Conquering San Miguel

Kelson loves climbing mountains and running on trails. For about a year after we moved to San Diego, he kept looking at the peak East of Chula Vista and saying that he would love to climb it. I finally agreed to go with him and give it a try. This is what we found when we got there:

It is a little bit hard to see in the picture, but the trail goes straight up. No switchbacks at all. I looked at it and was pretty sure I would never make it even halfway. Fortunately, Kelson was very patient with my plodding speed and frequent (as in every 20 feet) rest periods, and we reached the top. Unfortunately, we found out when we got to the top that we were nowhere near the end of the trail. There was a little bit of more level ground, and then another climb even bigger than the first one, also straight up, to get to the summit. At that point I gave up and let Kelson finish. I felt pretty good about my accomplishment though.

 As I sat at the bottom of the final climb waiting for Kelson, I was visually searching the mountain side trying to see where he was.  I started to get worried because I couldn't spot him. Then I saw a guy dressed in black running down the mountain at top speed, and I knew that had to be my husband. I was right.

Our first climb of Mt. San Miguel was several months ago, before we even knew I was pregnant (thus my significantly slimmer figure). Since then, we did it once more together. This time I let Kelson run up the mountain while I plodded very slowly. I still made it, but with even more frequent rest periods this time. That time, Kelson timed his climb to the summit at about 38 minutes (It is around 2.5 miles, most of it straight up.) He was determined to beat his time, so a couple of weeks later while I stayed blissfully asleep in our bed, he got up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and tackled the mountain again. He came in right around 29 minutes. He is awesome like that. I think we can count San Miguel as conquered!