How will you spend your 72nd birthday?
How will you spend your 72nd birthday? For one local hasher, Telfor, he celebrates an entire birthday month by doing awesome things. Yesterday for example, he spearheaded a trek up Diamond Rock.
At 6:00 am yesterday, our friend Lucy picked us up in Woburn and drove us to Sauteurs in the north end of the island. It was there that we were to meet up with our fellow hashers to board a couple of go-fast local boats to make the run to Diamond Rock, sometimes labeled on the charts as Kick ’em Jenny (this can be a bit confusing because the actual underwater volcano known as Kick em’ Jenny is, although nearby, at a slightly different location).
Even though it was pouring rain when we all woke up, the skies cleared and we were presented with a perfect adventure day. I say adventure because there is no trail to the top of this island. Telfor, with cutlass (machete) in hand, led the way for the rest of us, picking a route and clearing the brush as he went.
Speaking of brush, it would be heard to find a place with more inhospitable foliage. The rocks we climbed were covered with both cacti and stinging nettles making those of us without gloves afraid to grab onto anything for support. Note: Bring gloves next time!
After an hour and a half or so of slowly picking our way up the island, we reached the summit, approximately 640 feet above sea level. The view from the top was, as we expected, incredible and we could easily see everywhere from Carriacou to Grenada.
Descent inevitably had to follow ascent but the trip down Diamond Rock took surprisingly much less time, in spite of the steep grade. When we reached the bottom, we found our diligent boat captains waiting for us, anchored just off the beach. After we had a refreshing swim in the clear water to cool off, they shuttled us back to the mainland. Our adventure concluded at the beautiful Petite Anse Resort where we celebrated our success with good drinks and food.
Yeah, on my 72nd birthday, I think I’d like to spend it just like that. Happy birthday Telfor!
On an unrelated note, today is Canadian Thanksgiving and we have much to be thankful for, including our friends, family and each other. Have a great holiday everyone. If you’d like to do one simple selfless act to help someone today, please put in a vote for our friend Carlton Grooms in the Rumologist contest. This is the final day for the contestants to accumulate votes and when it’s all over at 9:00 PM PST, the decision will have been set. It really is a pretty easy thing to do to help someone out so I hope you’ll follow through on my final request for help. Thanks in advance!
So cool you guys!! Like an uber-hash!!
Happy Thanksgiving guys. I also hope to be out there on the waves and exploring when I’m 72. Looks like fun times on the climb, besides that little crab and what appears to be tree boa in your pictures did you run into any other interesting wildlife?
Outside of the snake (tree boa?) and crab, which we found quite high up the island, we saw a couple of quite large iguanas. And birds, plenty of birds.
I think it would be impossible to see the iguana INSIDE the tree boa :{))
Cool looking snake. How long was it?
I think the snake was maybe only 2.5′ long. The cool thing with that snake is how far he could extend his body in a straight line to get from one branch to another. It didn’t seem possible.
Wow, what a beautiful place to hike! Looks like ya’ll were smart and wore pants.
Goes to show that 72 years of age isn’t so old anymore!
That is the first time we have worn long pants since the Bahamas and we’re sure glad we did.
Awesome day!
What type of snake is that?
I was told it was a Tree Boa.
Great photos.
Thanks Philip. I put over a hundred pics on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150397691611421.402857.179781141420&type=1
Hey Mike,
Looks like you guys had a great day. Sorry I could not go on that trip but term papers at SGU had me swamped the entire weekend. It would have saved Lucy quite a drive to get you guys from Woburn lol. I can assure you that I am going to the hash next saturday, AND to the Mt.St.Catherine hike the next day. So if you guys need a ride to either/both let me know and FOR SURE! later…. have a great week in the sun.
George Jr
Thanks George. I understand… priorities. We would love to have a ride to both the hash and to the Mt. St. Catherine hike. Thank you!