Hiked up a Tree Today, March 17, 2013

It was a great morning, frosty early but sunny and calm by 10:00 our meeting time ...
Yup ... we were planning to hike up a tree ... it was to be an Over-the Hill Hikers special New Year event ... it took us a while to get everyone and everything organized ... and then sadly we were one short but we did find a replacement!

Sooooooooooooo  ... we met up on Rainbow Hill with our patient guide, Toby ... first we handed in our paperwork [well some of us] then we hiked a bit of the Backyard Trail until we got to a beautiful, tall cedar with no branches until maybe 50 feet up, or maybe it was meters, it looked really tall!

Excited but with some trepidation ... we listened to the instructions ... thinking will we never remember everything! Then it was climbing into our gear [2 at a time] and then we were off, sort at the speed of turtles ... inches at a time, trying to get ourselves co-ordinated, then rested ... oohing and awing all the while and on top of everything we were being filmed!

Let me say that height has nothing to do with it ... you are concentrating on new stuff, ways your body doesn't usually have to work ... you won't be cold, your muscles are working and you didn't have to go high at all to have a great experience!

Coming down was super fun, worth the work of going up.
Toby is able to accommodate some problems by special rigging to make things easier for the climbers.

We were so engrossed with watching everybody go up we didn't even search out the nearby eagle's nest; but we did celebrate with fancy chocolate when everyone was down!

We didn't ask but we may have been his oldest group ..... I think we will probably all do it again; Toby has more trees picked out across the Islands.

Thanks Toby ...