Peak #3 – Mount Baden Powell Trail

I got to the trailhead around 3:30am and took a powernap before eating my breakfast and around 4:00am another car pulled up next to me and got out with his dog. I will always listen to my body and if it says go hike then I hike. I started on the trail a little bit behind him but I guess I hike too fast and passed him and his dog on the way up.

I didn't get tired from the switch backs, I was tired from turning so. many. times. It was like come on, how many more.

Finally I got to the summit and it felt so good. I made eye contact with a couple who had backpacked the day before and once you make eye contact, you know they are about to ask for a photo op. So I got one of me and they got one of them. After they left I started to see other people show up from a different direction but it wasn't crowded. I sat down, ate my snack and enjoyed the scenery around me. A couple minutes later I saw the owner with his dog that I had passed. We laughed about it.

On my decent though there were SO MANY PEOPLE. I think I said hi to over 80 people, no joke! It was insane. I had to stop and move to the side since they had the harder part of coming up and I was just going down but that did get annoying. A lot of people kept asking about the flag and I did notice that when I was up there, there wasn't a flag. Someone had taken it down since it's considered “trash,” but it didn't bug me. I guess it bugged a lot of other people that it wasn't up there but what are you going to do?

Once I came back down to the trailhead there were a bunch of people and parking was out of control…..this is why I go early!!