Hiking the "M"

As we are trying to do "Bozeman things" this summer, I'm happy to report that Emily, David, Duke and I hiked the "M" today. For non-Bozemaneers, the "M" is a large letter M, made of rocks, on a mountainside for all of Bozeman to see. It represents Montana State University, I suppose. We started out about 11:00 on this very warm day, and needed to have Emily to work at 2:00. No problem. There are two routes to the "M", the Steep Route and the Gradual Route. Well, since this was our first time up, we decided to take the Gradual Route. Or so we thought. We quickly tired and opted for the "short cut" which actually was no shortcut at all. See, at some point up the Gradual Route Short Cut, we got off the beaten path. Not a good idea, especially when we couldn't even see the "M". At one point Em and I were crawling on our hands and knees up the mountain. Dozens of times I wanted to quit and thought "This is really far enough for my first time". To which Emily would reply "Come on Mom, we can do it!" After approximately 75 minutes of climbing, we DID make it to the top. The "M" is a little disappointing, just a pile of white rocks, but the view of the Gallatin Valley is breathtaking. As was the climb up! Next time we are sticking to the Gradual Route up. I'm sure we'll get there quicker!