|:: Birthday Hike ::|

today is my friend's belated birthday celebration. him and his wife invited a bunch of friends together to go on a hike at rattlesnake lake trail. of course there was no rattle snakes at the lake or on the trail, but the trail has got really great ratings from people who have hiked it.

wifey and i were a bit late getting to the meeting point, as usual, but when we got there, we found out that there was little or no phone reception. so getting a hold of the birthday boy and the rest of the people was a bit challenging. we waited at the parking lot for a bit, then decided to walk around to see if we were in the right parking lot, then walked some more to see if we could run into people we know.

luckily we were able to find my friend walking out to the front of the parking lot. apparently, there was another group of people who did not know where the meeting point was as well, so that made us feel a bit better. but after an hour or so of endless phone text messages, we found everyone and began the hike.

much different than the hike that wifey and i went to with our monkey brothers at lake serene, because this hike was a short but steep incline hike. it was only 2 miles long but we were to travel up 3300 feet in elevation. it was a tough hike in my opinion but quite good. we were all to busy trying to get up to the top quickly so we could take pictures and rest, that i didn't stop much to take pictures along the way.

it took us quite some time to make it up the hike. we had to stop a few times to rest up, as it was quite physically intensive. when we finally got up to the top of the hike, the view was beautiful as we were looking directly down at the lake from 3300 feet. the weather was beautiful and we could see the cascade mountains along with the roads and the trees surrounding rattlesnake lake. but it was also dangerous too because there was no restraints to prevent people from falling off the cliff. and boy was the fall deadly because it was straight down into sharp rocks and trees.

tired but excited we all got to the cliff edge to take pictures. i managed to take a lot of pictures from the top view as it was amazing. we sat around and talked for a bit, taking in the site that we were all seeing. the sun was glaring hot by the time we got up, and there were many other people who were there as well.

on the way up, as we were reaching the top of the cliff, we overheard some hikers talk about reporting some accident that happened to the search and rescue team. apparently a hiker fell off the cliff just minutes before we got up to the top. then when we were up at the top, we really did see a bunch of search and rescue people surveying the situation. i guess it was true, some poor person really did fall off the top and is no where to be found.

we began our hike back down and as we were walking we ran into more search and rescue rangers hiking up. as we reached the base of the trail we saw a whole team of search and rescue team along with the sheriff making plans for the search. we were too tired to care much at this point so we just headed back out of the park and saw a few people being turned away at the entrance because the trail was now closed off for the rescue. pretty heavy stuff.

i hope that the person is okay and that he/she is rescued safely.