On Friday 24th July 2009, just after midnight, a group of us crazies left Kingston in two SUV's for another trip to Whitfield Hall, from where we would hike to the Blue Mountain peak.
About two years ago, I had pledged never to make that trip again, not because I had any difficulty going up, but because the descent was treacherous, due to the overabundance of loose gravel on the trail. On this occasion however, I decided to break my pledge and join them, since my daughter Michele who lives in Denver, had not been home for about 5 years and she wanted to do the trip. Also, my 14 year old grandson Shadrach had never been to the peak. This would be my 4th trip.
The original plan had been for us to leave Kingston at 2am on Saturday morning, drive about three hours up to Whitfield Hall then start hiking at 5 am at first light. Arbitrarily however, my ex husband Michael decided that we should leave at midnight losing at least an hour and half well needed sleep. I knew that was a stupid idea, but no one else objected, so I just went along.
When we got to Whitfield Hall at about 2 am on Saturday 25th July, we all had to sit all night, just as I had feared waiting for dawn to break. Some lucky people did get to sleep but I didn't.
The next morning 18 of us set out on the hike. At first it was quite cold, but as we ascended it became unusually warm. I was afraid that Shadrach couldn' t make the trip as he looked extremely flushed, but soon he ran off with his cousins and we never saw them again until we got to the peak where they told us that they had been waiting for over an hour for us.
It was a much easier climb than I had remembered although we had to rest often to accomodate Charles who was recovering from an illness and who should never have undertaken the 4 hour climb, but Betty was off the island and as they say.....when the cat's away....
Anyway, we made it without any mishaps and as usual, the scenery all the way to the peak was absolutulely breathtaking. We hung around up ther for a while, just cooling out and taking photographs. We wanted to take a group photo, but Shadrach and Tashna ran off and the group dispersed .
As I feared, the trip down was treacherous as I slipped several times and nearly sprained my ankle a couple of times. In fact, coming down, Howie led me down Jacob's Ladder like an 80 year old geriatric but I swallowed my pride as it saved me from spraing my ankle. In fact I appreciated his assistance even more when on arriveing back at Whitfield Hall , I saw where one of our group had sprained both ankles and actually had to be literally carried by her boyfriend Andrew, part of the way down. Had that happened to me, there would have been no one strong enought to carry me down!
At Whitfield Hall, my toes burned and my leg muscles compalained vociferously but after a wonderful meal of delicious rice and peas and chicken, all was well for the drive back to Kingston.
As if that was not enough exercise for one weekend, my super fit daughter advised me that we would br riding to Hellshire Beach the next day.
I did not have a problem with that since I love to ride and my riding muscles are well tuned as opposed to my mountain climbing muscles.
As usual we left out from Hope Pastures just before 7 am, Howie, Michele, Tashna, Damit, Michael and myself. It was a fairly easy ride but Tashna who had raced Shadrach down the mountain the day before gave up near Independence City and jumped into the support vehicle.
We had a great ride, a wonderful swim, excelllent fry fish and bammy and a real shocker when the bill came. For guess what, we had failed to get the prices before we ate! But c'est la vie. We survived that bill and even decided that we would ride to Hellshire Beach one Saturday per month for breakfast.
But guess what, my poor legs nearly never survived the next day as my hill climbing muscles really revolted then and I ended up walking like a 80 year old geriatric the whole day.
Thank God for pain killers.
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