I did it! I did it!

My women's hiking group went snowshoeing on Saturday. I was so iffy about whether I wanted to try and go or not. I have a hip problem that seizes up in the cold. Plus there have been avalanches in our area. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to try it or not. Friday morning I went to a Yoga class (for the first time...) with the girls. They were both definitely going to go. Then I started getting excited about trying it myself. I ran out and rented the snowshoes and borrowed a pair of snow pants. The kids had an over-nighter with their worship team at the church Friday night. I was chaperoning the event. Read- I got NO SLEEP!!!! The kids were just too excited to sleep. By morning, I was exhausted and a bit grumpy. But I had already arranged transportation and rented the snowshoes so I was going!

It was one of the hardest things I ever done. The weather was beautiful. There was snow blanketing all the trees and everything. A soft snow fell the whole time we were there. It was a pretty dry snow so we didn't get too wet. We started out on the trail, and it was going up hill. My understanding was that we would be going on a flat trail around a lake. However, this trail kept going up and up and up! Out of the seven women, I was definitely the slowest. My lungs were screaming, my legs were screeching, but I kept plodding along. My snowshoes were an older style, and seemed to be real long on me. I felt like I was dragging the mountain up the mountain with me. Fortunately, the guy at the store showed me how to take the back end part off. So I did that. It was a bit better, but still, I was having troubles. About halfway up, one of the ladies suggested I take the snowshoes off completely. So, I did. Victory! I could almost keep up with the ladies then!

After going up the mountain for an hour, we finally asked some snowshoe-ers who were coming down the mountain how far the lake was. It turns out we were on the wrong trail! So I put my snowshoes back on (It started snowing harder, so I was starting to need them) and we came back down the mountain. We stopped for a quick lunch and went out looking for the trail to the lake.

We found the trail and found the lake. The hike wasn't very hard at all. Not nearly as hard as going up the mountain! We hiked for about another hour and built a snowman too. It was a lot of fun.


My legs are still pretty sore. (I did Body Step at the gym this morning and about died!) It was a beautiful trip, a challenging trip. I'm glad I did it!