So the weather this weekend turned out to be excellent, and would have made a perfect mountaineering weekend. Alas, I stayed here in Los Alamos. However, the fact that it was absolutely gorgeous outside did allow me to climb to the top of one of the larger mountains behind town, Cerro Quemazon. It's shorter than both Pajarito and Caballo, but at 9,960' it is the tallest of the peaks that is immediately behind town. Rather than climb directly up from town (~2,500' of gain in ~2 miles), I chose to approach from Camp May. In this way, there is only 700' of net gain but a series of annoyance climbs makes the gross gain about 1,500'. The hike is also considerably longer, coming in at about 10 miles round trip. This qualified it for the 10^th longest hike I've taken since I started keeping track. I saw what I think might be a blue grouse near the summit, and had an excellent view of town and the lab with my binoculars.

A fun trip, and it demonstrated just how out of shape I am. But I think I can attack larger mountains next weekend. Sunday I was very sore and chose to not do much, so I weeded the front yard and took pictures of birds.

Having recovered by this afternoon, I went back and played ultimate which I found very taxing. Hopefully if I keep exercising regularly this will become easier. Of course Wednesday I have SAR which conflicts with ultimate, but seeing as I am an officer in the team and haven't been to a SAR meeting in months due to thesisation, I'm going to miss out on the exercise. I'll have to go for a bike ride or something on Thursday.