sea to summit trail

This afternoon, I went hiking with about a dozen people from my church—and we all got more than we bargained for. We were hiking a 7.5 kilometer trail from sea level up to 3,000 ft. in about four hours.The hike was rated intermediate-advanced; there was even fixed rope lines up several bald arcs of rock face. The first half hour was steep wooden steps, and then a gauntlet of stones that functioned similarly. I didn't know how I would ever be able to continue for five more minutes, much less three and a half more hours of it. We had a little meeting about whether we were up for it, and whether some of us should go back down...but in the end we all chose to press on, assured that it would stay steep but that nothing so grueling as a half hour of fast paced stairs would meet us further up the mountain. It was definitely an intense hike. The good news? We were hiking up to the Sea2Sky summit center, which features a cafe, restaurant, suspension bridge, observation decks...and a gondola. That's right, we only had to hike up the mountain. The gondola offers discounted fares for those who hike up and only require the downward trip: we glided down the mountain in under ten minutes when we had finished snacking, exploring, and taking photos.

Me, Lauren, and Carson: all of us exhausted and giddy

 The crazy thing on the gondola ride down was seeing how incredibly steep the summit was. On our descent, we came over a ridge and then just dropped almost vertically. We were absolutely flipping out about it as we looked down. We just couldn't get our heads around the fact that we'd somehow managed to climb all that way. It was pretty incredible.

It was a wildly challenging day but I am really glad I survived got to share this experience with friends and people from my church. Of course, I will flatly refuse to ever do it again, and I almost certainly won't be able to walk tomorrow...