Hiking Craze - Hopefully will last long!

So, me and a few friends from around Boulder area have started hiking the Rocky mountains around Boulder. We go every Sunday and try to hit a different hike/route every time. It's fun, good exercise and you get to see nature's beauty!

It all started from the Memorial Day weekend 1st Birthday party of Junaid's son, Hamza. We were sitting there having good desi food and a fun talk about RedBox DVD rental and their system of updating their boxes with new DVDs. According to Rizwan, they probably have a way of sending code to burn DVDs over the network instead of sending employees to put in new DVDs every Tuesday (usually when the DVDs are released). There was almost a bet for Cigars for everyone since Masood and a lot of others thought that was a ridiculous idea at the moment. Everyone believed that it is quite possible, but that's not what RedBox does currently. They should however!

And then, Jarrar (who had been talking about going for a hike to Mt. Sanitas for some time) insisted that we go for this hike on Monday (it being a holiday - Memorial Day). We all pondered and finalized that we should leave at 6:00am from Junaid's place. If you are not familiar with Junaid... getting up at 6:00am for Junaid is like not sleeping for two nights. Not many people liked the idea of a hike and that so early in the morning on a holiday when you can sleep a few more hours than a usual Monday. So it all came down to that me and Jarrar and Junaid were going to go for sure. Jarrar picked me up and we went to get gas before getting to Junaid's place. While we were getting gas, my phone had fallen on the seat on Jarrar's car and I didn't hear the phone ring while talking to Jarrar. It was Junaid calling to make sure we were still coming! I realized while going towards Junaid's house that he had called and probably would be thinking that we had chickened out and were still sleeping. When we got to this house, he was standing out there waiting for us. It was a relief, since we might have backed out that days hike if he didn't come.

We got to Mt. Sanitas trail head on Mapleton Rd. after a few detours since it was Memorial Day and we all had conveniently forgotten the fact that it was the day of BolderBoulder, a 10K run which stops traffic in most of Boulder. We did get to the trail head after probably a 45 minute delay. Since it was our first hike, we got to to the trail map, thinking of getting some information about the trail before heading up. There was a laminated, new looking notice on the board... Mountain Lion activity. We highly recommend that you consider a different hike!

It took us 15 minutes and 5 other hikers passing by us to calm down and start to hike. With our picked up tree limbs we started the hike. A 3.1 mile roundtrip hike seemed like a marathon. The 1 some mile hike to the top of Mt. Sanitas is about 70% log stairs. It was tough and we stopped almost 6 times before finally making it to the summit. At the top, we were the three happiest people on earth at that particular moment!

Many many people passed us while getting to the top. That didn't stop us from getting their. The way down was too easy after the climb.

Driving back home we called our better halves and told them to meet us at IHOP in Westminster for breakfast. It took us about 4 days to recover from the hike.

That was supposed to be the only hike but while coming down, we decided we want to continue this every Sunday morning (rain or shine, or even snow!)

That was the first ever hike that we did together. After that, we went to Mt. Sanitas many more times until we got tired of it. As Jarrar puts it... "wo hike boo chor gaee". We started taking different trails and also went to our first 14er, Mt. Bierstadt. A 14er is a 14000ft+ elevation mountain. It was tough and took us 5 hours to complete. Again I have to say "At the top, we were the three happiest people on earth at that particular moment!"

So it is an ongoing activity that we enjoy every Sunday morning. Since then Abbas, Irfan, Kamal and Zaidi have joined us for some hikes. Some of them after part of the permanent group.

Here you can get the blog from Jarrar about the hikes and here you can get to the google group for our hikers group.

Our next 14ers to attempt are Greys and Torreys peaks on August 10, 2008.