Went hiking today by myself on Bear Mountain.  I went with a fully loaded backpack (~30 lbs) which was a great workout while climbing to the top of Bear Mountain along the Major Welch trail.  I had done it before without a backpack, and it was tough then.  This time it was insane, plus the temperature was about 90 degrees.  I came back along the Appalachian Trail and actually ran into a thru-hiker.  Also, lots of day hikers.  There were a number of posters for a dog that had run away the night before.  I ran into someone who was looking for the dog and I said I would keep an eye out while I walked down, but I didn't see any dogs.  I started the hike around 10:30AM, and got back to the car around 1PM.  I then went to Mitsuwa and had a mini ramen set with pork belly rice, shio ramen and hard boiled egg. Yummm.  It was a little sabishii eating by myself though.

Yesterday, I had gone on another hike with the Appalachian Mountain Club.  It was a small group led by Bill Lee.  We went by a private lodge house and club within Harriman, Thendara, which was pretty neat.  One of the hikers actually jumped into the lake because it was so hot.  There were about 7 of us originally, and then 2 people split off in the middle to take a shorter hike.  The 5 of us continued the original plan, and then we ended up taking a shortcut also, which cut off about 1 mile from the planned 9 mile hike.  On the way home I drove two people home, a 72 year old woman, retired architect, and a 33 year old Japanese girl, Saori.  We had discussed Mitsuwa on the way back home, which was one reason I went by today.  She actually works at NYU as a graduate student in Microbiology and I had seen her before on one of the other hikes.  She was cute and had a great smile.

The reason I've been hiking so much lately is that I am going on a backpacking trip in 2 weeks in the Sierra Nevadas, with the Sierra Club.  I'm psyched. It will be my first backpacking trip.  I already had most of the gear from all the camping I did with Kazumi last year.  Overall, I will end up spending about $1600 for the trip, including airfare.  $600 for the trip, $600 for the airfare, and $400 for the rental car.  The rental car part is kind of ridiculous because I will be renting it for a week and only driving it for 2 days to get from the airport to the start of the backpacking trip, but I don't see any other way to get there.  I will email the leader tomorrow to see if there are any other options.