Borestone Mountain...

So this past Saturday I went hiking with two of the girls from my class. Now I went to Quebec with these two girls I knew from experience that one, Lindsey, is still learning to love the outdoors- I can tell you that her favorite new quote is "I am outdoorsy in that I love having cocktails on the deck" and that fits. Now don't get me wrong, I am no major hiker myself, in fact I was just tagging alone with them. The problem is that Jessica, AKA the mountain goat, is somehow unfazed by gravity. So while Lindsey and I are gingerly crawling along on out hands and knees, Jessica is just skipping along... But lets start from the beginning shall we...

None of us were in top shape come 8 am Saturday morning and I blame the Alcohol consumed by all on Friday night; non the less we made it out the door in a timely fashion to start the adventure. We head over to the mountain and get out of the car, we spray ourselves down with a nice thick layer of Deet bug spray and contemplate whether we need to bring food, it was after all, only a four mile hike. Lindsey was driver and she only has ONE key to the car (it is not cheap to get a second key made for a Lexis I guess) so we tie the key to Jessica's boot. We lock up the car, take two steps and decide we should bring the food. So instead of untying the boot to get the key off, Jessica does a very impressive car/leg straddle thing while Lindsey turns the key (I wish I got a picture of this). We get the food, lock up and head out. This time we made it across the street almost to the entrance gate when we decided we should bring out student ID's so that we can get in cheaper (you have to pay at certain trials out here). So its back to the car for another leg/car straddle move, get our ID's and we're off!!!

We get through the gate and find the trail map, there was some debate about where the trail actually began but in the end we went the right direction so we were off to a good start. Now it had poured down rain the night before and this particular hike included a lot of big rock steps and a lot of steep tree roots to climb up. We are hiking a long, Lindsey and I keep finding nice things to take pictures of, AKA we need an excuse to slow the mountain goat down. The hike was progressing nicely with no major incidents- little did we know we were just on the "warm up" hike. We get to this nice little peaceful lake where we meet a women who knew all about our school and program, we chatted for a while and then it was off to the real mountain. Now, everyone said "make sure you go to the second peak, that's the better view", So that was our plan.

We didn't have to go very far beyond the lake to realize that this was indeed, the "real" hike. Things started to get steep and precarious... At one point there was a steel rod with a make shift step thing to go up because the rock was too big to get over without help (where was my chalk bag when I needed it). It was at this point that Lindsey decides to look down and she suddenly realizes that maybe she is afraid of heights! She had a mini hyperventilation attack but she was able reel herself in like a champ and we continued up the mountain. At this point I was leading because the mountain goat went too fast and we were afraid to let Lindsey take up the rear, in case someone need to be there to catch her. When we got to the top of the first peak we stopped to take pictures and stuff. We ran in to a couple that we had seen at the start and they said it was about 10 minutes to the second peak and that it wasn't too hard of a climb... They lied.

First it was a real challenge to get down the back side of the first peak so that we could start climbing the second one. There were some challenging moments but everyone made it to the second peak in one piece! We were very excited, we took all kinds of pictures and just sort of hung out for a bit. In the mean time it had started to rain a little bit but we weren't concerned, it actually felt nice because it was really muggy out. We should have been concerned, the slippery rock thing didn't occur to us at that moment. We started to head back and I was leading again, only this time as well are headed back down, the rocks are wet... and slippery. There was one spot in particular that I took one step and my foot started to slid down the slope, I instantly started screaming "slippery rock, slippery rock" and dropped down into a squat/fetal like position and tried to grasp the rock. My foot stopped sliding but every time I would try and move it would slide again. The other girls are just behind me laughing and taking pictures... But they soon saw that I was not crazy. We ended up having to do a very impressive crab type walk to get off that particular spot. As the descent continued we realized that we should have been concerned about going down, the up part was apparently the easy bit. I think Lindsey went down twice (maybe 1 and a half, I can't remember) but every time we would think things were getting easier, someone would roll an ankle. We kept running into "real" hikers who had to wait for us to finish decending from which ever difficult spot we were in and since I was leading they all just thought I was an idiot I am sure. I keep say "this will really be entertaining for you when I fall on my face". We also kept running into people who knew of our program or a professor or something. Did I mention that Lindsey and I were both wearing UNE PA T-shirts, unplanned of course. Thats how everyone knew who we were...

By the time we got back to the lake we were a mess. We decided to walk back to the car on the service road instead of back on the "warm up" hike because we were really hungry for lunch.

This is of course the part where I roll my ankle, yeah not on the actual mountain but walking down the gravel road... I was fine, I didn't fall all the way down or anything it was just really funny. We made it back to the car in one peace! After the hike we decided to go check out this river that we had driven past because we were all really hot and sweaty! The river was beautiful, we were able to take our shoes off and walk out on yet more slippery rocks to just relax! After that we drove over to Moosehead lake, the biggest lake in Maine, for lunch. All in all we had a really great time, even better- no one got hurt. Here are some of the pictures from the event!

Hiking in Maine