A Weekend of Many Firsts

So I had quite an adventerous weekend. It all started on Saturday with a phone call from a friend saying he wanted to float down the river with my brother and I. Ryan and I had been talking about taking tubes down the Elk River ever since we moved here but we never got around to it. Thanks to Travis, we had a chilly but hilarious time going down the river. It got even better when we encountered some whitewater, which was probably only a Class One... but still. It was whitewater. I felt like Tom Sawyer for some reason while we were floating......

The weekend didn't end there though. That night, we get a phone call from another friend saying that he wanted to hike Fernie Mountain with a group of people Sunday morning. I was a little unsure, because I'd never done a "real" hike before. Nonetheless, I figured that I only live once and if the hike killed me, dying on top of a mountain wouldn't be so bad.

So 8am came on Sunday morning when Ryan and I picked up Aaron and headed to the base of the mountain. There, we met four others and began the asent. The first half wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't until the lookout that my fears would become truth. From the lookout, the climb to the summit was pretty much vertical. As we went higher and higher, I started getting dizzier and dizzier. It wasn't until Charles started talking about cravings for a McD's cheeseburger when I realized that I was feeling rather nauseous. I stopped, letting Charles pass me, and crouched down to hold onto a tree. Aaron came up and asked me what was wrong. Yeah well, the next few moments weren't very pretty. Up came my breakfast and anything else that had been sitting in my stomach... Aaron, I'm sorry that you had to witness all that... Anyway, was I going to head back down? Heck no. I was determined to make it, feeling nauseous and dizzy or not... I was going to defeat this mountain.

And it was absoultely 100% worth it. The views from the summit were incredible. I could see our little Overwaitea, the high school track, the Red Barn, everything! Sweet deal man.

So usually, once you get to the summit, you start thinking about getting down. Well, apparently that wasn't the plan. Us three girls saw a patch of snow at the bottom behind the mountain, and decided to go play. Good job Nadine for navigating through the bush to get to the bottom.. even if we had to climb down a bit of a cliff. Once getting to the snow, we filled a bag full of snowballs. Mission: Ambush Chromosome Y. Then we again made our way up and met up with the guys. We rock climbed our way to a little cave where Nick had dreamed (for five years) of dislodging a massive boulder down the shoot. And wow did he ever dislodge it. He actually created a mini rockslide, and the boulder ended up flying about 20 feet into the air. Pretty insane. And the noise! It gave me goosebumps.

After screening our way down some shale (which is a skill I should work on!), we again climbed up to the summit. Seeing as there isn't a trail on the backside of the mountain, I'm sure I imitated a delirious mountain goat while trying to get up the extremely steep slope.

Going down after reaching the summit was a mind over matter issue. In this case, the mind did not win. I was freaked as I tried to slide down-yes, slide... because it was steep and rocky... and it took a while to get to the look out. Once we got to the look out, I put myself in cruise control and let my wobbly legs get me to the base of the mountain.

And that was that. Supposedly, the hike should only take 3 hours... we ended up being on that adventure for 8... just cuz going up was slow and then all the exploring we did once we hit the summit...

Ryan and I rushed to DQ to grab some ice cream, I rushed home, jumped into the shower, and rushed to church. They've changed the services to Sunday evenings for the summer... and I had to be there early because I was going to play piano with the worship team for the first time.

After church, I was absolutely exhausted and incredibly sore and all I wanted to do was get home. Driving a little faster than what's recommended along Cokato Rd, I hit a ground squirrel right by the Red Barn. It was sick... the "bump" feeling of the front right tire. Poor Ryan, I think I made him deaf by the screaming I did. I've never killed anything so living before... I felt horrible! At least they aren't going extinct... it would probably do that area some good if we got rid of a few more... (they're everywhere!!)...

I was just getting over the fact that I was charged with road kill when these two little, cute birds were flying across the road. One of them wasn't fast enough and smacked right into the windshield. If that wasn't horrifying enough, my window was wide open and it flew into the car after hitting the windshield!!!! My screaming began again as I slammed the brakes, opened my door, and watched the little thing drop to the ground. I'm scarred for life, I tell ya. I still feel horrible every time I think how there's some lonely bird out there, flying around without it's lover. How sad!

Anyway, that's my weekend. Lots of firsts for me... tubing down a river, climbing a mountain, screening down a mountain, doin' a little rock climbing, playing with the worship team, and being guilty of killing two animals in a matter of a minute and a half.

Good thing it's Monday.

Here's some pictures from the hike.

This is the mountain we climbed. Mt Fernie!

Looking at the Three Sisters from a different perspective up on the summit.

My bro and I just after we reached the summit.

Everything looks so different when you're so high up!
You can see some of the ski runs on Lizard.

My beautiful, quaint, little town with the Elk River meandering through.

Leah and Nadine making their own trail to get to the patch of snow. We were determined to ambush the guys!

How could anyone get tired of that view?