King's Peak summit

This is my first attempt at a post, so nobody better laugh. You see, Jen has completely dropped the ball when it comes to keeping the blog going. Like many things I've had to step in and right the ship! All kidding aside, I don't know how she keeps her sanity with all she does, not to mention the schedule with the kids etc. She is coaching Mady and Mimi's soccer team, which has been awesome to watch those girls play their hearts out. More on that later.
The Young Men's high adventure activity this year was to summit Kings Peak. It was a 32 mile round trip hike that quite literally "kicked my trash". The first day was an 8 mile hike into our base camp, where we fished and made ready for the next day. On a side note the leader (Steph), now this guy has climbed mountains like Rainer and McKinley, had to escort one of the young men out to meet his parents on the first day. He hiked into the base camp, all 8 miles, in the dark. Talk about gutsy. The next morning he comes strolling into camp at 6 am, he had slept the previous night about 100 yards away from where we were camped! We gear up and start for the summit. About 2 miles out some kid approaches us and informs us he is lost. Steph once again leads this kid all the way back to his campsite. The route we took to the summit was over Gunsite Pass and in order to catch up to us Steph had to ascend up what is called "the chute" a brutal pass that should be called "elevator shaft" to better describe its angle. When we finally make it to the base of the peak, I am done, physically, literally, figuratively, whatever you want to call it. The rest of the crew takes off for the summit. I force myself to eat a bagel, some trail mix and jerky. After about 20 minutes I feel much better and decide to push on to the summit. Now this mountain is nothing but rock. I mean jagged rock. I managed to catch up to the group just before reaching the top. We snap some pictures, and due to possible incoming thunder storms, start our descent. After reaching the base, we decide to go down the chute in order to shorten what has already been a long day. Now going down the chute was the most stressful part of the whole journey. It took us each about an hour to get to the bottom. In the mean time we had to scream at people below us to watch out for rocks, more like boulders, we had kicked loose and sent them crashing down the mountain. One boulder I kicked loose took off and was headed straight for two people below. I managed to get the attention of one guy, but the other looked up just as the rock hit him squarely on his forearm. Luckily he had just lifted his arm off the ground, otherwise I'm quite certain it would have broken his arm. He ended up with the biggest "monkey bump" (his words) on his arm. We finally made it down together, and in one piece. The rest of the hike back to camp was about 4-6 miles. After we returned to camp we ate, and literally fell into our sleeping bags. The 8 mile hike out seemed just as hard as the 16 mile summit due to sore, blistered, tired feet. We hit Wendy's in Evanston like a freight train! All in all it was an awesome 3 day adventure. We are already talking about our next adventure in the summer of 09.