The plan was to meet and hike today, and when I got to his apartment, Jonathan surprised me with this beautiful arrangement as an early birthday present! It was absolutely gorgeous, and will brighten many days to come.
We then set out to climb Mt. Olympus. This may or may not have been incredibly ill conceived! This hike was SO hard. The elevation gain is about 4200 feet over (only) 3.5 miles to an elevation of 9,026 feet at the summit. That meant it was an enormous amount of upward movement. Actual steps up like stairs, as well as climbing fairly steep paths. Now, Jonathan and I have Running has not been very consistent, and neither has his trips to the gym. So this was SUPER hard.
We persevered, and it took us what seemed like forever, with many points where we thought we should just turn around.
I'm so glad we didn't. It was a very difficult hike, but the views were amazing.
And honestly, you just can't beat that sense of accomplishment when you reach the summit. You are tired, and sweaty, but dang it, you're on the top of a mountain!
We had pretty much had it, though.
We started a bit later than we should have, so ended up climbing down quite a ways in the deepening dark as the sun set. This picture captures it probably best...but the inversion was pretty bad today. Down on the valley floor it just looked a little hazy, but up here it just looks like soup. We joked that this must have been what Lake Bonneville must have looked like.
The last hour or so after the sun went down was us still trying to just make. it. to. the. car. Going down is often just as hard as going up, and the dark made it tricky. But we made it safely, and now we can say we climbed Mt. Olympus! And we will probably do it again!
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