memorial day hike

dad keeps letting me know that i haven't updated my blog in awhile, so here i am updating it. i haven't had much to talk about lately just same ol same ol: work, hangout with friends, eat, sleep, etc. so for this past weekend my friends, joey, phil, and myself went backpacking out to the old mining town silver city out in the mountains on the border of idaho and oregon. we went up there because the other 2 places we wanted to go to were going to have thunderstorms and weather.com said that silver city was going to be sunny with few clouds so we ditched our tents and tarps to sleep under the stars. while we were almost to the top of the mountain the storm hit...

we were in shorts and t-shirts with not much other clothing to protect us. we made it to a clump of evergreen trees and the hail started smashing to the earth. maybe the size of pennies or smaller, they hurt none-the-less. there were 3 trees next to each other that we took refuge under. we decided to build a shelter to keep our stuff and ourselves dry so we each set out gathering sticks and branches and cutting down evergreen branches. we weaved sticks through the 3 trees' branches and built a wall on the side and covered the tops and sides with evergreen branches to cut the wind and keep out the rain. i dug out a firepit inside the shelter and circled it with rocks and we cleared the ground to lay our gear out. we got a fire going and rested while the thunder/hail/rain all that shabang pounded the mountain.

luckily it let up later that evening and we got to watch the sunset and several lightning storms light up the surrounding areas. it was truly gorgeous and amazing! i brought my newly acquired mandolin and harmonicas while my friend joey brought his accordion and shakers so we could play music up there. it was just a great time to spend with my friends and soak up God's beauty and power.

we only saw a couple deers and we ran into a good amount of snow; speaking of snow...after we built the shelter i decided to go take some pics around and phil was keeping the fire going and joey was off exploring and gathering firewood. i climbed up and around a mining area and to make a long story short i was circling back to camp and i was walking on a patch of snow, which there were many scattered patches, and i fell through; legs dangling, luckily i threw my arms out to stop myself from falling further. i pulled myself up and gained composure. joey was luckily close by and i showed him it and then took some pics of the inside; it wasn't as deep as i thought were i fell in but it sloped down further and i fell at an angle hence my feet dangling. it was an old mining shaft that was covered with snow; i'm lucky nothing happened.

this is long enough so we made it back home safe and sound. here are some pics of the trip; if you want to see more you can go to my flickr account on the side of my blog.