5th Feb 2006

Today we decided to take Eve for her very first hiking trip. We thought it would be an easy hike. We planned on heading over to Peterson Butte, finish the hike and after that watch the Superbowl.

We got ready and left home by 12pm right after Eve had been fed. Dad was waiting for up outside with his friend's dog Riley. We drove straight to Peterson Butte. Dad and I had checked out the place the previous day when we had gone hiking to Horse Butte. We started the hike at about 12:20pm. I looked at the incline and thought that it should take us 20 minutes to the top. How wrong I was.

We were taking it easy and not being goal oriented. Eve was totally passed out. It was quite cold with some wind. We saw some sheep and dad decided to put Riley on his leash. Trish and I had tossed our hiking boots while leaving India. I had my steel toed work shoes on, which are terrible for hiking and Trish had her Sketcher skate shoes on, again not ideal for the terrain we were looking at.

The climb started out a little steep, but quite grassy and reasonably dry, so trudged our way up. Trish started getting tired after the first 15 minutes, so we dropped our pace. This was her first real workout after the delivery. We stopped near some trees and I took some pictures. The weather was still great, but the wind was kicking in. As we slowly made our way up the butte, the incline increased and the going got tougher and tougher. We had to constantly stop and catch our breath. Trish and I were slipping every now and then, so were walking quite carefully and firmly.

After almost 45 minutes of climbing, Trish's dad told us that there was a thicket of poison oak up near the top of the mountain. This was not what we wanted to hear. The incline was at about 60 degrees. Quite steep. The pictures will show you how the going was. Trish lost her footing a few times and I was going real slow. We switch backed (zig zagged) our way to the top, but that too was a little nerve racking, with the soft soil and the wind.

It took us just over an hour to get all the way to the top. Eve had barely stirred. She snored her way through. We thought about doing lunch there, but with no cover, the wind was making things quite chilly. We decided to go back a ways, so the mountain protected us from the wind and the sun warmed us up. Going down was much more difficult than going up. Trish lost her footing again and fell a couple of times, but nothing serious..

We had a hearty lunch of a hunk of salami, "Laughing Cow" and crackers. We washed it down with some "Crystal Light". We also soaked in some sun and then we moved on when I thought Eve started stirring. With the worst of the descend behind us, we finished the rest in about 25 minutes and got back to our cars. It was about 2:45pm when we left. Eve had woken up and started fussing. We got home a quarter past 3.

I sat down to watch the Superbowl, which turned out to be a damp squib. But, this was Eve's first ever hike and was quite a memorable one. Lots more to follow.

Watch this space.

You can have a look at all the pictures here.

- Anupam