November 2021 Monthly Running Challenge

The final hike of the 46 happened to fall on a picture perfect day on Sunday Nov 7. We had a group of 6 of us, all of whom had hiked another friend's 46th peak almost exactly a year earlier. I feel extremely lucky that this November day arrived without a cloud in the sky and temps in the 30s-40s on the mountain. It was frosty to start but as soon as we had hiked 20 minutes, I was taking off my jacket. There was a dusting of snow and some ice at higher elevation, in the shadows. We had to put on our micropikes evenutally to navigate some icy patches.

The way up to the summit was amazing. One of my favorite hikes of all of them. The views were incredible, and there were some fun rock scrambles to climb up, but nothing too grueling. We could see mountains in all directions that we had previously climbed. So cool to see from the vantage point of "I've climbed all of those!" We had to climb over 3 smaller peaks called "The Brothers" on the way up - First Brother, Second Brother, Third Brother. Each one had a great view. Then we get to near the summit of Big Slide and we negotiated some ladders and more ice on the way up. And a lookout spot where we could see the big rock slide that gives the mountain its name. But fortunately we didn't have to climb that, because it's very steep!

One of my friends went ahead with my phone so he could take pictures and video and he captured the moment of me reaching the top and then my friends joining. It was kind of a surreal moment to both think how incredible it was and then "this is it? It's done?" We stayed up there for a while and ate and I just marveled at all the surrounding mountains that I had climbed. There is a lot of talk in facebook forums about pine martens that hang out at this summit and come out and try to steal food. My friend who got up there first saw them! And he took a pic with my phone! But the rest of us didn't get to see them because they ran away and didn't come back out with all the commotion.

After we hung out a while hoping in vain the pine martens would come back, we started back down. Here's where things went wrong. One of my friends who has only hiked 3 high peaks and doesn't really enjoy it - he's just there to be supportive on these special last hikes - always wants to get down really fast. He's ready for it to be over. So he started hustling down, and one other friend was with him. I realized quickly that they would pretty quickly come to a junction and wasn't sure they knew what to do. We had decided on the way up that we would take a different route down, making it a loop rather than an out and back. A little longer route by distance but easier. He had definitely heard that discussion, but whether he would recognize the junction and take the right route was unclear. The friend who went with him was waiting for us at the junction, but she had lost him before that. We were unsure which trail he had taken and sent someone down a ways of each one running quickly to try to find him or evidence that he had gone that way. We didn't see him but the out and back way we saw people coming up and they had not seen anyone. We decided to all go down the loop trail, based on that and a possible footprint in the mud that could be his very big boot. I did not feel good about this and really wanted us to split up, but we decided he was 90% likely to have taken this route. We kept trying to text/call (no service) and yell ahead, but no response. The trail had several places that would have been easy to make a wrong turn and it was increasingly worrisome that we weren't seeing him. We moved quickly and decided at this point we just had to get to the parking lot and if he wasn't there, split up and search.

It took us 4 hours to get down and we didn't see him the whole time. I was nauseous with worry because he did not have the app to navigate on his phone, his phone was probably dead from listening to music the whole time, he has the least experience hiking and had little water and food with him. I was angry also that he took off and didn't wait for us at the junction or anywhere else. About 2 miles from the end, we ran into 2 hunters and they told us they heard someone yelling "hello, hello" and possibly "help" and had come down from the ridge to try to find the person. You can hear sound better going up and you can't hear when you are lower than the person yelling so that made it hard. The hunters suggested where they though the yelling had come from and they looped one way and 3 of us looped the other to try to search that area. One friend and I continued on to the parking lot to be there and to have cell service. We exchanged phone numbers with the hunters so we could connect and we were starting to get spotty service so we hoped this would work.

My friend and I walked about 25-30 minutes and I realized I had a voicemail on my phone. It was someone saying "I saw your friend" and they had pointed him across a bridge to the trail to the parking lot. I thought this was the hunter guys and I called back and fortunately got someone on the line. He told me basically the same thing and I asked if my friend had actually gotten on the right trail and he said he thought so but I didn't have a reference for where he was saying he was. I called my other friends and relayed the message and said I had talked to the hunter guys and they saw him. She said "the hunter guys are with us" and they didn't call you, so it was actually someone else my friend had run into! We had no real idea where he was but it sounded like he had been close to getting back to the parking area so we hustled up the last half mile or so to get there. And we were almost there and heard his big booming voice yell out to us. OMG. The relief and emotions. I called our other friends and said "he's here!" and they were so relieved and started back as well. It was after 4 pm and starting to get dusky in the woods (the time had just changed) so the possibility of this all going very wrong was very, very real.

The whole hike took 8 hours 20 minutes for me. I waited to officially sign out of the register until we all came out of the woods and that was a bit later. The hunters came out with my friends and they were the nicest guys. They had committed to helping us search if he had not been at the car and had so much knowledge of these woods and mountains. I am so grateful to them and a few others we ran into who gave us helpful info, and the guy who called me on my friend's behalf.

So, I'm still recovering from the wild emotions of this hike. The way up was the most amazing experience and I was putting it in the running for my favorite hike overall. Summiting my 46th peak on this perfect day was something I will not forget. The second half of the hike I would like to forget. I am still angry that he didn't wait for the group and put us all through that, but I am so happy he didn't give up and didn't lose his wits (he did get off the correct trail and had ended up across the river on a service road). There are many lessons to be learned from this. I hope we all learned them.

And that is The End of this journey. I am a 46er. I hiked 21 trips and over 230 hours. I don't have the mileage added up because it tends to be so inaccurate but it was a lot. I started in September 2019 with 2 peaks, not really intending to do more. Then didn't hike again until June 2020, and that's when it all took off. 23 peaks between June and November 2020, and then 21 peaks between June and November 2021.