First hike of 26 B.C.

Wednesday, January Eleventh 26 B.C.

I've been trying to find a nice day both Ce and I had off so we could be outside but every time our schedules synched up the damn weather would tell us to go inside and watch an episode of Dexter, Breaking Bad, or How I Met Your Mother. After a few failed attempts and several episodes of HIMYM a beautiful sunny day surprised us and we both had the afternoon free!

The Massanutten Ridge Trail is pretty rocky but fairly easy to manage. Ce prefers loop hikes so she doesn't have to see the same things twice but this hike was a 'there and back' hike. from our parking spot it was a little over two and a half miles to the end-point.

The end of the hike is at the peak of Massanutten mountain, close to the top of the 'Diamond Jim' and 'Paradise' ski trails. Right past the cell phone towers and a little farther up some rocks there is a suicide dock, it is just like a normal dock you would see on a lake but this one hangs over the edge of the mountain and is intended for those who want to end their lives in the noble fashion of plummeting down the side of a mountain to their certain death.

"Awesome hiking poles Ben" - Anonymous

Instead of jumping like we had planned, we decided to take the service road from the cell phone towers down to the villages of Massanutten. The road wouldn't take us back to the parking lot so while we were up at the cell phone towers I called my mom who lives nearby to meet us when we got to the bottom of the mountain. 

Interesting note: While my phone has a max of four bars when in service, standing next to the Verizon cell phone tower while making the call gave me an extra fifth bar that was bigger and orange instead of blue like all the others.

Closer to the bottom of the service road we found a slip and slide that had frozen. Ce decided it would suit her better to stand at the bottom and record me going down.

View this shit larger YOUTUBE (opens in a new window)

I used RunKeeper on my phone to track our progress, you can see the activity report here.

<3en

update 1: Turns out the suicide dock was actually put there as a hang gliding dock, same difference if you ask me.

update 2: The extra orange service signal bar turned out to be a cheeto.