Mt. Lukens = Tick Farm

Next on our list of mountain peaks, was Mt. Lukens. This time our friend Jeanette decided to join us.

The morning started with off with everyone meeting up at my house, making a early morning Carl's Jr. Run, which is becoming a tradition, and taking to 210 to the 2 FWY towards the Mt. Lukens trail.

We arrived at our destination, the Wildwood picnic area. It was just behind the picnic area that would find the Stone Canyon Trail... Or what we thought was the trail. To reach the trail we had to hop rocks and logs that were making a make shift bridge across a stream. After keeping as dry as we could, we walked along the stream until we reached "the trail". This trail worked its way about 3 miles into the canyon. It looked like a trail...but at the same time it looked like a rocky dried river bed. Turns out, it was the river bed. After hiking up the steep rocky bed, we decided to make out way back down to the beginning to see if we had overlooked the real trail. Indeed we did. Luckily, Elizabeth spotted the real trail up on a ledge about half way down our decent. It took a little climbing, but we reached the real trail.

Excellent, so now we were on the real trail heading up the mountain, looking forward to a terrific and smooth hike. That wasn't the case.

As we made our way up the trail, I noticed little bugs jumping onto my legs. I examined them a little closer. They resembled little crabs. And thats when it hit me. TICKS!!!! These were no ordinary ticks. They were ticks on Steroids. Luckily for the girls, they shave their legs, but for me, my leg hair acted like a jungle gym, and guess what, school was out for the summer, cuz the ticks were having a grand old time swinging from hair to hair. We had to stop every few minutes to clear out legs of ticks. This was initiated by one of us yelling "TICK CHECK!"

As we started to get into higher elevations, the ticks slowly went away. Now we had a new problem. SLAPPERS!

Definition - Slappers (noun) - 1. one who slaps, 2. tree and shrub branches that hit, smack, wack, slap or cause other bodily injuries while hiking. Most commonly found on over grown trails. Word orgin comes from an aggravated hiker, John.

Yes we had to bush wack almost half of the hike. Finally reached the summit. Scrathed, itchy, and tired, we sat at the peak of Mt. Lukens, ate some food and enjoyed the view.

After 30 mins of rest, the fog started to roll in over the mountain. We packed up and made our way back down the obsticle course back to the car. When we got to the car, we did one final tick check and started the drive back home.

While this hike wasnt the most attractive, it was definitely an experience worth remembering.