I got hike number 21 done today - Whiteface. After Owls Head, I wanted to do a nice one, and I thought this fit the bill. It's only like 7.5 miles long, it's one of the lower ones (4020 feet) and it has really good views from the top. Also. my research said that there was a lot of exposed rock on the top, which I always like.
I went up to NH for the weekend for my friends Greta and Eric's wedding. It was really nice - they got married on top of Chapel Ledge which is one of the places they climb a lot. The guests stood, and they had laid out rope for the aisle. After, my friend Kerry and I walked down - there were shuttle busses but it was really nice out.
Anyhow, today I really wanted to get in another hike - after the Owls Head fiasco I got another cold and actually had to stay home from work for a couple days. Plus, when I went climbing with my brother for that last time I hurt my back. I've been so pathetic! So, I was like "I gotta get off the couch and stop being such a slug." I kind of wished I'd eased back in a little more, this was hard!
The first part was a gentle climb and I was thinking it wasn't going to be so bad. Then it started to go up, and for a moment I thought about giving up and just going to the outlets. But I stuck it out. There were some pretty relentless uphills. There were some really nice rock ledges that I loved. Some of them were almost like climbing! Probably like a 5.2 or so, but no rope and I was 3 miles from the road, by myself. Getting to the top, I wasn't totally sure if I was there, but then I went further and it went down, so I was there.
I stayed at an airbnb. I didn't totally love it - you're at someone else's house. So, it's kind of weird. The woman who owns the place made me breakfast, and it was really good. But, it's not like a restaurant - I told her 7-7:30 for breakfast the night before, so she got up then, so I had to... Because otherwise I would have felt rude. Even though you are paying to stay there, it's still someone else's home... I would do it again, but hotel first. Or, if I was traveling, like Cuba!
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Friday, September 9, 2016
Day 2 of 2
I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make right before crossfit is eating sushi. Not that that stopped me from doing so, but I had regrets. I was so hungry today, first I ate my lunch early, then I needed something to eat before I could work out. I was kind of counting on laziness to keep me from getting a snack, because I have to walk down 3 flights of stairs and to the student center to get food, but then I just got something on the way out.
Anyhow, I'm going climbing with my brother tomorrow, so I had to go to crossfit today. Which I was a little sad about given the WODs - todays kind of sucked, and tomorrows looked much better. Though, I guess I wouldn't think that so much tomorrow...
First we did front squats. I did 6 sets of 3. I wound up working with someone who's new to crossfit, so I was actually lifting more than her! That never happens. I got up to 80 pounds with relatively decent form.
WOD: 8 minute AMRAP
30 chest to bar pull ups
25 thrusters (I lifted 35 pounds)
20 chest to bar pull ups
there was more to it, involving descending reps, but that's as far as I got.
I'm trying to decide if we should climb inside or outside tomorrow - not so sure about the weather. One thing I do know, def not going to hike owls head! :)
Anyhow, I'm going climbing with my brother tomorrow, so I had to go to crossfit today. Which I was a little sad about given the WODs - todays kind of sucked, and tomorrows looked much better. Though, I guess I wouldn't think that so much tomorrow...
First we did front squats. I did 6 sets of 3. I wound up working with someone who's new to crossfit, so I was actually lifting more than her! That never happens. I got up to 80 pounds with relatively decent form.
WOD: 8 minute AMRAP
30 chest to bar pull ups
25 thrusters (I lifted 35 pounds)
20 chest to bar pull ups
there was more to it, involving descending reps, but that's as far as I got.
I'm trying to decide if we should climb inside or outside tomorrow - not so sure about the weather. One thing I do know, def not going to hike owls head! :)
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Day 1 of 2
Once again I'm in the position of having to do two days of crossfit in a row. Today wasn't too bad, I got caught in traffic and got there late so I missed the warm up, which was a good thing because it was the coach's birthday and the class did 29 burpees in his honor. Hum, I've been 29 many times before too (except I think maybe he really is).
WOD:
400 meter sprint (WTF? Sprint?)
3 rounds:
5 power snatches (I lifted 35 pounds)
5 squats (it was supposed to be overhead, but those hurt my shoulders, so I did back)
25 double unders (I did 50 singles)
400 meter sprint
3 rounds:
5 power snatches
5 squats
25 double unders
400 meter sprint
my time: 17 min 50 sec
We started with snatches or power snatches. I did power snatches because I'm so powerful :) Also because I can't squat with the barbel over my head. We did 5 rounds of 3 and I got up to 60 pounds for the last 2 rounds.
The students are back at school. It's so strange, but it is kind of nice.
WOD:
400 meter sprint (WTF? Sprint?)
3 rounds:
5 power snatches (I lifted 35 pounds)
5 squats (it was supposed to be overhead, but those hurt my shoulders, so I did back)
25 double unders (I did 50 singles)
400 meter sprint
3 rounds:
5 power snatches
5 squats
25 double unders
400 meter sprint
my time: 17 min 50 sec
We started with snatches or power snatches. I did power snatches because I'm so powerful :) Also because I can't squat with the barbel over my head. We did 5 rounds of 3 and I got up to 60 pounds for the last 2 rounds.
The students are back at school. It's so strange, but it is kind of nice.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Owls Head!!
I did it!!! And, I'm never doing it again :) According to my fitbit, it was a total of 55,374 steps! Which, when you consider Owls Head (or, The Owl, as I've been calling it) is an 18.2 mile hike, isn't surprising.
I was thinking about either Owls Head or the Osceola's. The Osceola's are way shorter and easier, and have much better views. Owls Head's view looks like this:
When my alarm went off at 5 am, I was determined, though! (OK, I hit the snooze bar, but I was determined at 5:10). I knew it really was pretty much my last chance for this year to do Owls Head, and I really didn't want it hanging over my head all winter. I got up at 5:20 am, got dressed, and hit the road by 5:45. Now, this was actually my first mistake - that was too late to be leaving this time of year - by the time I got to the trail, it was already 8 am. Book time for the hike as 11 hours and 35 minutes, and it gets dark now around 7:30 pm. So all day I was kind of racing against the fact that I was going to be short of daylight at the end of the day.
As all the other bloggers say, although it is an 8 mile hike to the base of Owls Head, it's not like 8 miles of NH hiking. The first three miles were basically a dirt road. I accidentally wound up on the wrong side of the river on the wrong dirt road (there's one on each side, I took the correct one on the way back). It only took me an hour to get to the camp site that's about 3 miles in, I was pretty psyched about that. Conveniently, as I was looking at the map trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the river, a ranger walked by and gave me directions that started with "keep going down the road until you get to the bathrooms...." Heck yeah! They were composting toilets, but still better than the woods. After using the bathrooms I was at the river, thinking about how to cross, and then thought "actually, I kind of have to poop..." which costed me about 15 minutes to return to the bathroom and take care of business, but time well spent.
The second trail, Franconia Brook Trail, is also wide, fairly flat, easy to hike, and gentle on the feet. There weren't any rocks like there usually are on NH trails. There was one point where I got a little confused because the trail branched, which it wasn't supposed to do. I figured out that it was because there was a bandit campsite there - a really pretty one! I would totally recommend it, and in fact on the way back I found that there were people camping out there.
I reached the third trail, Lincoln Brook Trail in pretty good time. It was about 10:40. It's 3.4 miles on Lincoln Brook Trail to get to Owls Head. Lincoln Brook was a little more uphill and a little more NH like, in that there were some rocks and you had to pay attention to the trail some. But, it was still a very easy trail. It went uphill, but so gradually that you barely noticed. The Pemegawassit Wilderness is gorgeous, and I really liked the hike - all of the trails follow really pretty brooks and it was just a perfect day! There were about 6 river crossings (including the unnecessary one because I hiked on the wrong side of the river on the way there). The water level was low enough that they weren't too bad, though in the spring I think they could be hard. I discovered on the way back that it's easier to jump from rock to rock if you yell "bamm!" as you leap. Yeah, it's a little weird, but effective.
Although Owls Head is one of the most remote mountains, it was like a super highway out there! I guess in part because it was a really nice day and a long weekend, there were a lot of people who wanted to hike it. It was pretty crazy, though. Just as busy as Lafayette or Washington, I bet! There was this one group of French backpackers who passed me on the way there - when I got to the top they had already summated, and were eating, when I was heading down, they were taking a nap, and yet they still got down at the same time as me! And, there was also this group of 4 + dog that I wound up walking near a lot - they seemed nice, though their dog had apparently rolled in turkey poo. But everywhere I went on the way there, there they were! I mean, how far does a person need to hike to get some alone time with nature?
Anyhow, I reached the foot of the mountain at 1 pm. I was a little worried that I would have a hard time finding the trail up, it's not an officially maintained trail and there's some discussion about that in the hiking books. I'd asked a couple hikers as I was getting closer if they had any trouble finding it, and they all said no - there's a cairn across from it, and when I got to it, it looked like this:
Really, no worry that I wouldn't find it! I took a moment to mentally prepare and headed up.
Climbing Owls Head wasn't really a whole lot of fun. The bottom of the trail was scree and rock. It was a lot of work going up, slippery and hard on the calves. There were a ton of people coming down, and they all looked like they were struggling too, going up is hard aerobically, but down is more a head game because you can see how far you have to fall! The trail for about the first half or so looked like this:
After a while the trail became more tree lined and really more of a trail, even if it wasn't officially maintained. So many people traveled it, it was pretty much a trail. It seemed to go forever after it got to the trees. I wasn't prepared for that, I kept thinking I was almost there! But, of course, it's a 4000 footer, and it was 1000 feet elevation gain in a mile, so I should have expected it. Once I finally got to the top (where the french people were eating lunch, it was still another .2 mile (or .4 mile?) to the actual summit. Apparently for a while people forgot that the real summit was somewhere else and were calling the french eating spot the summit. I'd like to know who re-discovered the top and give them a piece of my mind! It took forever to get there! I was so hungry and wanted to sit, but really wanted to reach the top. When I got there, of course the people + smelly dog were there - they were so nice, though, they welcomed me like an old friend! Hikers are great :)
I sat for like 10 minutes and admired the lack of view and ate a little and rested my feet. But, it was getting late and I knew I had to get down. It took and hour an a half for me to get to the top, it was 2:45 by the time I started heading down. Going down was really hard too. There are a lot of smooth, well loved trees on that trail. I made use of them, holding on as I negotiated the moving trail. The scree fields took the longest - there were so many rocks that were big enough that I thought I would knock them on myself! Fortunately I was pretty much alone at this point, so I didn't need to worry about knocking them on anyone else. It took about an hour to get down, so it was 3:45 by the time I got to the bottom! I was pretty much out of filtered water at that point, though I had a bottle that I had taken from the creek but not yet filtered, so I sat for a few minutes and filtered. It was a few minutes before 4 when I started heading back. I wasn't feeling so good about this, because I had 8 miles to hike, and it had taken me 5 hours on the way in, and sunset was at 7:30.
Again, fortunately the hike was not that hard, especially on the way back. Although it hadn't seemed very uphill on the way in, you could tell it was a little downhill on the way out. Not so downhill that it required navigating, rather it allowed me to walk faster. For me, I moved pretty fast, only stopping once in the middle of a creek to filter more water and have a power bar (oh, and put a bandaid on a blister I got on my second smallest toe.)
The hike again was very pretty. I got to the first trail intersection in about 2.25 hours. The second one I got to after about 3 hours hiking. I had a little internal debate with myself if I should cross the river and go back on the other side, the way I came, which I knew was going to be easy, or if I should take the chance that the other side would be easy too. Crossing the river would take time, but was safer. In the end I decided not to cross, and I was so glad I didn't! The trail on the other side of the river was actually better - it was once a railroad track, so there were old railroad ties on it, but otherwise it was so well graded, I was able to go really fast for me. It was getting dark by this time and I was worried about bears because, well, that's something that I do in woods with bears. So, I was singing and humming and talking loudly. At 1.6 miles the trail intersected with another one, and a couple minutes after I passed a couple other hikers came off that trail (sigh, I think I was singing at that time). They had two dogs, which was comforting because I figured that the bears would prefer the dogs. They were so fast, they passed me like I was standing still and were off!
I got to my car at 8 pm, so it took me a full hour less to get out. The NH police had left a nice parking ticket on my windshield. Live free or die, ha! That's cold. I was so exhausted, and so happy with myself! It took a little over 2 hours to get home, I showered and totally crashed. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a migraine - my body telling me "never do that again." And I'm totally listening to it! I'm glad I can check it off the list, and that I did it in one day. I wish I had stayed up in NH the night before to make it a little easier. I am kind of glad I did it in the fall, even though it meant that the last 20 min or so were in the dark - I think the hike would be very buggy in the spring with all of the creeks and hiking mostly at a lower elevation, there weren't that many in Sept. Also, there were 5 brook crossings that had the potential to be really hard if the water levels were higher. We're pretty much in drought now, and I still took my boots off once and waded, I think with snow run off it would have been much harder. And it would be awful on a really hot day, way too long. Twenty of the 4000 footers done, and that includes the two hardest - Isolation and Owls Head!
The view from the slide:
I was thinking about either Owls Head or the Osceola's. The Osceola's are way shorter and easier, and have much better views. Owls Head's view looks like this:
When my alarm went off at 5 am, I was determined, though! (OK, I hit the snooze bar, but I was determined at 5:10). I knew it really was pretty much my last chance for this year to do Owls Head, and I really didn't want it hanging over my head all winter. I got up at 5:20 am, got dressed, and hit the road by 5:45. Now, this was actually my first mistake - that was too late to be leaving this time of year - by the time I got to the trail, it was already 8 am. Book time for the hike as 11 hours and 35 minutes, and it gets dark now around 7:30 pm. So all day I was kind of racing against the fact that I was going to be short of daylight at the end of the day.
As all the other bloggers say, although it is an 8 mile hike to the base of Owls Head, it's not like 8 miles of NH hiking. The first three miles were basically a dirt road. I accidentally wound up on the wrong side of the river on the wrong dirt road (there's one on each side, I took the correct one on the way back). It only took me an hour to get to the camp site that's about 3 miles in, I was pretty psyched about that. Conveniently, as I was looking at the map trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the river, a ranger walked by and gave me directions that started with "keep going down the road until you get to the bathrooms...." Heck yeah! They were composting toilets, but still better than the woods. After using the bathrooms I was at the river, thinking about how to cross, and then thought "actually, I kind of have to poop..." which costed me about 15 minutes to return to the bathroom and take care of business, but time well spent.
The second trail, Franconia Brook Trail, is also wide, fairly flat, easy to hike, and gentle on the feet. There weren't any rocks like there usually are on NH trails. There was one point where I got a little confused because the trail branched, which it wasn't supposed to do. I figured out that it was because there was a bandit campsite there - a really pretty one! I would totally recommend it, and in fact on the way back I found that there were people camping out there.
I reached the third trail, Lincoln Brook Trail in pretty good time. It was about 10:40. It's 3.4 miles on Lincoln Brook Trail to get to Owls Head. Lincoln Brook was a little more uphill and a little more NH like, in that there were some rocks and you had to pay attention to the trail some. But, it was still a very easy trail. It went uphill, but so gradually that you barely noticed. The Pemegawassit Wilderness is gorgeous, and I really liked the hike - all of the trails follow really pretty brooks and it was just a perfect day! There were about 6 river crossings (including the unnecessary one because I hiked on the wrong side of the river on the way there). The water level was low enough that they weren't too bad, though in the spring I think they could be hard. I discovered on the way back that it's easier to jump from rock to rock if you yell "bamm!" as you leap. Yeah, it's a little weird, but effective.
Although Owls Head is one of the most remote mountains, it was like a super highway out there! I guess in part because it was a really nice day and a long weekend, there were a lot of people who wanted to hike it. It was pretty crazy, though. Just as busy as Lafayette or Washington, I bet! There was this one group of French backpackers who passed me on the way there - when I got to the top they had already summated, and were eating, when I was heading down, they were taking a nap, and yet they still got down at the same time as me! And, there was also this group of 4 + dog that I wound up walking near a lot - they seemed nice, though their dog had apparently rolled in turkey poo. But everywhere I went on the way there, there they were! I mean, how far does a person need to hike to get some alone time with nature?
Anyhow, I reached the foot of the mountain at 1 pm. I was a little worried that I would have a hard time finding the trail up, it's not an officially maintained trail and there's some discussion about that in the hiking books. I'd asked a couple hikers as I was getting closer if they had any trouble finding it, and they all said no - there's a cairn across from it, and when I got to it, it looked like this:
Really, no worry that I wouldn't find it! I took a moment to mentally prepare and headed up.
Climbing Owls Head wasn't really a whole lot of fun. The bottom of the trail was scree and rock. It was a lot of work going up, slippery and hard on the calves. There were a ton of people coming down, and they all looked like they were struggling too, going up is hard aerobically, but down is more a head game because you can see how far you have to fall! The trail for about the first half or so looked like this:
After a while the trail became more tree lined and really more of a trail, even if it wasn't officially maintained. So many people traveled it, it was pretty much a trail. It seemed to go forever after it got to the trees. I wasn't prepared for that, I kept thinking I was almost there! But, of course, it's a 4000 footer, and it was 1000 feet elevation gain in a mile, so I should have expected it. Once I finally got to the top (where the french people were eating lunch, it was still another .2 mile (or .4 mile?) to the actual summit. Apparently for a while people forgot that the real summit was somewhere else and were calling the french eating spot the summit. I'd like to know who re-discovered the top and give them a piece of my mind! It took forever to get there! I was so hungry and wanted to sit, but really wanted to reach the top. When I got there, of course the people + smelly dog were there - they were so nice, though, they welcomed me like an old friend! Hikers are great :)
I sat for like 10 minutes and admired the lack of view and ate a little and rested my feet. But, it was getting late and I knew I had to get down. It took and hour an a half for me to get to the top, it was 2:45 by the time I started heading down. Going down was really hard too. There are a lot of smooth, well loved trees on that trail. I made use of them, holding on as I negotiated the moving trail. The scree fields took the longest - there were so many rocks that were big enough that I thought I would knock them on myself! Fortunately I was pretty much alone at this point, so I didn't need to worry about knocking them on anyone else. It took about an hour to get down, so it was 3:45 by the time I got to the bottom! I was pretty much out of filtered water at that point, though I had a bottle that I had taken from the creek but not yet filtered, so I sat for a few minutes and filtered. It was a few minutes before 4 when I started heading back. I wasn't feeling so good about this, because I had 8 miles to hike, and it had taken me 5 hours on the way in, and sunset was at 7:30.
Again, fortunately the hike was not that hard, especially on the way back. Although it hadn't seemed very uphill on the way in, you could tell it was a little downhill on the way out. Not so downhill that it required navigating, rather it allowed me to walk faster. For me, I moved pretty fast, only stopping once in the middle of a creek to filter more water and have a power bar (oh, and put a bandaid on a blister I got on my second smallest toe.)
The hike again was very pretty. I got to the first trail intersection in about 2.25 hours. The second one I got to after about 3 hours hiking. I had a little internal debate with myself if I should cross the river and go back on the other side, the way I came, which I knew was going to be easy, or if I should take the chance that the other side would be easy too. Crossing the river would take time, but was safer. In the end I decided not to cross, and I was so glad I didn't! The trail on the other side of the river was actually better - it was once a railroad track, so there were old railroad ties on it, but otherwise it was so well graded, I was able to go really fast for me. It was getting dark by this time and I was worried about bears because, well, that's something that I do in woods with bears. So, I was singing and humming and talking loudly. At 1.6 miles the trail intersected with another one, and a couple minutes after I passed a couple other hikers came off that trail (sigh, I think I was singing at that time). They had two dogs, which was comforting because I figured that the bears would prefer the dogs. They were so fast, they passed me like I was standing still and were off!
I got to my car at 8 pm, so it took me a full hour less to get out. The NH police had left a nice parking ticket on my windshield. Live free or die, ha! That's cold. I was so exhausted, and so happy with myself! It took a little over 2 hours to get home, I showered and totally crashed. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a migraine - my body telling me "never do that again." And I'm totally listening to it! I'm glad I can check it off the list, and that I did it in one day. I wish I had stayed up in NH the night before to make it a little easier. I am kind of glad I did it in the fall, even though it meant that the last 20 min or so were in the dark - I think the hike would be very buggy in the spring with all of the creeks and hiking mostly at a lower elevation, there weren't that many in Sept. Also, there were 5 brook crossings that had the potential to be really hard if the water levels were higher. We're pretty much in drought now, and I still took my boots off once and waded, I think with snow run off it would have been much harder. And it would be awful on a really hot day, way too long. Twenty of the 4000 footers done, and that includes the two hardest - Isolation and Owls Head!
The view from the slide:
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Back again!
So apparently I was actually pretty sick last week, probably part of why the hike was so difficult. Not that it wasn't difficult to begin with, but it was even more difficult due to whatever virus I had. After the hike I spent the last three days of vacation on the couch. Monday I only went to work for a half day, and all week I was pretty much a couch potato after work, doing next to nothing. I have this hacking cough and am tired, but finally I'm starting to feel better.
Which is to say, I have not been a good crossftter. I didn't go at all last week, and I hadn't been this week either. I didn't want to go today because #1 it was a partner workout and #2 I didn't want to go. But, then I decided I had to go. I've wasted so much $ and I may never go back if I get too in the habit of not going. And I don't want that to happen. I was thinking I could just go tomorrow, but tomorrow is a killer looking hero wad, and also I want to go for a hike. I'm having thoughts about The Owl, but I also am having thoughts that that's a silly idea. We'll see.
WOD: My partner was super nice and did Level 1 with me
60 calories rowing
90 wall balls
60 pull ups
90 box jumps (I did steps)
our time: 17 min 15 sec
For rowing we did 10 calories each and then switched, so I rowed 3 sets of 10. We did 10's on the wall balls as well, and so I did 4 sets of 10, plus one more in the warm up! That's pretty good for me. Pull ups we did 5's. I used bands but was actually getting them right with the bands :) Box jumps of course I stepped.
They have a softer box that's made of some padding-type stuff. I'll have to try doing box jumps on it sometime. It looks harder to hurt yourself on. It would be a good way to work up to real box jumps. One woman was using it and we were talking about it, and this guy was like "it doesn't work well on the higher level, though." Coach looked at him and said "I think you are talking to the wrong crowd with that concern." Everyone but the guy laughed, I think he was embarrassed.
Which is to say, I have not been a good crossftter. I didn't go at all last week, and I hadn't been this week either. I didn't want to go today because #1 it was a partner workout and #2 I didn't want to go. But, then I decided I had to go. I've wasted so much $ and I may never go back if I get too in the habit of not going. And I don't want that to happen. I was thinking I could just go tomorrow, but tomorrow is a killer looking hero wad, and also I want to go for a hike. I'm having thoughts about The Owl, but I also am having thoughts that that's a silly idea. We'll see.
WOD: My partner was super nice and did Level 1 with me
60 calories rowing
90 wall balls
60 pull ups
90 box jumps (I did steps)
our time: 17 min 15 sec
For rowing we did 10 calories each and then switched, so I rowed 3 sets of 10. We did 10's on the wall balls as well, and so I did 4 sets of 10, plus one more in the warm up! That's pretty good for me. Pull ups we did 5's. I used bands but was actually getting them right with the bands :) Box jumps of course I stepped.
They have a softer box that's made of some padding-type stuff. I'll have to try doing box jumps on it sometime. It looks harder to hurt yourself on. It would be a good way to work up to real box jumps. One woman was using it and we were talking about it, and this guy was like "it doesn't work well on the higher level, though." Coach looked at him and said "I think you are talking to the wrong crowd with that concern." Everyone but the guy laughed, I think he was embarrassed.
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