thetinymite.com

Today we hiked 8.4 miles to the Top of Texas. We stared at 9am and returned by 2:30pm, a 5.5 hour roundtrip. Not too bad. We saw a a lot of people today, more than we cared for. There are many college students out here for Spring Break. A group from Denison drove 25 hours! Other than that we have seen more Tech and t-sips than I have cared for. Not a single Aggie outside of our ranks.

The hike was much easier than I expected, and I can hardly believe we gained 3000 feet today. I never really felt winded even at the peak. What is sore are my knees from the descent. The most difficult part has been dealing with the wind. I can’t remember the last time I’ve faced so much wind. The peak was very treacherous, but so rewarding. My favorite parts were looking down on El Capitan or looking back at the Bowl and the peaks near camp. We just found out that A&M beat Texas again in basketball. Also, the campgrounds are completely full. Thank goodness we arrived Friday night.

The views out here have been incredible, even with the haze from the Mexican pollution. Currently, there is a little dust storm contributing to the haze. I’ll be so glad to say goodbye to all that dust. Still, it’s very majestic.

So I later found out that the the Aggies lost to Texas. We found out from another Longhorn who was now at medical school in San Antonio named Charles. He and his wife (Wendy?) were looking for a site and were not having any luck. I mentioned that the wind had ripped the tent of another camp full of Texas grad students from India. Oh, the Wal-Mart tents! Two others fell over yesterday in the ‘moderate’ 50+ mph winds. Later, we volunteered our site to Charles and talked with the Indian grad students. In some small way we were able to live out the Sermon on the Mount (our topic of study for the trip).

Dinner was delicious. Salmon and noodles. Mmmm. It really hit the spot. The wind at night was so bad that it broke part of Charles’ tent (not Wal-Mart).