Metalheads who Hike

Heck yeah! I live in northern/central Utah, so we are less desert and more mountains than the rest of the state. I've been to Canyonlands a few times, but mostly hike up here and in Colorado (where I am originally from).

I'll post some pics in the coming days. Kinda in a hurry right now though. Cool thread!

I love to hike, trail run and fast pack. I've been all over the states and in Canada doing this. My favorite places have been the Rockies in Colorado, those gorgeous western North Carolina/ East Tennessee Appalachians and Flagstaff Arizona area, the mountains north of Burlington Vermont. Will be heading to Alaska for some fresh air in May.

Spitshockey you're awesome!

I've mostly been hiking only for 4-5 years and almost exclusively in NH.  Have you ever been here?

Despite being relatively nearby, I've only had one day in VT, which was this summer, and was a tremendous day on Mansfield.  I specifically chose it because it promised the best weather that day, but as I climbed (after a 3 hour drive!) it was socked in and I would have been terribly disappointed to climb it for no views.  I popped out above treeline. . . still socked.  Arrived at the summit, ate a sandwich, cursed my luck and the weatherman. . . still socked.  Started down, and all of the sudden saw a valley for about a half of a second.  I stopped, and other spots briefly appeared and disappeared.  And after a few minutes it all blew off (to the W, at least) and visibility went from about 100 feet to over 100 miles in about 10 seconds.  If any of you have ever had that happen, it's really one of the most amazing things that you can see on a hike, it's absolute magic.  Awesome!

Anyway, I used to be something of a runner, but I guess traded that in for hiking, and have never tried trail running (nor do I desire to at this point).  It's pretty popular here though, and dang those cats are nails and do the impossible, it seems to me (and I'm a fairly strong hiker, relatively speaking).  I'm afraid I've never heard of "fast pack."  Nor have I been to Alaska -- would be a bucket list thing for sure, though.  Are you going to Denali?  Park or peak?  The peak would definitely be more than I'll probably ever be able to attempt, but just to be there would be amazing.

Post some of your favorite pics, if you can!

And Raven. . . we're still waiting!

I travel quite a bit with my work (in the real estate field) - so sometimes I like to hike when I'm on business trips! Heheh.

This is from when I was in New Mexico a little while back. I have quite a bit of real estate in New Mexico - so I travel down there quite a bit. These pictures are taken from several different trips. All New Mexico though!









This creek was really fun to play in on a hot New Mexico day! My son and I had a blast!





I ended up exploring this amazing place with HUGE reddish rocks. There were caves and all sorts of fun stuff to discover!!!

Even found this lizard who proved to be quite friendly.

Kerrick wrote:This Saturday I went on a ~14 mile hike with some folks from the 20s/30s church ministry I'm involved in.  We had a blast!  It's a pretty mellow hike (not a lot of elevation change) but there are a couple really pretty waterfalls to see.

That's a lot!

The most I can remember ever walking in one day was 6.7 miles.  That was a geocaching trail that we had to walk.  Me and a buddy walked the whole trail in 105 degree heat.  Also, I weighed 325 lbs. at the time so this was no easy feat!  I was never so tired and dehydrated in all my life.  I practically peed toothpaste I was so dry!  OK, in reality, I was so dry that I could no longer pee or sweat.  That's dangerous.

This Saturday I I went on a pretty cool hike in Andrew Molera area with my family and aunt + uncle + cousin.  We had a great time though my dad and uncle both got ticks and my girlfriend and mom both got sick from the cold...

Totally worth it though!  (Hahahaha easy for me to say! )  Here's a view from the trail.


But to get there we had to ford a stream.  You can see by how wet my legs were, it wasn't too shallow - and it was moving at a pretty swift speed too. Trying to be the good boyfriend, I gave Veronika a piggy-back ride across haha (and no, I didn't even drop her!).

Some pics from my anniversary getaway in the Oachita Mountains (Oachita National Forest) in Arkansas.







The last one was taken just outside our room. We woke up to that view each morning.

Wow those are amazing!!!  That second one looks like there's a cascading waterfall of rain straight from heaven.

Kerrick wrote: Wow those are amazing!!!  That second one looks like there's a cascading waterfall of rain straight from heaven.

Ditto

Kerrick wrote: Wow those are amazing!!!  That second one looks like there's a cascading waterfall of rain straight from heaven.

It was pretty cool to watch that storm move across the valley. It was a perspective I hadn't had before.

I mountain bike, and regular cycling everyday, if that counts.  

Nope, wrong thread, get out of this one!    Just kidding; have any pictures of where you like to go riding?

Excellent necrobump, metaldude.  I have a friend who I hiked with a few times that moved to Arkansas.  He's definitely worked to try to get me to come down and hike around there with him.

Nothing ALL that epic for me lately, but here are a couple highlights of the last six months or so since my last post:

On one of the higher peaks in Maine, along the Appalachian Trail:
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Summit in sight on the most hiked peak in the White Mountains here in NH:
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My most recent trip, Squam Lake of "On Golden Pond" fame being the nearer lake:
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Hiking and canoeing over Labor Day weekend. 

Oh man, I am still sore from a family hike for my dad's birthday this past Saturday.  It was great though.  Here's a picture my sister got of my wife, dad, and me:

Kerrick wrote:Yesterday I went for a nice little hike by myself in Nisene Marks State Park here in Santa Cruz area.  It was gorgeous.  I snapped a few photos with my phone:

Beautiful pictures, Kerrick.

To be honest, I've never been at a hike. But I do have plans for doing one.

Thanks Markus!

Never been hiking?  I would imagine Finland has some awesome places you could go for your first hike!

I'm always hiking around NY. My most recent was along side Lake George, I hiked from Shelving Rock Falls to Pilot Knob, right along the lake. I'm hiking and biking whenever I can, I live on the Mohawk so I'm walking along and in the river a lot as well.

Right on!  (Pictures or it didn't happen!  )

I'm looking forward to our trip in a couple weeks to the White Mountains.  My wife and I are pretty out of shape though so we'll see just how severely our hikes kick our butts hahaha.

The only pic I have on my phone is from a bike ride I took on a paved trail along the Mohawk... BUT it does contain my 3 speed chopper:

I guess that didn't come out right lol.

I tried flipping it... I can't figure out how!

Fearless For The King wrote:I tried flipping it... I can't figure out how!

Looks like you already did. 

metaldude wrote:

Fearless For The King wrote:I tried flipping it... I can't figure out how!

Looks like you already did. 

I guess I did. 

Alright!  Sorry [Grindboy] for the delay in photos from our New Hampshire trip.  My wife and I had a delightful time celebrating our first anniversary in the mountains of New Hampshire.  And again, for anyone who is considering going there, Grindboy is your guy for hiking recommendations.  Seriously.  He wrote us pages and pages of recommendations, pros/cons to each hike, elevation gain, peak height, mileage... you name it.  We were so fortunate to have access to such great information.  On to the pictures.

Our first day we got off to a late start and it was due to rain later in the day so Grindboy recommended us a nice short little hike which was just right.  We hiked to Mt. Pemigewasset.  This is what the trail looked like:



And here's the top:



However, the trail actually makes more of a "U" shape than loop and we ended up walking the wrong way along the highway for a bit... and then it started to rain haha.  We got pretty drenched but a nice guy from New York with two old dogs picked us up and gave us a ride to our car which was nice.

Here's a view from our hotel.  We got a super deal on the trip - basically free lodging - but we had to listen to a sales-pitch to try to sell us a timeshare.  We declined.  The resort they were trying to sell was really quite luxurious, though the hotel they put us in was quite funky and not one we'd recommend.  Regardless, it had pretty views.



It was actually raining off-and-on for the majority of our trip, but the next day was clear skies throughout its entirety: perfect for our one big hike.  We chose one of Grindboy's recommendations to hike to the top of Mt. Lafayette which was pretty spectacular.  It was ~8.9 miles (of mostly very steep ascending/descending) and 3850 feet elevation gain.  But oh so worth it!

Most of the trail looked like this:



Here's from the top, looking down along the ridgeline.  This portion is actually a part of the Appalachian Trail which is pretty cool.



And who let this funny looking guy up there (sporting his The Slave Eye shirt)?



This is where we came from (and where we were headed back down).



At this point, we needed to hurry down because we still had a long ways to go and not an endless amount of sunlight.  But we made it, just before dark.  Our car was all alone haha; everyone else had left already.  The next day we spent a fair bit of time driving to Mt. Washington but due to weather, the visibility was very poor so we didn't end up going to the top.  We went on a short little walk on Lost Pond Trail and found the lost pond!    Again, it started to rain on us but since it was warm out, it felt pretty nice.



And this little fella was pretty cool:



On our way to the airport, we were able to get lunch with Grindboy which was a lot of fun too.  Neither Veronika nor I had ever had lobster before, so we figured it'd be the appropriate thing to do:



All in all it was a fantastic trip and we are excited to go back again and explore more of the bazillions of miles of hiking trails out there!