Difficulty 2 kicks my ass

adfamiliares and I climbed a mountain yesterday.

Granted, it was a small mountain—Hadley Mountain, half a mile high—and we only actually hiked the last 1500 feet of elevation. That rise happened over two miles of horizontal travel, which is an average 1/7 grade:

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Nevertheless, it was strenuous, clambering over the scree and rock slopes, and I was huffing and puffing under the weight of the backpack before we were halfway up. adfamiliares had cleverly thought to pack Luna bars ("The whole nutrition bar for women!"—*sigh*) which, when eaten on Resting Rock in Panther Pass, turn out to be remarkably satisfying, however unappetizing they look at the bottom.

It was just the leading edge of fall in the mountains, and maple leaves fell green from the trees but lit up in slow reds while they lay on the path. Several fires last century left patches of the mountain denuded, so we occasionally emerged into sunlit glens or passed through shoulder-high alleys of butter-colored flowering bushes. On the summit stands a fire tower, no longer in service but still climbable, and the view from there is endless: mountains shading from green to blue to smoky pale all the way to the horizon, all the way right round. Worth every shaking knee, labored step, and sore calf—and whoever was thoughtful enough to pad the tower's crossbars with duct tape saved me a head wound.

But you don't need to climb a mountain and risk head wounds to see what we saw: ( pictures behind the cut. )