Hadley Mt September 2009

We again took a trip up Hadley Mountain. Due to our spring trip around the country, our annual Hadley trip has been a little delayed. Howver, we got it scheduled and managed to talk one other person into coming with us. My 4-H member, Haleigh, decided that since she hadn't been up this mountain, she'd come along.

We were very lucky and have a week of really nice late summer/early fall weather. Clear, not to hot and not too cold. Just perfect. We left our house at 9am and 22 miles later, were at the trail head. Only one other car there when we arrived.

We trudged up the mountain and at trail location 2 (if you're lucky enough to have a map describing some of the points of interest along the way) we stopped for a breather. Hadley is only a little over a mile to the summit, but it's just about straight up the whole way.

We trudged on, looking at chimpmunks, toads and other nature scenes along the way. We passed the owner of the lone car at the trailhead coming down when we were about 1/3 of the way up. Haleigh of course, being only 13, never broke a sweat. Randy and I were red of face and sweating thru our shirts.

We got to the top about 1 hour and 20 minutes from when we started. Pretty good actually. We had the top to ourselves for nearly our whole stay there. Then a
family group, mom with child carrier, dad and small boy in hand came up. While there we snapped a few pictures, climbed the fire tower and had lunch.

Upon leaving we stopped at the old ranger cabin to use the privy. The cabin had been broken into early in the spring. A $1000 award for the capture of the knot heads who did it.

By then, people were coming up the mountain. I told Haleigh my theory about this mountain. As it's very popular, and from past experience, I reckoned that the ratio of people to dogs was 4 to 1. On the way down, she put this to the test by counting people and dogs. Sure enough. By the time we got to the bottom, the ratio theory had held.

Overall, a great day out. The view was great and we had lots of fun too.