climb every mountain

this is us at the bottom of the trail. excited, naive, and ready for anything. yes the picture stinks, thank you tourist lady.

the valley view from the gondola coming down
tippity top!

ida's patch of hair is my goatee! completely unintentional, but very funny now that i notice it...

hey! we climbed a mountain this weekend!

saturday morning we decided to drive up to Banff and hike up Sulphur Mountain. we have taken the gondola up to the top a couple of times and watched the poor folks trudging up the 5.5 kms straight up hill, er mountain. it does switchback, but it is quite vertical and little did we know it would be quite an accomplishment to push ida in her chariot to the top. every foreign tourist on the trail walking back down commented in broken english, "i compliment your efforts!" "wow, nice effort!" etc, etc...

poor c.j. did most of the pushing, i don't know how he did it. it was tough.

it reminded me a of a hike we took early in our marriage at Zion National Park. we were with my friend megan and her boyfriend. the highlights of that day involved being really out of shape, barfing, jello-like legs and heat stroke. it was sure a great day. *sigh*

the nice thing about our recent sulphur mountain achievement is, I COULDN'T BELIEVE WE DID IT. i really haven't done something like that in a long, long time and IT FELT GOOD. it was hard and taxing and difficult and pushed me to my limits. i got to the top in pain and was thirsty and could hardly walk with my cramped up calves. i just sat and stared and drank and drank. i needed a good 1/2 hour to get myself together. but we did it. we did it.

so to you out there. climb that mountain. go for it. you can do it. and if you are already doing it, good for you. push yourself, start an adventure. i am looking for my next one.