By Daniel Z
On the brisk morning of October 17th, I woke up at 6:00 — 4 hours earlier than I do on weekends — to make my way to St Francis Church. We were headed to a new place called Trumbo Hollow, where the scouts would either take a day hike or an overnight backpacking trip.
We hung around in the parking lot for a while, waiting for our SPL Jimmy Z to show up. Unfortunately, he overslept (the audacity!) and our waiting was in vain — he still hadn’t arrived when we finally left at around 7:30.
This was also the day of the League of Legends World Championship quarterfinals (Fnatic vs Top Esports), so I spent the car ride watching the match. When we got there at 8:30, I dutifully put my phone away, in order to enjoy the hike that was to come.
For our hike, we would walk three and a half miles there, then turn around and walk back. There was a lot of uphill for the first half (which just meant more downhill when we came back), which tired out a few scouts.
Near the turnaround point, there was a wall of branches that completely blocked the trail. Fortunately, being the resourceful scouts that we are, we managed to walk around it (wow!). Our pace was also so good that many of the scouts decided not to eat lunch, since it was only 10 when we reached the halfway point.
We then turned around and started our trek back. We met the second group of day hikers — who had left five minutes after us — almost ten minutes later (really goes to show how fast we were). After another hour and a half, we finally got back to the parking lot. The drive back to the church was pretty uneventful (the LoL semifinals match had concluded), and we arrived home at around 1.
