Accomplishment #1

The hiking season started in earnest for me on June 30th. That was the day that I climbed Mt. Schroeder - yeah, that's me on the peak with a friend in the background. I look a little stooped and told my kids I was looking as if I was pushing 70. By the time I got down, I felt it! We had a gorgeous day for a big hike - it turned out to be not all that warm. We had a two hour bushwhack through some pretty nasty stuff that included devil's club (ask a tree planter to tell you about it!) at the lower elevation and rhodos and huckleberries to walk through. We got to the snowfield in a couple of hours. That was the easy part. The descent over the snow was great but we had a long (to me) downclimb on the edge of one snowfield. I had two falls - learned how to use my iceaxe! - and got some good scrapes on my forearm on the second one. We hiked out to a forest service road which made it all downhill from there with no big logs to walk over. I felt that I had accomplished something that day.