Hiking In The Dark

During Labor Day weekend, we decided that instead of spending our three day weekend sleeping in, we would get up before the crack of dawn and go on a hike! That Sunday we set the alarm for 3:15 AM, finished packing snacks and water and hit the road. By 4:30 we were at the trail head for Angel's Rest in the Columbia River Gorge.

We started up the mountain with headlamps shining. I had never done a hike in the dark and was a bit apprehensive to say the least. I quickly discovered that bugs like light. The light they seemed to prefer was the one on my head. Thus I was constantly flailing my arms around so they wouldn't land on my face. I was not going to be able to take 2.5 miles of this up to the top!! The headlamp was then converted to a wrist lamp which was much better. After a while I got used to the dark and was enjoying the hike. Thankfully we did not come across any wildlife, though we did spot a few scorpions in the scree fields we had to cross. We finally made it to the top, though we hiked faster than anticipated so we had to wait around a bit for the sun to come up. But once it did, it was totally worth it...

 

After soaking up the view for a bit longer we started the 2.5 miles back down the mountain. We got home and promptly went back to bed. It was a great feeling to wake up at 9:30 and know we had already put in a 5 mile hike and had the rest of the day ahead of us.