UPDATE: Forgot to mention the pictures I took. Look for the “map” link to see exactly where on the mountain the picture was taken.

Took the day off of work today (legitimate vacation day, not the sneaky “personal day” with sick leave) and hiked King’s Mountain with Frodo. I’d been up once before and I remember it being painful. This time was the same. It’s about 2.19 miles from trailhead to summit. The trailhead starts at like 600 feet and the summit is at 3200 feet. Very steep. The last half mile is the absolute worst.

Frodo did really well. This was kind of a test for him to see if he could do something this steep. Now I think I can take him on almost anything I’d go on. He has a nice mellow pace. Or maybe he was just humoring me.

I took my GPSr and camera and figured I’d try geotagging pictures. Still working out the kinks with that, though the eight pics I took are up on Flickr now and they’re geotagged and mapped. I used the “tracks” feature on the GPSr and that’s really cool. It’s basically digital breadcrumbs. If you’ve got Google Earth, you can grab this file and it’ll show you the climb we did. There’s an option in there for a USGS altitude map overlay, which you can turn off. Pretty cool. If you don’t have Google Earth, well…why not? You might notice that at the top of the mountain it looks like I’m stumbling around in a couple of places. There was a geocache (members only cache, I think) near the summit that I grabbed–that’s the reason for the tracks over on the right side.

I did all this because I rolled 39 earlier this month, and I’m pretty much in the worst shape I’ve ever been in. So I’ve resolved to, at least, be in better shape when I roll 40 than when I rolled 39. This hiking thing is just one part of my strategy. I’m going to do at least one hike a month–that is, I’ll plan one serious hike but may end up doing other easier ones if the family is into it. The other part of my strategy hasn’t been working out so well, but I’m figuring out how to make it work. I’m going to run sprints, do plyometrics and hit the gym. I’ve got a whole workout planned, based on a book I read. Now I just gotta find the right time–I want to set up a routine, so I don’t get distracted. Mornings are best, but the gym isn’t open early enough. So it looks like evenings are where it’s at. We’ll see. Definitely doing the hikes, though. 🙂