There are 4 reasons any and all Gonzo events are never cancelled, postponed, or rescheduled:

1) A true Gonzo is not a wimp.

2) Once scheduled there is no way of knowing who is going.

3) Weather is a mental thing and if you let it affect your actions you will miss out on a lot of good times.

4) Weather is never as bad as you can make yourself think it is.

At least 3 people have whined to me that they wish they had gone on the Long Lake hike but thought it was going to rain. My first comment was--Refer to 1,3, and 4. My second was, don't you own any rain gear?

Bottom line if you fit into any of the above reasons you missed a nice hike, full moon shining on the water, only enough cloud to give a mystical aura to the sky, a magical fire, and scintillating conversation.

After a prehike brew and dough nut at Timmies, Dipper, Sungod, IMAX, PackitinPackitout, Mountain Dancer, and Mrs. MD carpooled to the trailhead.

Everyone then took a turn either leading, or supervising the leader, trying to follow the trail we hiked in the winter snow. After the first 10 minutes, at no time did any or all have a definite idea where we were, where we were going, and weather we had been there before. No matter, after slogging through some swampy stuff (yes for the wimps that didn't show up, you would have got your little toes wet), Mountain Dancer took us to some high ground where we had a "big" fire, sitting mesmorised by it's flame. A most enjoyable hour of solveing the world problems.

Actually the nice thing about being in these places, you don't think that much about any sort of problems.

The hike darted past long Lake a number of times and the moon shimmering on the lake was a thing of beauty. We followed the bread crumbs we had dropped along the trail back to our cars and returned to our home kennels--

The tradition continued.

Our next night hike will be the popular Cape Split hike in for the Sunset, cook the weinie on the fire, and hike out to the full moon. Reserve Saturday, October 14th for this trip. Plans will be as past, meet at Timmies in Sackville at a time(2:00pm?) that will get us to the trail head two hours before sunset(3:30pm) for the 1 3/4 hour hike in.

-- The Sun god