For the longest time we've been wanting to climb to the top of the mountain behind our community. Just about every time we drive home, I say to myself one day I'm going up there, but life has a way of getting busy and time flies by quickly.
A few years ago we started off to conquer it, but we got a little nervous when we came across no trespassing signs and a gate across a road leading toward the top. We decided not to proceed because at our age it would suck to get caught trespassing. You can get away with those things when you are younger, but after a certain age (not sure what that age is), it's not cute any longer.
After talking to a couple of friends that we heard were running there regularly, we found out that there was another way to the top. With this new information, Bart and I set the date of January 1st as the day we would take on the mountain.
We started off on the Mountains to Sea Trail, and on this section of trail is a cairn. It's always different every time we see it. On this day, we were greeted by this cute little green frog with his face toward the sun and our mountain.
At this point we left the Mountains to Sea Trail and crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway.
After some scrambling, we made our way to an old logging road and proceeded to go in the wrong direction. We realized after about a half a mile that we were just going around the mountain and not up it. We were having fun though so it just added to the adventure. It's an awesome dirt road to run on.
At about this point, the trail starts descending, so we decided to turn back.
It didn't take long to start the up hill climb once we got back on track and in the right direction.
We had several stream crossings after all the rain we've had recently.
The streams really were beautiful.
This cove was our favorite section, and as you can see, we are getting closer to the top
This was as close to the top of the mountain as we could get because of over grown vines. The road just does a loop around the top. After all these years of wanting to climb this mountain, we finally made it. It was awesome.
From our home, it's about 1200' of elevation gain to the top. The views were a little less than spectacular on what turned into a cloudy day, but that's okay, we'll be back again.
We could see Mount Pisgah from here, but you'll have to trust us on that one.
We wrapped up our adventure with some breakfast from our new neighborhood cafe, and we're already making plans for our next trip to the top.
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