Antone Peak

I have to say that the first time I stepped out of the car; I vowed to return. There is something about Antone Cabin, something peaceful. I can not really put my finger on it, but the place you model dreams after. I dream of living in a cabin in a beautiful place where I can ride from my front door. The Antone Cabin is such a place and now my perfect “dream home”.

The first morning laying in my hammock I had a new copy of Switchback Magazine, which, I may add, had a great article on Sam. My partner came out the door sporting a fresh cup of coffee and announced that we should hike. Sounded good to me. We wondered West up the valley, stopping numerously for photo ops with the local botanical. But that lazy fun hike soon turned up, and we stood on left-over snow that may have been a part of an avalanche last winter.

“Lets just go straight up and see what is up there”. My partner pointed up to a ridge.

It seemed close enough. “Sure why not, otherwise we should head back”, I pointed towards an approaching storm.

It seemed close, but once the climb began, it was hard to turn back. After an hour, we scrambled to a sheltered rock on what seemed a ridge. Now our backs were against an overhanging rock to protect us against the wind and light rain.

“Did you see anything”, she asked me, her hood flapping wildly against her face.

“I didn’t get a chance,”, I yelled back.  “The wind gusts were too much, so I just ducked under this rock.”

“Let’s wait it out and see … maybe we should just go back down.”

“OK”. I was hesitant. I mean we should at least, to me, look to see if we were close to something.

I got restless and when the rain slowed a bit, I scrambled over the rock and looked at the ridge line. I quickly came back.

“Looks like we are close to the top of Antone Peak“, I was fibbing a little because I knew how these ridgelines go. Every prime point leads to another.

“I think we should go for it”, she in a “wink” type way. Darn it! She read my mind. Fully aware we were biting off something that could be too large, she was now “with me” on that denial type of thinking. Which ends up summiting a peak, but leads to hiking out after dark. Or worse, get caught up in some severe storm that spawns many tall tale of survival and near death experience.

30 minutes later we walked to the top of the peak. It was a little windy, OK DAMM windy, but overall quite a simple walk. And we did not stay long because of darkening skies and the belief that we were about to become wet. However, nothing happened and instead of getting wet the sun came out and the storm went down in a different valley. We went back to the cabin.

“Maybe tomorrow we should do a bike ride”. She turned to me and the yellow glow of the campfire danced across her smile.