Hiking Up Stone Mountain in the Heat

My mother came down from New York to visit me here in Atlanta this week. One of the tourist attractions she has had her eye on since the last visit was Stone Mountain. So despite the heat of the 98 degree weather yesterday we decided to hike up Stone Mountain anyway. The online literature says this hike is only about two miles, so you’d think it wouldn’t be so bad. However, when you’re walking uphill for those two miles it sure does give you a work out.

It took about an hour and a half or so to make it all the say up the mountain. This was with a number of stops in between. I know everyone always tells you to bring lots of water for hot days, but yesterday was so hot it didn’t even seem to help. I’ve been in Atlanta for almost two years now, so I’ve grown accostom to the heat, however my mother isn’t. She was very out of breath the whole hike up the mountain and her face was beat red. I was getting pretty worried for her.

She is in pretty good shape, and walks on a regular basis so I didn’t anticipate a problem. After the hike at Vickery Creek I didn’t anticipate any problems. Now I know that hiking Stone Mountain is a much more difficult task than one might expect. I think the worst part was that once we made it halfway up the mountain the trees started to fade and it was difficult to hide from the dirrect sunlight.

We endured though and made the long hike up Stone Mountain. At the time we relaxed and enjoyed the view for 30 minutes or so while we filled up our water bottles and ate some itiallian ice. We did plan ahead and bought tickets for the Skyride down the mountain. This felt a lot like a big ski lift, and it gave us a beautiful view of the park.

We wrapped up the hike around 7:30pm or so, just in time to relax and get settled in for the  lazer light show that night. It was a great experience, both my mother and I felt very accomplished afterwards. It was nice to see that all of my excercise lately has helped get me into shape.