I mean, I know which way I WANT to go.

I went for a hike up a mountain today. Ended up being another friend's exasperated, "Can't you just go up a mountain or something?" that caused me to think, yeah, I need to go up. Last weekend's camping trip was incredibly wonderful, learned a lot, but the hike wasn't up. For some reason, the up is what I find calming these days. Maybe I'm limited in the speed I can go, maybe the effort induces a meditative state, maybe going up alone instead of with Zeb and Brittany and Mike meant I could be alone with my thoughts. Maybe.

Though I can't say being alone with my thoughts these days is necessarily a good thing, it is a thing.

So I went up the easy hill, figuring I had the three choices of Mt Wire (3 hours), Red Butte (2 hours), and Living Room (1 hour), depending on how hot the sun became (hot), how tired I was (not very), or how loud my thoughts became (very).

I said hello to everyone coming down the mountain as I was going up. I hit my usual pace going uphill, even stopping to have entire very lovely conversations with a couple people. One woman had arrived from sea level this morning, was going up with her friends without much water, and wasn't really an uphill person. She kept dismissing her efforts, "I made it only half way," and I kept insisting what she had done was great! She smiled and eventually saw her accomplishments with the celebration I thought they were worthy of. Was great!

Eventually, my thoughts got the best of me in the sun, so I stopped for a while in the shade just before the Living Room Y, to figure out what I wanted to do. I hadn't seen very many people going up, everyone was coming down, which meant I would likely have Living Room to myself if I went that way. I have never had Living Room to myself, so I turned left at the Y and wandered up.

The view was lovely, hot, and, let's be real, with a siren call to go straight down instead of wandering back along George's Hollow. The ridge was right there, right in front of me, just right. there. I had been thinking about walking up (or down) that ridge for at least a year, more like 2, and there was no reason not to give it a go. I went forward instead of back, and went out to the ridge before me.

From Living Room down to the trailhead and my car via the normal route is about 30 minutes.

From Liviing Room out the ridge, down to the trailhead is about I don't know how many minutes. I didn't make it. I mean, I know which way I wanted to go (south and down), I knew I was in the correct location on the map (hello, GPS), but I could not find the trail. There wasn't a trail where I was. I sat down to figure it out. I wanted to go right, but I couldn't see the trail. I knew that left would take me along the switchbacks back down to George's Hollow (and was likely the side trail I had noted when I passed it an hour+ before). I didn't want to go that way. I wanted to go down the ridge.

At this point, I had been going down the ridge for an hour. According to the map, I was about ⅔ of the way down the trail. Much of the ridge trail was some form of scrambling, with poles tucked away in my bag and hands on rock for balance. Most of the terrain was live, but there were a couple maim locations (no obvious die sections, but a bad slip, and that whole live-maim-die categorization takes a morbid turn).

As I sat on the trail, trying to figure out where to go, John Malkovich walked up the trail to where I was sitting. Well, John Malkovich with hair anyway. I asked him if he knew where the trail was going along the ridge, and he let me know that, hey, this was his first time on this trail, he was trying to find Living Room. Oh, new friend, you have gone much the wrong way today. I explained I was over an hour heading this way down the ridge, and if he took the 15 minutes down the hill, he'd be at George's Hollow trail with a quick left leading him 30 minutes up to Living Room. He laughed and said that he had gone that way recently, but ended up at the top with a strange radio tower. I laughed back and explained that was Mt Wire, and he went the seriously long way up the mountain, Living Room was much closer, take a left at the Y, not a right. Though, now that I think about it, he might have gone straight up Mt Wire from the South, and okay, THAT is a great straight up climb.

I stood up as he turned around to go back down the hill. I followed him along the switchbacks, gathering up a woman and her child, letting them know they, too, were on the wrong path, that they were likely 2 hours from Living Room going up this way, 45 going around, maybe they should turn around. They had little water with them. I really hope the guy who passed us on the trailing going up was heading over to help them. He lacked water, too.

Back to George's Hollow I went, disappointed that I wasn't able to climb down the rim. I might head up the front face of the ridge just to see where the two trails connect. Maybe. I might just go play ultimate instead. The disc is calling me again.