Manitou Incline 6/24/2025

 Tuesday, June 24th, 2025

Today was the Manitou Incline day. Doesn't everyone want to walk up 2,768 steps for FUN? We all agreed that we would go our own pace and not wait for anyone. Gavin and Lillia are ready for the challenge!

Me, on the other hand, I'm planning my early exit here:

Here is the whole gang ready to take on the Incline. AJ carried Joy on his back while the rest of us just carried water.

The views on the way up were amazing. And JJ (7 years old) was super amazing: He climbed the mountain completely on his own and made it the whole way to the top without any help!

Everyone tells me the views at the top were amazing, but I never had the privilege of enjoying the view.

Here I am taking the 2,768th step, and placing 8th among the 8 hikers. In the distance, lightning strikes began almost immediately upon my arrival. So my dead legs got me this far.

Then posed for this picture:  

Then, without any rest for me (Everyone else had 30-45 minutes of rest!), we began running down the mountain as fast as we could. The rain was pounding and we were absolutely soaked. Then it turned cold, and the rain became hail. We kept running as best we could. When running seemed too dangerous due to the rocky terrain, we walked, but did our best to keep moving. Lightning safety (and our resident military guru) tells you that if you're up on a mountain, the best thing you can do is descend as quickly as possible to get away from possible strikes. Victor made sure to run at least 50 feet ahead of me so that if one of us got struck by lightning, at least our kids would still have one parent.  A day late and a dollar short, Victor sent us a bunch of lightning tips the following day. Thankfully, we were smart enough to know to get down the mountain asap.

By the time we reached the bottom, the storm had cleared, and the weather was gorgeous again. 

Joy loved the backpack so much, she stayed in it even after the wet hike down!

It's always an adventure with our family. This was awesome, but also dumb. We will do better with watching for storms in advance. (Foreshadowing Wednesday's blog post) At one point, an Army helicopter circled near the top of the mountain. In retrospect, we think they may have been trying to warn us hikers of the impending storm. We were clueless!