Yesterday I finally made it out on a hike with MeetUp! I’ve been watching a couple of local ones and joined a bunch of different groups but nothing lined up very well until this weekend.
We all met around 1030 at the parking lot so we could head out together, there were nine of us. The trail was pretty muddy to start with and it was even raining a little. I didn’t mind the rain though because it meant i could test out my new arc'teryx jacket and I’m happy to say I kept quite cozy in it.
(And yes I do purposely buy obnoxiously coloured hiking clothes. If something were to ever go wrong, I would like to be located easily. I didn’t used to pay a lot of attention to this but especially this past summer with how many times I went hiking alone and overnight alone I realized that this was something important to factor in.)
The group pretty quickly divided into two based on hiking speeds. Once people found out about my trip to Newfoundland I kind of got pushed to the front as the leader. There were lots of nice look out spots but it was so foggy we couldn’t really see a whole lot. It was still pretty but I’d love to come back and do this hike in the summer.
It started to get colder and colder the closer we got to the top, and snowier. By the time we got to the top we were all bundled up in our jackets, we took shelter by the ski lifts to have a quick lunch and then we are all very eager to get going down again. It was crazy the temperature difference as soon as we left the peak and got out of the wind.
The way down went considerably faster, as it always does. There were a couple of wipe outs, which of course was funny because it was so muddy and everyone got dirty. We even caught up to the other group, they had turned around at an earlier point realizing they weren’t going to make it to the top.
Overall, I had a lot of fun and am hoping to join the group next weekend too!