We slept in and hit the road at about 8:15 and hit the trail at about 10:45. It's always a long ride up to hike but today's ride went by fairly quickly as we were both de-stressing with the holiday weekend.
The first 1.6 miles today would coincide with the Appalachian Trail as is evident by the White Blazes and AT markers. We signed in after about .2 miles as the park is trying to find out how many people were using their trails. There was also quite a bit of Painted Trillium along the trail as well as a little bit of Red Trillium. The Red Trillium however didn't seem to be surviving too well and were all sagging down so I didn't get any decent photos.
After a few miles, the trail gets steep in a hurry and is fairly heavily eroded. There is a long series of stairs and then two sets of ladders. Here's a picture of Shelby before the second set of ladders.
We soon arrived at the top of Mt. Willey. This is 4000' Number 11 for Shelby and Number 21 for me. I'm almost half way there and for someone who isn't interested in Lists, Shelby is doing ok as well. Mostly because she just goes where I go but I love having her along.
We sat at the top and ate our lunch. The Gray Jay's found us but they seemed more agressive than I've seen them in the past. Usually they will wait for you to hold out food or expose your food and they will come and take it. One of the birds actually bit me and didn't really land and grab the food and then leave, it just swooped by, bit me, grabbed my food and left.
After we finished our lunch, we hiked over the summit and down the other side to a great view of the Northern Pemi Wilderness. In the next few months I want to do a loop of these peaks as a backpack. Hopefully I can get in the shape to do it. Below is a picture of the Webster Cliff from the Viewpoint near Willey.
We hiked our way on down and realized how steep the trail actually was. One of the people ahead of us had froze on the ladders as she was scared so we helped her down and went on our way. Before we knew it, we were near the bottom where the Arethusa-Ripley Falls Trail takes off. We decided to hike in to Ripley Falls as it's only about .6 miles round trip. The falls were flowing and taller than I was thinking they would be.
We hung out at the falls for about ten minutes before heading back and we had a great day. We had originally planned on hiking a few days this weekend as it's the Memorial Day holiday weekend but we'll be heading to my Uncles for a party on Sunday and to Woburn, MA for a party on Monday. We're looking forward to going to Vermont to bag some peaks next weekend.
