I woke up this morning with absolutely no intentions of doing anything. It's supposed to rain for the next ten days. But at the first pulling open of the drapes I spotted a sliver of blue sky, and high level sirrius clouds.
A break in the weather!
With only three weeks until we head to the lower 48 for the rest of the summer, and two summits left on our challenge, I knew.
Today is a mountain day.
I woke the kids up and announced "We're going up Monashka! Get ready!"
They weren't expecting that and were a little bewildered, but they're very good sports, and got geared up and ready for the day. Within 45 minutes of the three of us waking up, we headed across the island to Monashka Mountain.
Monashka is one of my favorites. The first half of it is merely a walk in the absolutely beautiful woods of Termination Point.
It was very "beary" today, with bear scat all the way down the trail, so I was a little spooked, walking down the trail with the bear spray in my hands, but never did see any bears.
Instead of bears, we ran into this little guy. A baby bunny, who had some sort of brain damage (possibly was lifted in the air by an eagle and then dropped), and most definitely wouldn't have surivved the day between the bears, foxes and eagles, but it was adorable nonetheless, and we nudged it off the trail into the bushes.
Honestly, even though it was an impromptu hike, it was a great day to hike this mountain. It was cloudy, but cool, and the ceiling was high so we got the best of both worlds - a great view that we worked so hard to climb to see, but not dying of heat stroke (as Monashka's trail faces the sun the entire hike).
By 11:30 we hit the summit! We had a quick lunch and enjoyed the panoramic views of the backmountains, town, and even mainland. Summit candy today was life saver gummies and swedish fish.
Then it's time for my favorite part of this hike, the way down.
Okay not really actually, because the long, heavy "stairsteps" down are brutal for the knees, but the photo opportunities are spectacular, especially when I hang back and let the kids get a bit ahead of me.
And that's another summit down! This marks the end of the summit challenge for Calen, who graciously bows out at five (we have an agreement that he'll either do the 7 summits next year or the year after).
That's six summits for Cam and I, and now we just have to wait for another un-rainy day to finish!
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