I’d climb the highest mountain...

Jemaine: Would you really do that, climb the highest mountain?

Bret: No, probably not

Jemaine: Why not make it a bit more realistic… things you’d actually do?

Bret: Well, I’d hang out with her… (check out the Flight of the Conchord's song)

Or in my case, I’d hike Old Rag. And since I wasn’t hiking up for, or with, anyone in particular I reveled in my mostly solo hike (which made for some fun shadography). Thanks to Diana for getting me to finally do this climb for the first time (it only took about 31 years of living around here!), for driving, and for letting me cast the deciding scheduling vote so I could hike it on my birthday weekend.

Notes to Jon:

• I theorized that we witnessed the latest sunrise ever over our morning pitstop, Wawa. This is the first year of the new daylight savings time and Saturday was the last morning before we fell back, so that sunrise shot was taken at 7:41 am.

• We spotted the strangest rainbow (a rainspot?) which was a prism of color that kept glowing out of one spot in the clouds a good distance away from the sun. It remained for the final 15 minutes of the drive and was visible even as our road twisted off in different directions.

• Departing Ballston at 7am was early enough to avoid the bottlenecks on the rock scramble section despite being one of the busiest weekends of the year. Leaving later would have been a disaster. Hiking back down the rock scramble around 1pm we encountered people who’d presumably arrived closer to 10 or 11am. They were in a line that easily stretched back 100 people and couldn’t possibly have taken less than an hour to work through the bottleneck.

• There is a bypass to the left of the bottleneck (as seen from the bottom), but it isn’t for the faint of heart and I needed a hand (actually a bent leg) to get started. It also isn’t much of an option when the line gets as long as it did because no one is going to let you pass through the line to get to the bypass. Coming back down on the other hand worked just fine!

• We chose to hike up the rock scramble and then back down it rather than taking the easier fire road home. If you are willing to crab walk down the bypass I think that’s the better option. I didn’t take the fire road but I can’t imagine it would be more exciting than another trek through the rocks.

• The hike took about two hours each way, which accounted for a decent amount of time wandering off for photos, but not much for waiting in line if you go later.
  
  
• My winter biking gloves were perfect for keeping my hands warm and scrape-free.