Gimme the hard stuff!

With 3 days left until Rex and Katie leave we've been getting in a lot of things. Today we tackled quite possibly the hardest trail on the island...Precipice. This made Beehive look like a walk to the local 7-11. See my photoblog (link over to the right) for a map. The trail is only about a mile long, but it goes up something like 930 ft.

It started out easy enough. Kind of big boulders and rocks, but the trail would go up and down.

Then it was mostly up. Rumor has it that Jen wouldn't let Jeff and Brett go on the hike when they were out here...I think she was right. I don't know if they look at this, but here are pics of what you avoided.

This pic is pretty much straight down. There were a lot of "fun" places where you had an iron rail to hold onto and a slight ledge to stand on.

This was one of the more flimsy rails. It was strong...it just didn't feel like it. I pretty much stayed at the tail end of the group. This is what I usually do because I'm tall and can see over everyone.

Plus I can hopefully catch or support Deanna when she reaches those rocks that are hard for her to climb with her short legs...unless I'm taking pictures, then her life is in Katie's hands.

There are also ladder rungs at certain points sometimes they're severely bowed or bent due to what I assumed was falling boulders...it could have been falling people though.

Here was one of the thicker ledges where we stopped for a quick break. Apparently this trail is listed as a 90 minute hike. Katie hiked it with Jake while he was out here...or at least they started at the same time and he took off to see how fast he could do it.

I stopped to take photos as everyone got to the next level. Deanna wanted to take a picture. It wasn't as treacherous as it seems in this pic...there was a series of steps over to my right. That thin grey line behind me is, however, the road and the entrance to where we parked.

Here's a zoom shot of people who were watching us and waving from the parking lot.

Here's the not zoomed shot. They were a ways down there.

To give it a little more perspective, here's me next to the parking lot. Not far from the top at this point.

We finally made it and there was a cool pond of water at the top.






There were a couple other people at the top who took our picture. They didn't hike up Precipice...they took one of the easier routes to the top. There was a slightly overweight guy at the top when we first got there who took another route up and then headed towards taking Precipice down...THAT is insane. We told him about 5 times NOT to go that way, but he did. Deanna felt really bad, but about 3 minutes later he came back.



Here's Rex in front of Jackson Labs. He likes that place.

It took us just over an hour to reach the top, and about 90 minutes to get down. The trail we took down almost seemed harder, but it was fun.

Later on we had two shows. In the second show the crowd was drinking a lot. Jen and I started a scene for Larrance's Choice (Sing it) with the suggestion "Wizard of Oz". It was one of the lamer scene initiations I've done...the best part was that Jen was a Munchkin I named Chimchoh. Rex ended up grabbing one of the curtains off the window and coming out as the wizard...he was behind the curtain the whole time. My song was first and wasn't that great. Rex's was next. Jen's was the last song singing about how she would take the wizard down. In the pause of the first line I said "CHIMCHOH!"...then again in the second pause, and a drunk guy in the front row said it too. Then he said it again on his own. Then I pointed to him expecting him to say it...he didn't. Then I pointed to him again in the next pause and he said it...along with 2 others. Pretty soon we had the whole audience shouting "CHIMCHOH!" when I pointed at them. It was the saving grace and super fun.