Mount Teneriffe 5/8/2016

Teneriffe Summit - anticlimax today
Teneriffe Summit – anticlimax today

The new is mostly good.  The Teneriffe trail is as good as it will get.  No serious blow downs, just a few tiny little patches of snow:

Just a little snow
Just a little snow

As usual I had time constraints (today is Mother’s Day, after all) so I got to the trail head at 5:15 am.  Only needed the headlamp for 30 minutes or so, the sun is rising earlier and earlier.  I love it.

Little Waterfall
Little Waterfall

I took the long way up because the shorter route is so steep it borders on dangerous, for me at least.  I prefer to hike Kamikaze Trail with someone else.  But the long trail is also very nice.  There is a really cool section where you are walking along a narrow ridge at about 4400 or 4500 feet.

View down the ridge
View down the ridge

After about 7 miles of tough hiking up the mountain there you are, just below the summit.  If you want to stand on the top and check out the summit marker, there is one last challenge:

Looking up at the summit scramble
Looking up at the summit scramble

It is actually not as tough as it looks in the photo, but I am really careful going up and down.  And the summit itself requires a bit of focus because it would be very easy to take a wrong step and tumble down the cliff on the east side.

Anyway, 6.5 hours, 13.8 miles, 4,326 feet of elevation gain, not a bad day’s play.

http://adventures.garmin.com/en-US/by/djhiker/mount-teneriffe-5-8-2016/#.Vy-sBORe8tF

Not sure what is up next but the news for Derek’s knee is not good.  I saw him Friday when I was over there watching the Little Angels and he said he cannot get into the doctor until the end of the month and if he walks only a few miles the knee is really sore.  Bummer.

As of last week I had zero chance of getting a day off next week but I may be able to flex a day off on Thursday.  I won’t know until Thursday morning but if it happens, I will see what I am in the mood to do.