Monday, May 16, 2016

A Clark Shortcut


The first time I ever went up to the lake with Will's family (his Mother's side of the family) they all told me about the "Clark Shortcut" which is basically getting lost.  It is family lore, everyone has a story of taking getting lost, or turned around and calling it a shortcut.  We do our best to carry on family traditions and this weekend we took on the "Clark Shortcut".

We started out in the usual way.  Will planned a hike, where--if we took a small off shoot trail here and looped around there we could make the hike a loop instead of a "there and back".  For whatever reason, Will hates "there and back" hikes. We hiked up this crazy, big hill AND then started going back down again.  We should have known we were in trouble then.  


                                          

                                          

There were some spectacular views.  The hills are still pretty green and we could see a lot of the valley from various points in the hike.  

                                         



We trooped on and on and on.  We were all tired but persevered.  


                                          

At one point, we came around a corner and saw we were on a trail that we hike regularly...except this trail starts several miles south of where we started.  Oy.  

                                            



                                           



                                          

We also found some really cool rock formations to climb on.  It was one heck of a hike.  By the time all was said and done we had hiked over seven miles (our normal hikes are between 2 and 4 miles) and we all had blisters on our blisters.  I think my fitbit said we climbed the equivalent of 165 flights of stairs.  It was crazy.  Will ended up carrying 3/5ths of our family at one point or another.  He had to carry me down the very last hill (my knees were done).  Lorien carried Adell for most of the last mile.  It was such a hard hike!  The kids were amazing...tired but amazing.  I'm not sure if we will ever do the hike again...it was a doozie


No comments: