A local hike in the rain

Today's Sierra Club hike was much better than yesterday's. I ended up leading both hikes this weekend.

I got a call from a man visiting from out of town. I told him if it was pouring rain the hike would be canceled but if it only looked like it might rain, we'd go. It was pouring rain in the morning so when he called again, I told him the hike was canceled.

Then it suddenly got nice again so I decided we should at least go see if anybody was waiting at the meeting place for me. There were 3 people there waiting for me. They looked like nice people so I called the out-of-town guy and told him the hike was back on. He hurried over and joined us.

We headed up the trail and it started raining again. I have a hard time getting out there in the pouring rain when I'm already dry and cozy at home. If I'm already on the trail and it rains, it's usually a really pleasant experience. The rain today made the hiking a lot of fun.

We did the whole hike except for the final summit climb up to the top of a large rock. There wouldn't have been any views on the rock and there wouldn't have been any shelter from the rain. Instead, we waited around a little while under some trees but we started to get cold so we went back down without much of a lunch break.

We took a different route part of the way down. It was over grown and very wet even though it had stopped raining and the sun was peeking through. Shades of hiking in Washington all over again.

As soon as we got to the car, it really let loose and rained harder than ever. We laughed at the perfect timing.

The visitor from out of town thought, when I told him the hike would take until 2pm, that maybe it was going to be a slow ambling hike. I tried to tell him it would not. I couldn't explain why the hike would take so long except that it usually takes that long because you never know who will show up or how big the group will be. We hiked fast up the trail and he was happy to get a good workout. We went a little more leisurely down the trail. We reached the car at 1pm.

I much prefer smaller hikes like this. They feel more fun and the weather adds an extra bit of adventure. It was a perfect hiking day. Everything looked so green, there were so many wildflowers already blooming. Just perfect.