Our friend... Wildcat!!!

On Friday, December 30, we woke up with no plan what-so-ever. Our housemate, Ted, mentioned skinning up Wildcat. I am the rule follower of the bunch so I was all, "oh, I don't think that's such a good idea"... Nate looked at me and said, "I'm not walking down another mountain this week"... so I thought about it and I bargained with them... Well, what if we go through the parking lot and not walk by the lift and go to pole cat because that's closed and then we can walk up it. In the end, I wanted to do something, I knew Nate was not going to walk down another mountain so I knew I was going to have to suck up my "good girl badge" and go for it. It was a warmer day than the day before and when we got to Wildcat, it started snowing!! I love those moments!! We got about 25 minutes into our hike, and Ted's skin for his ski wasn't sticking in the back and he was having trouble climbing. The boys searched their packs for duck tape (I knew I didn't have any in my bag) and Ted ended up having to call it because it just wasn't going to work. So Nate and I kept on trekking to the top.

On Thursday, I was starting to get a cough and I could feel tightness in my chest, but I hate to admit when I am starting to get sick (especially on vacation). On Friday, about 3/4 of the way up, I thought I was going to pass out!! My chest was super tight and I just felt like I had been ran over by a mack truck!! For most of the skin up, we were skinning on closed trails so it wasn't too big of a deal. When the mack truck started to run me over, we moved off the closed trails and onto the open trails. I kept my head down and just kept pushing. We ended up making it to the top without any problems at all. We sat down to get our stuff together and of course, someone came over and was like, 'Do you have a lift ticket?' uh... no... we didn't ride the lifts... He explained to us that they were going to start cracking down this year and that we should consider going elsewhere next time. Well, buddy, thanks... we will consider going elsewhere... :) So, it took us an hour and 20 minutes to climb and all of 11 minutes to go down... AWESOME!! :)

Pictures from the day:

Closed Pole Cat with snow falling!!! 

My split board!! So nice to have that under my feet!! 

Washington in the clouds...

ah yes... so artistic with Hipstamatic

Super cute smiling Nate on the way up!! 

And super sexy Nate striking a pose!! ;)

Snow... Lovely lovely artificial snow!!! 

We were trying to hustle off the top so that we couldn't have been escorted off the top so I didn't get any pictures. The watch says we climbed 2,009 feet. We had 79,585 to go from the day before... 77,576 more to go!!! I can't believe we've hiked 22,424 feet this winter!! I wish it was all skinning, but what can you do!!

The next day, it started to rain... of course... that is the theme of this winter... Our good friends, Kelli and Doug, were staying at the Mount Washington Resort. They are from NYC and like good city folk brought Uggs to hike in. With the sickness and since we didn't want to ruin their Uggs, we scratched the hiking.... It was mostly because of the rain and sickness, but I like to tease about the Uggs! ;) We ended up going to lunch, and then wanted to take the dogs on a nice hike. We opted to try to get to the top of Cathedral Ledge. We followed Nate who was following his own trail and we ended up just scrambling up the top... yes, the theme of the blog!!  We then took the road down. We then ended up having a nice relaxing time at the resort with Kelli and Doug. We watched fireworks (at 5:30pm), swam in the outdoor pool, went to a nice dinner, got a tour of the resort from a very interesting shuttle driver, saw a guy with a SWEET comb-over and a silver& gold Spyder puffy coat, hung out in an empty bar, playing cribbage and watching TV until about 12:01am. Then we cheered on Nate for his first pee of the New Year and Nate and I went home!!

We would like to wish you and your family a very Tron New Year!! :)