Garfield, with parkour

Last night I looked at the weather in New Hampshire, and it looked really nice. Covid cases are low here, and so I decided last minute to head up and hike Garfield! I hiked Garfield once before, by myself in November 2016. That time the mountain was in the clouds, it was cold and windy up top, and I ate standing up - huddled in a grove of trees. It took me 4 hours up and 3 hours back down. I wore my micro spikes at the top. Today was much better!

I woke up on my own at 6 am, and was shocked because I never wake up that early. I decided to go back to sleep for an hour, though, because I wanted to be well rested. I got up at 7:15 (that's not an hour of extra sleep is it? But whatever) I was out the door at 7:30 and at the mountain at 10. I knew it was going to be crowded, and it was. I had to park a 5 minute walk from the trailhead - I hate it when I have to walk to my hike :). Seriously, that's probably an extra almost half mile there and back, on top of 10 miles hiking...

So, the things that were better was there was a beautiful view, the weather was good and I sat up there for almost an hour, eating and looking at the mountains and thinking how I had hiked all of the big ones... It was a little breezy and sunny, with pretty clouds, and right before I left, someone flew overhead in a glider. Also, even though I was doing crossfit then, and I certainly don't now, I did the hike faster! It took me 3 hrs and 15 min up and 2 hrs and 30 min down! So, I went from 7 hrs to 5 hrs, 45 min! Of course, I did get to sit up top and rest, which made a huge difference on my hike down...


On the way down especially, I used my parkour skills that I've been gaining to trust my feet and use gravity. Garfield was a good mountain to do this, because it's an out-and-back, 10 miles total, but only the last .2 mile is steep, the rest is pretty gradual, and it has switchbacks! Also, there are rocks, but you can see the ground some. So, it gave me a good chance to practice planning steps and using gravity. And, I was much better at it! Also, there are three stream crossings, which I used my poles to get across last time, but this time I just rock hopped and it was totally fine!

As I was going down, I saw this guy with his face against a tree, standing there with two girls and a dog. I was like "are you OK" and he said he was fine. Soon he passed me, and was like "thanks for making sure I was OK" and we wound up passing each other several times down the trail. It was kind of nice.

When I got back to my car my entire body was wet with sweat, and I ate a power bar pretty much without stopping. I drove straight home, fed the cats, made pizza dough, took a shower, cooked pizza, and ate the entire thing!

PS. That's Owl's Head in the photo to the left!