Adventure in the Mountains

So being soldiers we have this compelling desire to

seek out adventure....some a little more than others.  Which brings us to a beautiful afternoon in California, this particular afternoon myself, and two of my buddies; HP and Reinhardt decided to take it upon ourself to conquer one of the mountains because it had a cross on it so large that we could see it miles away.  The first picture is the view from our barracks to give you an idea of the distance.  While you can't make out the cross in the first picture, you can just barely on the second one (center hill).

Our easy hike turned out to be a little more challenging than we had initally planned, which is where the trip became interesting.  We covered the distance to the foot of the mountain fairly quickly, but were met with an unexpected obstacle...a sizable creek.  Normally this creek would not have presented a problem, but for the past month it has pretty much been raining non-stop, resulting in mudslides and rushing creeks in the mountains.

Not to be deterred we all agreed we would cross the creek, the only issue was where.  As I mentioned earlier, some of us have a little more adventure coughdaringcough in them, such as myself, so I assessed the situation (i.e. how fast the water in the creek was  moving, how deep I THOUGHT it was, and how far across it was) and started to cross the creek.  Well as I got further and further across,  and funny thing happened...the water kept getting deeper and deeper, until it was above my waist! Thinking that my buddies were not far behind, I turned around to see how they were doing, and there they were WATCHING me from the bank!  At that point I was in the middle of the creek thinking to myself, maybe I am in a LITTLE bit over my head, and slightly unsure if I should keep going or turn back.  Then words of encouragement from the bank "West come back to the bank" were just what I needed to hear...I pressed on, thinking to myself your a good swimmer; you've made it this far; you can't quit in front of the guys....AND THIS IS FREAKING EXHILARATING!!!


So I made it across and told the guys to come on.  Well they were not so eager to follow in my footsteps and decided to travel further upstream to find a shallower place to cross.

Here you can see they found a spot that the creek was only about up to their knees....that is until they ventured a little bit further...


Here are two video's that I shot from the bank as HP and Reinhardt found out that shallow in one part means deep in another....


               




So the guys finally got across the creek (after going about another mile upstream) and we continued on to our destination...the cross on top of the mountain.