Balsam Lake Mountain

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Balsam Lake
As much as I adore solitude, there were definitely times in the past few years where I wished I had some sense of community. Then, I started posting about my hiking and skiing and I developed an online community. Now, I’ve been meeting people from this online community in real life and am realizing the universe may have delivered to me exactly what I was looking for.
Deborah and I had been following each other on Instagram this year and she asked if I’d like to go hiking, so we ended up doing BLM yesterday.
She agreed to a pre-hike beer and it turns out we know some common people which seemed like crazy a coincidence. I had Sip of Sunshine and she had Heady Topper, which she liked. I was glad because when people don’t like Heady Topper, I always wish I had given them a beer that I don’t have to drive to Vermont to purchase.
After a long time talking in the parking lot, we figured we should probably climb this thing. The trails were wet as it has been raining for two days. There are puddles you have to find your way around and they can be pretty deep. It also wasn’t a great day for fire tower views, but Deborah bagged another peak on her road to completing the 35.
My advice to anyone hiking with Deborah is to let her drive out of the parking lot first. She was behind me for a while and I definitely got the impression she wished I would drive faster.






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