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Make a hole

North Incline, January 2009

I’m always surprised when I start scrambling up one of these inclines how much work it is. Not so much the climb as the scurrying over the 1000 acre basket weave of limbings, windfall and rot that is the ground cover. It looks innocent enough from the ground. It’s not unusual to have a entire leg disappear into a rotted-out stump cavern or keyhole a foot in a tangle of limbs and trip spectacularly every other step. Due to the sudden and dramatic changes in… orientation, I really have to cinch my pack down tightly so it doesn’t accidentally sail over my head and knock me unconscious, so that makes breathing a bit harder, and  I have a nasty habit of getting a bit careless as I tire out. Even bringing the dogs along to trail blaze isn’t much help, they tend to fall in behind and get closer and closer until I hear clop of our Lab’s jaw; she is so close that I’m actually clipping her in the chops with a heel on each step. I’m not sure if they are worried that I’ll somehow abandon them there, or if they’re just drafting, but only a moment or two after making her back off I hear the soft clop…clop..clop.

So, this plant a flag shot. The effort, or at least the spectacle of it, seemed to demand it.