Monadnock

It was like 70 degrees out today! Yesterday my (totally awesome) boss called me at work - it's spring break week and so she's working from home. She something to the effect of "I know we have a meeting tomorrow, but it's supposed to be beautiful outside. Maybe you should take the day off." I only need to hear that once!  I was already planning to take tomorrow and Friday off, a 5 day weekend sounds perfect :)

It really was a perfect day out. I got a kind of late start, but decided to do the Marlborough trail anyhow. I did it once last year and really liked it. There's a pretty sketchy road to the parking lot, it's dirt with a lot of rocks, puddles, and frost heaves. But, I decided to drive down it anyhow instead of just parking and walking an extra third of a mile. There were some scraping noises on the way in. Yuck!

I started out on the hike at about 1 ish. It was just as nice as I remembered. The hike up marlborough is 2.1 miles, but I decided to add on this extra little trail that's about .4 miles and goes up to a side peak. I saw almost no one in the hike, which was kind of surprising, given the weather! With the detour and a little stop at the side peak it took about 3 hours to get up. I guess the total up was about 2.5-3 miles? I was trying to figure it out, but I couldn't.

The one challenge was that there was still a ton of ice up there, the thick kind that's super slick. I did have my micro spikes, but I would have had to put them on and take them off too much. On the way down it was particularly difficult. It took almost as long to get down due to the ice. And, the trail wasn't marked as well in that direction, so I kept getting lost. In the end, it took about 2.5 hours to get down. It was getting dark out, I was a little worried about getting my car out of the crazy road, and then there was all the ice - I was a little nervous on the way down!  As I got close to the end, I saw a couple people ahead of me, one of whom was wearing the hunting orange. I thought "I wonder if they are murderers? If so, I hope they kill me right here so I don't have to finish walking back." My feet were killing me! And no, they weren't murders, just a couple of other bozos who started their hike a little too late. When we finished it was dusk.

I didn't change my shoes in the parking lot like I usually do because I figured that if I left before them and my car broke on the road they would have to help me :)

No pics because my regular camera battery is dead and my phone memory is full.