
Early start – slight drizzle – steep, then steeper – snow field – false summits – wind, fog – summit! – back down – jelly legs – mark bites it – whupped