NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE!!

Today, we went on our first hike of the season. We decided to tackle "China Man's Peak," which has been officially, politically correctly, renamed "Haling's Peak." It is a great 1.5 to 2 hour hike straight up. It is kind of early to be tackling this peak as we could see, even from the parking lot, that there was still snow up there, but since the sun was finally shining, we decided to just do it!! We grabbed a couple of friends, Scout, our camel backs and headed up the mountain. This is a fairly popular hike and today, despite the snow, was no different than any other on the trail. Tones of hikers. There were old hikers, young hikers, couples, friends and lots of dogs. This was Scout's first official mountain hike and she was pumped!!! She stuck fairly close to us most of the time, licked (kissed) every hiker along the way, played with every dog she met and rolled in every snowbank she saw! We laughed and laughed at her endless energy and the smile you could see plastered on her face! Though, the four of us humans were labouring to breath, on this our first hike of the season, Scout still had energy half way up to race around in her crazy puppy circles while we stood heaving and gulping water! Definately Scout's favorite part of the hike were the snowbanks. She could not resist diving head first into each one. As we neared the ridge of the false peak, Scout sneaked over to the edge to take in the view with the rest of us. The ridge, however, was lined with a neat layer of snow that gave way to a cliff covered with a blanket of deep snow!! Scout saw this and before we could stop her, leapt over the edge! I watched, horrified as she slid on her haunches down part of the cliff. I screamed! She skidded to a stop, looked back at the four terrified faces peering over the ridge, and shot us a grin that seemed to say "What? This is awesome!!!" Thankfully, she turned around and began leaping up the cliff, but as she got close to the ridge, the incline became very steep and the snow, packed down by her slide, was slippery. Scout started to loose her grip and she began moving her feet fast, but could not make up any ground! In a panick, I reached over the ledge and grabbed her collar. Luckily the collar was tight enough that it didn't pull over her head as I used my one hand grip on it to lift all 60 pounds of her up and over to safety! Immediately, we dug the leash out of the back pack and harnessed our over energetic thrill seeker!! We all hit the actual peak in one piece and had a celebratory granola bar! We didn't let Scout off her leash until we were safely back down to the tree line, where there were less fatal places to fall!!!!
Yep, that is a pink bandana in the photos. I thought it would be cute, you know, make Scout look like a mountain dog. Marty thought he'd get made fun of, but I think you will agree, it is ADORABLE!!!