Return to Black Tail Rocks

 

The jagged edge center-right was today's goal and in what would be one of the most technical hikes I've done in a long time, we made it to the furthest part of that edge. 

See, I've done Black Tail a few times now, but I've never made it all the way to the final peak. Usually I do this hike earlier in the year and there's always been too much snow left between the last peak and the next-to-last peak for me to go all the way. I really wanted to change that and today I did. 

As you can see, the weather wasn't exactly amazing hiking weather. But considering how quickly I tend to feel I'm overheating, I was a bit thankful for it. As soon as we started going up Baldy (the route most people use to get to Black Tail, though I have read about another way I'm thinking I should check out next summer) I was sweating. And not just a little bit. 

It took way longer than it felt like it should have to get to the final peak, but I blame them on the hike being more technical than I remembered and the weather. Wet rocks make for slow going when one is trying to keep from injuring themselves.  

Thankfully (and probably obviously), no one was injured and we made it back OK. Got to deal with some passing clouds, but that's just one of the joys of being in the mountains. And with a path as well worn as Black Tail, there wasn't much chance of getting lost even in cloud cover.

Overall, a great hike and one of my top ten for the area. However, you may notice there's no pictures of Hamlet in this one. That's because the couple times before when I tried to take him on this hike, something about the rocks here always tears his paw pads up. I don't know what it is, some other hiker once told me the peaks are made of shale as opposed to the granite further down and that's what's doing it. But I've seeing other dogs up there without any noticeable issues. Regardless, I have to leave Hamlet home when I do this hike and for that reason I don't do it as often as I'd like. 

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