Carr Peak with Sadie

Today was my last chance to hike up Carr Peak for this month. I was hoping to see Lady Bugs but instead saw bees and large flies. The big plus this time were the wildflowers and wild onion at the peak. Red thistles were starting to go to seed, but red sage is coming back! Red sage had been destroyed since the 2011 fire. Visibility was good today, too.

I took Sadie along, and met another woman, Nydia, at the lower picnic parking lot at 7:30am. She had answered my Meetup ad. She had never hiked up the peak before and said she'd hold me back, but in the end she did fine. I encouraged her along the way. I stopped for her, rested with her, and it took us three hours to get to the peak. We stopped a lot to take photos of the many flowers.

The waterfall at the top was running better than expected, and better than last month. This was Sadie's big water break, even though I had more water for her in my pack.


It was a busy day for hikers. Not only did I see four people from the hiking club ahead of us (we never did catch up with them), we also met three younger people and then a father and his two boys at the peak. They had two dogs with them, a young GSD named Riley and a young blue pit named Aries. While Sadie seemed a bit taken aback by them, Aries was all over Nydia, and Riley at nine months old was all over the place.

We rested at the peak for over an hour, talking to the father-sons and enjoying the scenery. I am glad I helped Nydia reach her goal of making it to the peak. While it was a longer than usual hike for me, I will always enjoy hiking up this summit, and especially helping others make it. Nydia had never hiked anything higher than 5000 feet before.

Time passes at a different level when you are talking to others and taking in the scenery. I was in no hurry to get off the peak today, despite having three others around me. I wanted to give Nydia time to recover from the long ascent and wanted her to fee comfortable. One of the young men was a German from Bavaria, Paul, who also had a German Shepherd at his home. Paul was the most conditioned of the three. When we all left the peak an hour later, we were going at the same pace, but little Riley was running back and forth between all the people, that I felt it best to get ahead. I remember when Sadie as that excitable.

Nydia and I never stopped on the way down for a break. It only took us 90 minutes to get down. It was 2:30pm when we got back to the truck, and after 3pm when I got back home.

I never saw Nydia again.  Perhaps the hike was too much for her.  I hope my stamina didn't intimidate her.