Cardigan Pente Peak

Peak bagging weekend with the Egg Salad Sandwich people. I went to Cardigan Lodge for the weekend and did a big hike on Saturday. The place was really nice, bunk beds, cute main area, a pond nearby and a BEAR!  That's a bear that liked to visit and turn logs over to look for food, then run off into the woods :)  Apparently it was a yearling, so it was pretty small, but still like 250 pounds. Cute! (Full disclosure, I didn't take the bear picture, but I was there.)

Anyhow, we had 4 choices for hiking, which meant that the group moved at a faster pace than for the Welch Dickey loop. At first I was a little scared, we kind of went from one extreme to another in terms of speed, but then we slowed down to about my speed. There were a ton of black flies out, which wasn't a lot of fun at all.  Once we got up to the first mountain, Gilmore (AKA Orange), we were out of bug zone. After Gilmore, we did Rim Rock, South Face, Cardigan and Firescrew. Cardigan was the highest, about 3156, and totally bug free. It's not above the treeline, but there was a fire there some years ago, so it has a rocky face. We ate lunch up there.

On Firescrew someone loudly pointed out that I had a rip in the butt of my pants. Awesome. Fortunately I was wearing some of my good underware. There was a helicopter coming in doing what we though was a rescue, but then it turned out to be just rescue training.

The hike was originally supposed to be 12 miles, then it was downgraded to 10+, but in fact it was actually about 8.5. It felt great until the end with the downhill, then my feet started killing me!