Our day started out innocently enough, a plan to do a relatively easy 5 mile mountain bike ride then ditch our bikes to hike up an ancient trail to the top of a ridge. See John’s trip report here when available. Once on top of the ridge, we would decide if we felt like hiking down to the Cougar Lakes…..
After about 2 hours, here we were on top of the ridge, the views were defiantly worth the effort and notice the hint of fall in the air! Lake below.
We sat down for a bite to eat and started to make our plan. John is fumbling with his GPS and grumbling that his batteries are not charged or something like that….. My memories of what happened next are a little fussy but as I recalled, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “You know Dave, I have never been up that peak over there (image above right side) and its only a mile away! Frequent flyers on my web site know that if John has not been up a peak in this area, its because they are very difficult to bag. My red flags were flying but I knew by the youthful jubilation in his voice that we were going to bag that peak!
Well, to make a long story short, after about an hour of some pretty intense traversing, John fumbles more with his GPS and announces “Ummm I messed up, the peak is actually another about 1 mile away…..” We were committed and another hour or so later, finally here is our peak!
John is alway happy on top of a new peak!
The views were amazing for sure! Out of water and pretty worn out, we started our long journey back. We swung down to one of the Cougar Lakes for a skinny dip, a bit of fishing, and to restock our water.
As the sun angle gets low, we headed back over the ridge in the distance and back to our bikes! Total trip distance, just about 20 miles but most importantly, John can put a new pin in his wall map of peaks!
davefaitlemonde.com 