Hiking time: 191 minutes and 50.23 seconds, or 3 hours and 12 minutes. Not long for one of my hikes these days, but this was a killer, on the difficulty scale. I knew I'd need trekking poles on this very steep hike, so no tripod, all photos hand-held. Took 101 photos, of which 72 made the cut. That's a lot of pictures for such a short hike. But this hike is practically in 12,300 foot Mt. Adams backyard and is in the Mt. Adams Ranger District, an incredibly scenic area seen from an incredibly scenic mountain itself. From the summit of 4,900 foot Sleeping Beauty Peak, Mt. Adams is indescribably majestic. If and only if Mt. Hood is merely a Tinkerbell, pretty and delicate looking in contrast to Adams, Mt. Adams expresses the power and magnificence of God. Sorry, Mt. Hood, but you're hopelessly outclassed, as beautiful as you are (and as dangerous to inexperienced climbers as you are).

Parking lot is 99.7 miles from our house (according to Google Maps, 95 miles according to my odometer) . The last six miles are on a gravel forest road. Trailhead is at an elevation of 3,550 feet, so total climbing is 1,350 feet in 1.4 miles. It is almost unrelentingly steep, just one short break where the trail levels out a bit, just before it hits an extremely loose stony section that takes you to the rocky summit. So this trail is an average 20% grade (1,000 vertical feet per horizontal mile). This is the steepest average I've hiked on a trail since my glory days when I could climb 1,000 vertical feet an hour for five hours. Amazingly, today I climbed 1,100 feet in one hour, by far the fastest I've climbed since my glory days. But it was exhausting.

All but the last 200 feet in elevation is along a well engineered, well groomed dirt trail, steep but unproblematic, which explains how it was at all possible that I climbed 1,100 feet my first hour. The last 200 feet in elevation was probably at a 25% to 30% grade. It took me about a half hour to go down this section, and to do it safely, I had to crawl down the trail, sometimes literally, on my butt, sliding down slabs of rock too high for me to step over.

This rocky section of the trail exceeded the worst sections of Hamilton Mountain, which I avoided retracing my steps like the plague, opting to take an easier and longer way back. On Sleeping Beauty Peak, I had no choice: the only way back was retracing my steps. So in many locations I had to stop and plan out my moves. This section of the trail was right next to cliffs that plunged that 200 feet in elevation gain at a 75° angle! Slipping meant certain death. But I never came close to slipping, I was so careful. Every step I took was calculated to be secure, and proved to be secure.

While I was on top, a young couple arrived, to my surprise. On my way back, I met a couple women, probably my age who were not aware of the difficulties ahead near the summit. But they were seasoned veterans in great shape. The only thing is, they didn't have trekking poles! I hope they were a lot stronger than I am.

The views from the summit were awe inspiring. Mt. Adams was the highlight, looming right up in front of me in its awesome majesty. In total volume it exceeds Mt. Rainier, even though the latter is 2,000 feet higher. There's no way photographs can capture what it's like actually being there in front of this divine spectacle.

Mt. Hood was also 100% open to the south, although distant, but not too far way for my 75-300mm lens at maximum zoom. Mt. Rainier was maybe 25% visible, and Mt. St. Helens was close by and just about fully visible. The top of Sleeping Beauty Peak was a mass of spectacular, bare volcanic spires and I took lots of pictures of them.