Tecumseh with Butt Sled

I haven't been doing a lot of fun things, mostly just working and trying to impress the new boss (which it turns out I was successful with, he emailed me with my performance eval and said that I am smart and motivated and when presented with a challenge can be counted upon to deliver!) and working on my dissertation (which just needs one more section to be two chapters, it's now 37 pages! Gonna work on it tomorrow, hopefully make it 42 ish.)  Anyhow, I decided I needed a day to do something fun, and hiking Tecumseh fit the bill. I'd hiked it before with the Egg Salad Sandwich People, but now since I'm solo hiking all the 4,000 footers, I needed to do it again alone for it to count. Plus, it's a pretty easy one, and I haven't been hiking in a while, so I thought that would be good. And, I read that you could butt slide down it!

One of the benefits of it being just a 5 mile hike was that I could leave later - I got up at 8, spent a while deciding if I would hike it or not, decided I would, putzed around, and left around 10.  I didn't have a lot of lunch food. I packed tea, cashews, and my favorite kind of protein bar, but I had to stop on the way up - also needed gas. I got an egg salad sandwich, in honor of the Egg Salad Sandwich People, and because it looked good.  The hike starts from Waterville Valley Ski resort, which was great because I could use a real bathroom before I headed up.  When I finally started it was about 1:00. Late, but I figured it would be OK due to the short easy hike, and it was.

The start of the hike was really gentle and nice, uphill but not too uphill.  There was still snow on the ground, and I was really glad I had my microspikes. There's a lookout at the ski trail at at about the one mile mark, I stopped and watched the skiers and had some tea. Then, the hard part... The next mile was the uphill bit. Pretty relentless.  I was kind of hungry and kept thinking I would stop, and then just went a little further. I got to the ridgeline between the ski mountain and the top peak after an hour, and finally ate my cashews and drank more tea. Then the push to the summit. I got to the top around 3:00, put on my layers because it was windy, and snarfed down the sandwich.  I took a few pictures, but I have to say the view is a little limited. It's nice when you're up there, but I don't think it photographs well, or at least not on my phone with sun glare:

Then the fun part!  I detached the sled from my backpack and headed down.  I realized, though, that I didn't know what to expect at the top, since there are two ways to go up, and I was going down a way I didn't go up, so I walked down, and was glad I did! It was really steep and bumpy.  I finally got to the fork where I'd had my cashews and did some sledding.  It was pretty fun, but also really scary! The sled can really move, and with the snow totally packed down, sharp turns, and lots of trees, I was kind of nervous about  going too fast. So, I did a lot of bailing when I started to feel out of control. I think my butt will be killing me tomorrow!  I think Pierce was better for sledding, or following Greta was better. One of the two. After a while my butt was so numb and wet, and I wasn't really going fast, so I walked down a lot of it. When I got to the ski trail look out I thought about taking the ski trail down, but somehow that seemed like cheating (no, butt sledding didn't, my hike/my rules). So, I went down the rest of the trail. I was really glad I did because when it got less steep it was way more fun.

I got back to my car a around 4:15. So 2 hours up, 20 minutes at the top, less than an hour down.  

I really love early spring hiking. It's so quiet out, the sun is bright again, the snow makes it easy to hike because you don't have to worry about all the rocks. There aren't too many people out. It's a zen way to spend the day!  If only it didn't take 4.5 hours driving for 3 hours 15 minutes on the mountain.  Still, a good way to spend the day.