Just because

a High Peak is below 4,000 ft, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy. I didn't think Blake Peak was going to a walk in park so to speak, but come on....this was a knee cruncher!

Brian and I got to the St. Hubert's parking lot at 7am---which was looking pretty full at that early hour. We scooted up to the Lake Road and signed in. We took our usual Colvin/Nippletop Route---I say usual because this is the third time we've been up there.

We had an uneventful hike up to the junction, stopping a few times to take a breather. I felt like I was having an off day---just couldn't find my groove. We took a break around 9:15am because I was starving. Of course, when I sit down to snack, I have a hard time getting anything past my lips. My stomach says "feed me" but my brain says "no way Jose". I wish I could find a happy-medium solution to this issue. Anyhoo, I had a half of a snack size bag of "Cheeze-its" and figured that was plenty. Before I knew, we were nearing the beginning of the steep section below Colvin. No problem---I was looking forward to that stretch since I was already familiar with it. We reached the summit of Colvin at 10:30am---holy smokes! It only took 3.5 hours to go 6 miles (half of that road was walking)---not a new land speed record, but I was happy!

We had an early lunch, packed up and then headed over to Blake, 1.3 miles away. The first .2 miles was ok, but after that, forget it. It's all down-hill. I was really surprised at the amount of scrambling we had to do. Secretly, I was hoping it would be a ridge walk--like from Dial to Nippletop. No such luck. This was muddy, steep and downright nasty in some spots. We got just past the col and ran into 4 hikers coming down from Blake. We were within .5 mile of the summit--woohoo! Finally, after about 30 minutes of serious huffing and puffing, we reached the top! Great! Now we just have to re-trace our steps back over to Colvin [insert evil laughing here].

Me on the summit of Blake, proof I was there :)

At the split

My hiking buddy


Probably the worst of the scrambles going down/up the backside of Colvin towards Blake---this would be a great spot for a ladder or rope. I decided to straddle the log and pull myself up because I couldn't get a good foothold the other way.


Same scramble, different view. I dubbed it the "Butt-crack Slab" because it looked like a big fanny with a crack running up the middle!

We reached Colvin (again) at 1:55pm and started the next series of scrambles---which weren't too bad considering what we just did! There was a definite breeze, sky was really starting to cloud up by now and the front was moving in. Brian kept saying that he was surprised it wasn't raining. I kept telling him to "shut up", LOL! I told him it could start raining when we reached the road. Sure enough, we were a couple hundred feet from the road when we finally put on our ponchos. We walked out the 3 miles to the parking lot listening to the thunder rumble and watching the lightening flashes. Not a bad day...2 High Peaks, 14.6 miles in 10 hours...