To the top!

On our third day at Stone Mountain, our last full day, Randy and I climbed the mountain.
This was the cloudiest day we had seen, but I didn't want to leave without fulfilling my mission.

We stopped in the learning center that was at the beginning of the trail. Stone Mountain is not actually a mountain, it is a monadnock. Basically, a granite formation that is being exposed by millions of years of erosion.

The trail we took was 1.3 miles and went to an elevation of 1683 ft above sea level. The trail was very rocky, and very smooth in some places. . Near the beginning of our trip, we saw places where people had carved their names in the rock. Some of these were from the early 1900's and I saw one from the late 1800's. I even found one that was my initials.

The higher we climbed up the trail, the foggier it got.

At one point in our walk we stopped to drink some of our water and eat some beef jerky. I had learned this week, that dried meat is a camping favorite. Our camp ate no less than three bags of it. In this picture you can see how foggy it was about half way up. Also, you can see a yellow line painted on the rock. That line is the trail.

At the steepest point of our climb, there was a railing installed. Even with this railing, we saw several adults slip on the wet granite. Randy and I made it to the top without falling.

At the top we saw that the sky lift was down for annual maintance. After a short break, we headed back down. It was so foggy at the top, you could hardly see the building for the sky lift. It was scary up there, because you couldn't see more than 100 yards in front of you. We stopped and took some pictures at the very top. Using the self timer I got a picture of the mountain climbers that we had become.

On our way down we took a side trail between two rocks that formed a sort of hallway. The inside of this hall was covered in gum. Randy and I wanted to be a part of this wall and I pulled our gum out of the backpack. After some quick chewing, the result was our initials written in gum, on the side of the rock. It was sugar free gum and required a bit of extra effort to have it stick properly. But we overcame this problem.

The other sight we saw on our way down was a truck that had been used to fix the skylift. One of the guys on the crew was ahead of the truck, warning hikers to move out of the way in case the truck lost control. Driving at such a steep angle, down wet granite does not sound like a fun job. Not only does it not SOUND like fun, it did not LOOK like fun.

Randy was trying to splash in some of puddles that formed in the low spots. He thought it was funny when he would get my socks wet. I ended that contest with one giant stomp into a puddle that about soaked him to the shoulders.

We had hiked 2.6 miles round trip. The six year old made it with no problems. He is an excellent hiking partner, and probably could have made that trip two more times. At the top, we couldn't see much more than each other, but at least we can now say we hiked to the top of Stone Mountain together.