Death by Mt. Raymond via Alexander Basin Trail
🥾🥾🥾🥾 9.6 miles. 4,425 ft. elevation gain. Date hiked: July 16, 2022. Picture taken at Gobbler's Knob with Mt. Raymond in the background, right hand side of the picture. It was on this hike that I was reminded of a piece of imagery that came to my mind a few weeks ago as I was hiking with Leti. Leti, when we hike, is like a mountain goat. Effortlessly scaling mountain tops, occasionally breaking a sweat. Breathing like a normal human. Meanwhile, I am like a hippo in training, gasping for breath as I lumber up the mountain, hoping to summit by some miracle. This is how our hike was yesterday. :) I gave it four boots instead of five because I mainly felt out of shape on this hike. This hike might be one of those one and done type hikes for me. We decided to go up Alexander Basin, which was in our top three steepest hiking experiences ever. Something like 1700 ft. elevation gain for .7 of a mile. The first three miles were extremely steep - 1,500 feet per mile. So, as I gasped f