{"id":3852,"date":"2016-08-01T23:29:19","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T06:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/?p=3852"},"modified":"2016-08-02T09:51:49","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T16:51:49","slug":"have-a-goal-in-sight-throw-yourself-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/2016\/08\/01\/have-a-goal-in-sight-throw-yourself-at-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Have a Goal in Sight? Throw Yourself at it."},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want to resort to the old clich\u00e9, \u201cthe mountains are calling and I must go,\u201d but I answered that call this weekend. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve spent much time rolling ankles over stubborn roots and scrambling over precarious rocks. Despite the fact that I couldn’t find a hiking buddy, I still found it easy to justify a weekend among the peaks where John Muir felt most at home.<\/p>\n

Hitting the trail early with a goal in view.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in the East, I tackled mountains every weekend I could. I come from the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, where a two-hour drive to the highest peaks in New York State coupled with a breakfast of gas station coffee and a banana is a regular Saturday routine. I wouldn\u2019t go so far as to say that I live for the 4am mornings, finding my way on the trail under headlamp, but I\u2019ve become so accustomed to that groggy early-morning feeling that it\u2019s almost nostalgic.<\/p>\n

Early morning wake up with headlamp.<\/p><\/div>\n

Once I did some research on the Cascades of Oregon and heard you could summit Oregon’s third highest peak\u00a0in a day, I was up for the challenge. My tent was already in my car so I smeared some peanut butter and jelly on bread, called it a dinner and hit the road. That night, I tossed and turned on my inflatable sleeping pad, anxiously going over the hike in my mind as if it were a documentary film.<\/p>\n

Looking down of Teardrop pool, Oregon’s highest lake, from the loose rock trail.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now is probably a good time to acknowledge the fact that this is my first time ascending to 10,000 plus feet of elevation on-foot, not to mention that I drove from sea-level. I\u2019ve hiked a similar prominence before, but never to an altitude this high. My body wasn\u2019t exactly thanking me for the elevation change as my lungs panted for air and my head pounded with an unforeseen headache.<\/p>\n

Farther than it looks, the summit looms over this steep scramble.<\/p><\/div>\n

Like most hikes, I had reached that low feeling on the climb where I questioned if I could persist to the summit. The strangest part for me was that I could see where I was headed throughout the entire hike, but never really had a sense of how long it would take me to get there. I\u2019m so acquainted with hiking through dense forest until the trail spits you out above the tree line just a few hundred yards from the summit. This was different.<\/p>\n

The final steps to the summit of South Sister.<\/p><\/div>\n

Perception is a funny thing. On a mountain, it can take your senses for a wild ride. Unsure of when the steep, scree-scrambling climb would end, I focused my eyes on my feet, switched to autopilot and let faith take me the rest of the undetermined distance to the summit. Then, as quickly as the questionable feelings set in, I was confident and pulsing with adrenaline as I lifted my eyes. The summit view was indescribable and clear enough to see as far as Mount Rainier. My head was clear too and I questioned why I even questioned myself in the first place.<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished!<\/p><\/div>\n

In that moment, the summit is the quite literally the peak of the experience. But in the end, it\u2019s about the journey and the people you meet. I was fortunate enough to make friends with a couple from Australia who became my hiking buddies as we followed the loose-cinder trail back down the south side of the volcanic peak. There\u2019s something to be said about a cooperative crew of people on the same path with the same goal in mind.<\/p>\n

Stopped for a swim at Moraine Lake after descending.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want to resort to the old clich\u00e9, \u201cthe mountains are calling and I must go,\u201d but I answered that call this weekend. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve spent much time rolling ankles over stubborn roots and scrambling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7834,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[215971],"tags":[215985,514,7490,517,2250],"class_list":["post-3852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justin-dalaba","tag-human-dimensions","tag-marine-reserves","tag-odfw","tag-oregon-sea-grant","tag-summer-scholars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3852"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3861,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3852\/revisions\/3861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}