Hike to the Pipe!

  So Greg wanted to go on a hike Saturday morning and after thinking about it for a bit I decided I might as well go and get a little extra weekly exercise.  Mark was also happy to tag along, at least he was happy until we got about 10 minutes into the hike and then he decided a short hike might be the better option but he survived and stayed with us for the most part.
   Greg had a hidden goal in mind.  He told us he just wanted to be out until around noon.  We left a little after 7 a.m. so I didn't think it would be too hard and it wasn't REALLY hard, but it wasn't easy and not having an ultimate destination made it easier in my mind to agree with Mark about keeping it short but we stuck with Greg and ultimately ended up at the top of the steel pipe that was installed on the mountain well over 100 years ago and Greg was quite tickled about discovering this without anyone showing him the way because we did have to leave the trail to find it but thankfully it wasn't a lot further off the trail.  Here are several of the great photos Greg took.  He took a total of 80 but I'll try to keep it at a dozen or so.

Starting out!

Not too long after we started we came upon this huge bolder and Mark had to climb up.

Here's one of the first visuals we got of the pipe along the hike.  In some places it's buried and other's it's exposed like this.

An area of the mountain where the fire was.  This tree was like paper.

It's August and the leaves are changing, sad but pretty.

This was the highest point we hiked too.  It was a pretty meadow with these trees lining it.

Here were are deciding whether to keep going up or head to where Greg thinks the top of the pipe might be.  I think we were all happy to go Greg's route which meant going down not up.

And here it is.  How in the world did the pioneers get this up here?!  This was how they got the water to come down the mountain fast enough to turn the wheels down below on their other amazing industrial stuff.

Greg standing on the pipe.  I wish my scanner worked so I could show you the photo from the Alpine Yesterday book that shows a pioneer gentleman standing on this exact spot.

Don't count Mark out.

Or me!  We did it!

And on the way back we left the regular trail to get a glimpse of Horse Tail falls/creek.  (The falls are much higher up but this is the creek and a gorgeous spot I might add.)

That's it!  A fun morning with two of my favorite men.