Storm King Fourteen

Jake and I had Wednesday off and decided to conquer the "Storm King" trail. We had attempted it with Jake's parents and the boys when we first moved here, but it was hot, we got a late start and only made it to a lookout point, before we turned around. I'm proud to say we made it and then some...

It's a sad trail to hike. There are little memorials along the way with personal items left about. As you get closer to the actual area where most of the Hotshots lost their lives, and realize how close they were to escaping, it's even more tragic. You'll never know if they knew how close they were or if the fire turned on them too quickly.  Reece will study this more in 5th grade and get to do the hike with his class.

Before you find the individual memorials, you see these trees with several shirts and hats hanging on them... it's a little eerie.

We didn't know which way to go when we came to the memorials.... do we turn around and retract where we came or do we follow the footsteps that looked like it just circled around to the beginning.... we chose the loop and chose wrong. It took us a long a rougher path that apparently was the path the Hotshots took, and it was kept clear just as part of the memorial. I did see this charred tree and it looked so cool... way more cool than this picture shows.

This doesn't look that bad in the picture, but Jake and I had to scale down this steep rock.... this was the end of our hike and by the time we got to this point, it was too late to turn around. We were committed. But those trees up top are very much small and in the distance.

A view from the very bottom of where we came down from. We survived with nothing more than a splinter or two.  Next time we will NOT go this route, but we got an adventure in!