Mt. Longonot...

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...kicked my butt.

On Tuesday, Jenny and I went with a bus load of other RVA folks to Mt. Longonot. She had asked me before I came if I wanted to do this hike. I happily agreed. I'm always up for an adventure! As we drove into RVA I got my first view of Mt. Longonot...


I mean, I expected a mountain, but not one this big! And actually, Mt. Longonot is a volcano. Its been dormant since the 1860s and rises over 9,100 feet above sea level. There's a trail that goes up to the crater rim and then the trail continues up to the highest peak and all around. Getting up to the crater rim was difficult enough, but we decided that we might as well do the whole thing. Wow! It's about 5km up to the rim and another 10km around the crater. So that's over 12 miles round trip... and I felt every step of it in my calves, hamstrings, and everywhere else! My poor knee on the way back down was hating me. But we had a great time and what great exercise! We even saw some game along the way... some kind of antelope too far away to distinguish and several giraffes. We did get rained on a bit and it was quite chilly if you stopped. The "Just Keep Swimming" song from Finding Nemo went through my head more than once--substituting swimming for stepping of course.

As difficult as the hike was it does make me really excited to get back home to my mountains. Ok, well, they aren't my mountains, but the Smoky Mountains are the most special mountains in the world to me. Coming home is coming back to them and all the rest of the wonderful things home brings. Thanks, Mt. Longonot for the great warm-up! Maybe one day we can do it again...

The view from the crater rim. My camera couldn't capture the full panoramic view.

I found this one on Google for a better view. Pretty amazing, huh?

To the crater rim but not even halfway through our journey.

The light brown line you see on top of the rim is the path. Quite narrow and a bit treacherous going down the other side of the peak.



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