Where did we hike?

That was the question Cal, Tory, Sean and Tyler had by the end of the climb. We started our hike at 11:01 in the morning. Are goal was to climb Fair View Peak which is the second tallest mountain in our area. We started our hike on a road leading us up the mountain. We were hiking along and came across a stream that ran down Henry Mountain which is right next to Fair View Peak. A little farther up the road turned in to a creek. Water was gushing down the road making a stream carrying away the lose dirt. We hiked on whatever looked to be the driest spot on the road until we came to a beaver dam that was made across the road. It had broken so the water was running throw the opening. Farther up we came upon the site of the peak and “man” was it high. The stream we were following had snow all along the bank. But as we came to a ravine with a few scattered trees, we noticed that the peak we where hiking wasn’t Fair View Peak, it was Henry Peak. We took out the map and saw that there was a hill to the other side of the ravine allowing us to cross over to Fair View. But the map is not the same as what it looks like in real life. The hill was steep and it took a good 20 minutes to climb 150 feet. At the top of the hill we saw the other peak. It was at least 2 miles away. We ate lunch at 1:20 on the top of that hill. During that time we decided to climb the last half of Henry’s Peak. So we started hiking up on a road leading us through flat spots until we came to a hill. The hill had the same incline as the one before lunch but not as tall so we decided to take the challenge. We climbed the hill very slowly and when we came to the top we saw snow banks that where 3 feet high and 7 feet wide. And these banks were in strips so we had about 2 feet of dry land before him next. This was surprisingly one of the shortest distances of that terrain we came to that day. When we rounded a curve in the road we saw the peak. But before we could reach it we had two more obstacles. For our first obstacle, we had to hike over a quarter mile in snow where only 15 feet of trees were sticking out of the snow. Every now and then we hit a lose spot of snow and we would fall waist deep in the snow and hearts pounding from fear we would fall clear through. We came to our second obstacle which was a side of the mountain that was all rock for about another 800 feet to the top. As we climb we stopped every 100 feet to catch our breath. At the top there was a 30 foot face of rock that we had to climb. As we got to the top, we were met with a 40 mph wind blast. Henry’s Peak stands at about 13,200 feet so we saw all around as stood in awe. We saw nothing but a mountain range covered in snow. We saw 2 other peaks that were only within 20 minutes so we walked to each with ease. As we came to the last peak we saw a way down that wasn’t as steep. We walked down to the tree line and saw something that was too good. In front of us was an endless sight of a winter wonderland. Surrounding the trees was a 4-foot snow bank. We fell through snow banks so often that it became a blessing that you could finally stand on it. Mr. Spitz and Mr. Campbell fell once and it took them 3 minutes to dig there way out. When we finally got out of the blanket of snow we were met with a hill that was on the other side of the ravine as the first. The only problem was that it was bigger. It took us half an hour to get down this hill and at the bottom we were on the road we started on. When we got back to the van we were exhausted. It was 8:30 p.m. We hiked a total of 9.5 hours. Just because we were done with the hike didn’t mean we wanted to learn more about our experience. On our last night in base camp, we had the local rancher come and eat with us. That’s when we learned that it wasn’t Henry’s Peak that we climbed it was Cross Peak. Cross Peak stands at 12,459 feet in elevation. That’s why the question, where did we hike?