Every spring Andy and I try to take a day off together ("date day") to do something fun and regain a bit of sanity. Usually we try to align our date day with spring warbler migration, and spend our day looking up into the canopy with binoculars to find all the little singing beasties. Sometimes we go somewhere in Vermont, sometimes the seacoast, sometimes the north country... but this year has been such a hectic spring for us that we both agreed we wanted to stay really local. So last Friday we spent our date day climbing (birding) our way up Mt. Kearsarge. It was a beautiful clear day, and we took Kimball along for the hike. The summit was bugless, windless, and clear as a bell...in short, perfect. After birding our way back down, we had big fat burgers at the Flying Goose Brew Pub, and even fit in a little afternoon dragonhunting at a few local haunts before picking up the kids at school.
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| With Kimball on Mt. Kearsarge |
The next morning our legs were just a little sore from the Kearsarge climb, but we headed off to Mt. Sunapee to participate in the first ever Mountain Mucker Adventure Race there. It's a 5K race (ok, simple enough) but straight up the mountain and with 14 obstacles to conquer along the way...things like scaling an 8 foot wall, climbing under barbed wire, walking a slack line over a huge mudpit, and lifting giant logs 20 feet in the air on a pulley system. It was nuts. Kyle, Mike, Andy and I made up Team "Leisure Badgers"... we were so leisurely that we didn't even pull together any sort of t-shirt or costume to identify ourselves, but we still had a great time. Mike and Andy stuck together and finished about 10 minutes ahead of Kyle and me (we took a few breaks on the crazy uphill runs, in true leisure badger style) but we were all equally muddy and sore in the end.
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| Team Leisure Badgers |
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Andy's legs after the mucker
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| Free Harpoon after the race! |
There was a "Mini Mucker" for the kids too, and Aiden, Molly, and Maddie (another WH friend) ran that. Their obstacles were considerably tamer (bouncy house, tire jumping, caterpillar crawls, beanbag throws) but they still had to run up a very steep ski slope and then back down. Andy and I were impressed that Aiden didn't stop the whole way- most kids (and adults- like me) ended up walking up the mountain slope but Aiden kept running and passed a whole mess of other kids. When he finished, he wasn't muddy other than his sneakers, but he was definitely tired!
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| Molly and Maddie ready to race |
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| Aiden, Molly and Maddie |
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| Go Aiden! |
Oh yes, and then the third mountain... the day after the Mucker I woke up so stiff and sore I didn't even really want to roll over never mind get up and out of bed. But as luck would have it, I was scheduled to climb Mt. Monadnock for a work event on Sunday so...no rest for the weary. It took me about 2.5 hours, but I made it to the top of that one too! Now it's Monday, and I'm not going anywhere near any mountains today.
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| Near the summit of Monadnock |
3 comments:
Was it the slack line that made you guys so muddy?
Grandma Chris
Was it the slack line that made you guys so muddy?
Grandma Chris
No, the last obstacle was a big mudpit you had to crawl through...most of the mud from the slack line had mostly worn off by the time we got to the end!
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