Beer At The End Of The Hike?

I always joke with folks that there'll be beer at the top of the mountain, but it almost came true the other day. I was heading up to the ski hut to try to keep up my conditioning, when I passed by a guy going the other way. I bitch (as usual) about how steep the trail is and how out of shape I am, and he tells me that there's a keg just a half mile up the trail. I'm laughing, thinking about the times I jokingly tell people it's all down hill once they get around the corner, or any of that other stuff. I wasn't really sure whether he was having me on or not.



Then I hike on a ways further, and *another* person tells me about the keg. And I finally get up to it! Some poor bastard has tied a backpack onto a full keg and dragged it half-way up the mountain. It's a heavy SOB (I tried picking it up), and I couldn't imagine toting it up the hill. Worse that that, some poor guy is dragging Coors Lite up the hill -- if you're gonna tote all that weight, shouldn't you grab something at least a little better? Yeesh.



Oh, well, I haven't been hiking much lately, as M. and I are looking at houses (in a scary market which may or may not go screaming down). I pre-hiked Stoddard a month or two ago, then everybody bailed on me on that hike (which I was leading with F.) due to rain, so I went up anyway and did the beer hike. Then I picked off Icehouse Canyon (with ice and genuine snow coming down, woo hoo!). [I realize that folks don't much care, but I like to write this stuff down for future reference.]