descent

you know when you talk to people who climb things, they always refer to the actual climb of the said thing -- "i climbed Everest, i climbed the Sears Tower, i climbed a ladder, i climbed a tree." well, what they forgot to mention, is that they also probably descended those things, too, and it also probably sucked ass in a major way!

well today i fulfilled another Oregon "Not Dead Yet" Adventure by climbing Mt. Mcloughlin -- a 9,495-foot, million-year-old volcano that is about 30 miles from my parents' homestead. the actual hiking trail is 2 miles to the base of the mountain via the PCT and then the ascent involves making 4,000 vertical feet over 3.5 miles (in other words - straight up).

i've always wanted to climb Mt. M, partly because i can see it, and partly because very few people die there (as opposed to Mt. Shasta, which i can also see, but seems to have a tendency to kill people). so i somehow convinced my mom that we could do it, and we f*ing climbed the shit out of that mountain!!! straight-up, boulder-hopping, out-of-breath, jello-leg, climbing action. it was awesome. we even took Ray, my mom's semi-retarded new puppy, and he climbed, too! i made it to the true summit; mom and ray stopped about 500 ft. below because it was loose lava gravel that was pretty un-fun. don't get me wrong, this isn't a technical climb, but at the same time it was not easy, either. it was a real challenge. a fun challenge.

but then comes the real meal deal -- getting off the damn thing. the trail from the tree line to the summit was a total sham. there were so many foot tracks, so many marks, so many false leads. we spent at least 30 minutes on the wrong trail and had to shimmy across an unbelievably rockslide-friendly slope. it was sand dune-esque. we did find the actual trail after our brief detour, but still had 3 miles of rocky, downhill trail to contend with. going down is much, much more difficult than going up.

my feet are blistered, my neck is sore for looking down at my feet for hours, my knees ache, my quads are jelly, my hands are scratched from holding tight to lava boulders, and my entire body is covered in dust.

but mom and i did it. i almost cried when we got back to the car -- the whole "i just won Olympic Gold" sort of cry. the "holy crap i just climbed a volcano and didn't die" sort of cry. the "i will remember this forever and i am so happy it was with my super awesome mom who i love so much" sort of cry.

so, that was my sunday. now i'm going to take a shower, band-aid my blisters, and descend into bed.