Plewman's Trail, Take 2

Today began around 7am when I crawled my butt out of bed (on a Saturday morning on my last day off). That part was relatively easy. Getting Chris out of bed on a Saturday morning at 7am when he got home around 3:15am is another thing. The guy spent the evening drywalling with Jer and last minute ended up going to hear a band play at the Arlington Pub until late into the morning. The band is called Chinlock and I wanted to see them play but didn't have anyone to go with so I sat at home alone meanwhile Chirs and Jer went without me. Was I bitter about this?? A little. But considering the day that we ended up having today, I'm glad that I got more than the 3.5 hours of sleep that Chris got.

So like I said, out of bed around 7, out the door by 7:45 and up at Pam's house by 8am. We met up with Pam, my dad and Splash and all piled into my dad's truck and headed up towards Rossland to find the trailhead of Plewman's Trail. In case you didn't read my blog a week or so ago, myself, Pam and Graham all walked about half way up this trail called Plewman's Trail which is an "advanced hike" up just past Rossland. The trail is 5km up, has an elevation of 700m and reaches to the top of what is called Unnecessary Ridge. Today we decided to do the entire trek up there. I had been looking forward to this day for a week now because I was so excited to see what the top looked like! Plus I wanted to see Old Glory mountain. Old Glory is my goal hike for the summer. It's a 15km hike and I am stoked to accomplish it.



So we began the hike just before 8:30 and reached Unnecessary Ridge by about 10:20am. The view was magnificant and we were all very proud of ourselves to see just how high we climbed in such a short amount of time. The hike was considerably difficult in some areas and the bugs were evil at some points, but in the end the view was so worth it. The ridge meets up with another trail, Old Glory Trail, which will take you the remaining 2.5km up to the top of Old Glory or brings you back down to the trailhead (where we began). We decided to take a different trail back down the mountain which was an extra 1.5km but was supposed to be a bit easier on the knees. Everyone voted that way. When we got back down to the truck around noon, we all looked up at the mountain that we had just climbed and were stunned at just how high up it seemed. It seems like it would take forever to climb that far, but it really doesn't. This definitely was a boost of confidence for all of us.



After the hike, my dad, Chris and I went to Castlegar. Dad needed to bring the car in to get an oil change and I wanted to look for Holden's birthday present. We ended up having lunch at a little pub then went and found an excellent gift for Holden. I hope he likes it :) We drove back to Trail and I did some gardening at my parent's house. I ended up picking some carrots, garlic, kale and beets to bring home. Yum yum yum. By this time I was so hot and gross and sweaty...it was time for a swim. The river has warmed up considerably so it was quite inviting compared to how it felt a month ago, or even just a week ago when I went for a dunk. We played some crib, blew some bubbles for Splash and had some dinner before heading back home. All in all, great day. Wouldn't change a thing!