Climbing again

It's Saturday night as I write this but I forgot to ask Andy and Jon for their network password before they went upstairs, so this will be posted tomorrow.

What a wonderful day! I know you've read that too often in this blog, but I hope you prefer it to the alternative. This morning I found my way, with some missteps, to the Cranmore Mountain ski resort, where hundreds of hill-climbers were assembling for the annual Jens Friends Hill Climb against Cancer.

It's a walk to the top of a ski mountain - roughly a mile's walk and a 1,200-ft. climb, which makes it longer and higher than the one-fourth of the Grouse Grind I did in Vancouver before I threw in the towel. It was certainly long and steep, but I made it! We were walking up ski slopes and a service road rather than a stairway in the woods, which didn't change the level of difficulty much except that there was little shade today.

With Margot, Paul, Lucie and Gillian, and some of their friends for company, I made it to the top of the mountain with just a few stops to catch my breath on the steeper slopes. The photo above shows some of the climbers coming up behind us against the backdrop of Cathedral Ledge and Crawford Notch. Compare this view with the same western skyline from my motel room below in yesterday's post.They told me that the long metal arm on the right beside the blue bucket is a snow-making machine. (Click to enlarge the photo to 1/4 its original size.)

Along the way we had spectacular views, including this one looking north to nearby Mt. Washington, the peak with its own cloud system.

At the top of the mountain the climbers were rewarded with snacks and entertainment: a folk singer and local dancers, including Margot and Paul's older daughter Gillian. As you can see, we all had yellow T-shirts; the day's joke was "You can't miss me - look for the person wearing yellow."

Then we walked down the mountain again for a "free" lunch that we had certainly earned.

From there it was an easy three-hour drive to Jamaica Plain in Boston, where I'm staying with Andrea, Rachel's other aunt, and her husband Jon. Their older son Peter and his family are also here escaping from the chaos and fumes of floor refinishing in their home. There's nothing quite as much fun as a house full of articulate, witty kids and I'm lucky to have had two such visits in a row.