Summits #7 & #8: Mt Osceola & East Osceola

Before I tell you about our exciting hike, I would like to thank you all for helping me get so close to my fundraising goal. I only need to hike two more summits and raise $22 to meet my goal of ten summits and $5000. Wow! My project is supposed to end in November, but it's only July. I think I'll climb more than ten this year, and it would be great if I went above my fundraising goal. Now, I'm going to tell you about the hike.

The hike was 10.2 miles long, it took about 8 1/2 hours, and we reached the peaks of two mountains: Mount Osceola, 4,340 feet & East Osceola, 4,156 feet.

We camped Friday and Saturday night at the Osceola Vista Campground in Waterville Valley. It was really close to Mount Tecumseh, which was my first mountain summit of this project. On Saturday morning we got up really early, ate breakfast, drank cocoa, and waited for the cameramen to arrive. Yes! there were actually cameramen on our hike. They're both professional cameramen for local news stations, and one of them is interested in making a film about me. It might get on TV! The cameramen took some shots of the mountain from the campground, while we got our packs and water ready.

Our hike up to Mount Osceola was fun. The weather was beautiful and the sky was blue. Some of the rocks were slippery because of all the rain they've been getting in New Hampshire (a tornado hit New Hampshire just a few days ago, which is really rare, and someone got killed). We stopped a few times so that the cameramen could set up a good shot. Sometimes we had to walk along the same part of the trail twice, like a do-over. And we had to pretend that the camera wasn't there. We reached the summit in about 2 1/2 hours, and there were already some other hikers at the top, and one of them had even seen my blog site before! The summit from Mount Osceola is really beautiful, and we got great views of the Tripyramids and Mount Tecumseh. We could even see our campground.

We stayed on the summit for about a half an hour and then headed over to East Osceola. The trail to East Osceola is very steep in some places. One spot is even called The Chimney, so you can imagine how steep that is -- it's almost straight up and down about 30 feet. In the spots that weren't super steep and rocky, it was muddy with lots of trees. The top of East Osceola is in the trees and has no view. There is a cairn that my brother and I kept accidentally knocking over, but we fixed it each time.

The trip from East Osceola down to the Greeley Ponds area was a little scary. First, there were more very, very steep sections. Then the cameramen decided to go ahead of us to set up a good shot. But they got so far ahead that we thought that we had lost them, and were really worried that maybe they took a wrong turn somewhere. And then, my dad took a bad fall, flipped over, off of the trail, and cut his leg. We finally found the camera guys near Upper Greeley Pond and were relieved. Then, we took off our boots and splashed around the cold pond for a while. It felt really great on my sore feet.

From Greeley Pond, the trail back to our campground went through a long valley and was pretty flat. But it was also really long -- about four miles. My legs cramped up a little bit just before we reached our campground, but I was excited that we made it! My dad drove the cameramen back to their car at the trailhead and picked up a mother and daughter from Norway and brought them back to our campsite, where their cellphone would work. They were so nice and they gave me $20 for my project.

This climb was really fun, and thank you again for helping me get so close to reaching my goal. If you'd like to see a bunch of photos and a slideshow of our hike, click here.

Green Tip #8: When you're at the grocery store, which should you ask for - plastic bags or paper bags? A lot of people say paper, because you can grow more trees and paper is biodegradable. Really, making a paper bag creates 70 percent more air pollution than making a plastic bag. But, plastic bags are bad too. They're made from oil and they take a long time to biodegrade. So instead of either, you should bring your own reusable bags, such as canvas ones like my mom uses.