Hiking Year in Review

Looking back at my 2012 hiking, it was a year of quality over quantity. I did not do the amount of day-hiking I've done other years - just due to general busyness. I used a number of personal days as sick days, and to help take care of my mom. So I wasn't able to grab a personal day to do an A.T. day-hike, or even to get up to Hawk Mountain for a day of hiking and raptor-watching in the fall. But the hiking I *was* able to do was very memorable.

My Shenandoah N.P. weekend in May was memorable for the bear I saw, and the vistas from Big Devil's Stairs - and also because of the agonizing back pain I was in. Thankfully I recovered from that...though slowly. I've decided that I need to see both a bear and a rattlesnake in the wild every year. So this year was only 50% successful.

The boys' trip to the Adirondacks was another smashing success. It was the latest in a long line of fun and well-planned trips. I bagged two peaks (Marcy and Algonquin) - both were brutally hard, but the vistas from both summits were equally spectacular.

Finally, I had a fun day at Mt. Rainier. It was unfortunate that the clouds and snow took away the vistas I was hoping to see, but the hiking was still fantastic, and the pine and cedar mountainsides of Washington state have to be seen to be believed.

So 2012 is in the books, and I can't possibly complain. 2013 doesn't promise to be any less busy, but hopefully there will be more opportunities to get out for interesting day-hikes. Discussion and planning for a boys' 2013 hiking trip will be the subject of future posts.