Hiking with Jordan

2009-02-03 00:25:10.000 – Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer

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Today I had the opportunity to hang out a bit with my old buddy, Jordan, from the other shift, my old shift. He has now worked his way up to the hard sought position of Senior Intern, relieving Jeff ‘Wehrwolf’ ‘Wehrburger’ Wehrwein who had previously held the position. Anyway, Jordan found a day off amongst his work-filled off week and chose to hike up the mountain and back to his other place of work for a visit. He seems a smart boy, but maybe he forgot that in two days he will be unable to leave this place for eight. Then again, this place is pretty awesome and you never know what you’ll see, especially in the winter. As it turns out, this was his first time summiting this mountain in the winter. Congratulations, man!

We are a bit short staffed this week, just Brian and myself on as observers, so we decided to work a bit of a different schedule to change this up a bit. I am working from noon through midnight, and Brian is working the other 12 hours. This left me with plenty of time to hike on over to the SE snowfields, strap on my board, and meet Jordan as he was hiking up. I did just this, finding the snow quite nice and spied his orange hat from a distance. I rode through the wee trees to the junction of the Tucks and Alpine Garden trails where he was. He had left the base a bit after 7AM and made good time up through Lion’s Head. I strapped my board (read: sail) to my back and we hiked and talked our way to Split Rock where we talked a bit more. We then carried on, hiking interspersed with talking, not forgetting the occasional stop of course to enjoy the soft light illuminating both the Atlantic far away and the Boott Spur ridge nearer by. In time we made our way to the summit, arriving at the same time as the day trip.

Jordan and other folks visited for a while. He then grabbed his skis to head over to the fields that I had ridden earlier in the day. He came back as happy as I had been when I had seen him. We’re now just playing the waiting game, longing for the time when Tuck’s is safe enough to ride so we can make the commute from the top down to Pinkham.

Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer