Alex Completes His First Big Hike to Lucky Peak Summit

Alex (my 21 year old son) has just started hiking and felt like he wanted to try a more strenuous hike on Saturday.  We wanted to stay in town because of late afternoon/evening commitments so we chose Lucky Peak Summit.  This hike is approximately 10 miles with 2,350 feet of elevation gain.  I have only hiked this trail once before in April 2016.  Anthony has hiked to the peak quite a few times over the past couple of years.  This is a challenging hike as my calves and shins can attest to as they are still sore today (two days later).  Although this is a very steep climb Alex was determined to make the round trip loop and did not give up.  It was great to see his enthusiasm and excitement over what he was able to accomplish.  I am afraid he is still pretty sore like I am but hopefully we will all recover soon.  We did not have time to visit the abandoned Aldelmann Mine on Saturday but I know Alex is looking forward to going back to check it out.  One option is just to hike to the mine and back without going the entire distance to the summit to make is a shorter and more manageable hike.

A couple of items I noted on Saturdays hike was that all the snow that was there just weeks ago has completely melted.  And wild flowers continue to be plentiful.  Although there were some flowers I had seen before I discovered many others in bloom that were not in April.  We were also very fortunate to have cloud cover during quite a bit of our hike.  As shade is limited during most of the hike the clouds were very welcome as the day was about 80 degrees as we returned to the truck.  In April we had the trail completely to ourselves and this past Saturday we only crossed paths with 2 other individuals.  One was running the trail and was running so fast down hill he was almost a blur.  The other greeted us from below and it appeared that his hike was focused on visiting the mine.

Although we did not have time to stop for pizza and drinks on Saturday due to the tight time line I did score both on Sunday with Anthony as he drove Jay and I back out to enjoy Hilltop Station for Mother's Day dinner complete with a trip to the salad bar.  I totally loved it!