June 15: Purple Mountain

Today is my Friday and the weather ended up great again. Robbie and I decided to go for a hike called Purple Mountain. Its 6 miles roundtrip, and quite a climb. You end up 1200 ft higher than you start and you start around 7800 ft., so you end up around 22000 ft up. Its simple math. We drove the 15 miles from Old Faithful to the trail head which is just north of Madison Junction. The first ¾ mile – 1 mile of the trail starts pretty harmless, then you really start to climb. Lots of switchbacks, steep inclines, faded trails, it was great. We got to the top in about an hour and 15 mins. It was super windy up there. We both brought windbreakers/rain jackets, so glad we did that. Gear makes all the difference. We were able to hang out up there for about 45 minutes. The views were vast and impressive. You can see the Tetons in one of the pics and they are over 60 miles away. We started using a compass to locate other areas in the park. The roads are so windy here that you get turned around pretty easy. Im starting to believe that the direction guide in my car is lying to me, and that it also exaggerates the temperature from time to time. Lola, check yourself. I have noticed that my stretch in my sexy stretch pose has gone lame. Its like Im almost being serious when I pose like that. I will remedy this. Once we had enough time at the top aka noticed bad weather coming from the west, we decided to hustle down the mountain. We ran roughly a mile of the top portion of the mountain. I was surprised that neither of us were winded. I don’t think elevation had anything to do with it, probably that all the running was very downhill. After the hike we went to West Yellowstone to catch the end of the NBA finals. The drive back was quite a struggle. Thank God I was just riding along. I slept very well.