My friend Jenny is up for almost anything.  So we decided to try the second peak of the Chief.  She has not yet done the first peak – we will rectify that later – but as I had not done peak two or three yet – we decided to give two a shot.

The day was overcast and a little cool – actually pretty nice weather for a hike.  So we start off on our hike, Koko and Tika raring to go.  We start off from the Shannon falls parking lot and make our way up.  We make good time to start with.

Take a short break at Shannon Falls themselves, take a photo.  Met a gentleman named Alistair who offered to take our pictures.  He took a really neat one of us on his camera that turned us into cartoons – but we forgot his email address and were never able to get a copy.  Darn it!!

We found a friend along the trail and did our best not to step on him.

Jenny is in fine form today – and very much into the hike – so I cannot help but snap a few extra pictures.

The hike is not easy, and it takes a lot of effort, so we don’t chat much.  We do take a few minutes to look at the interesting colors on this rock face – I wonder what kind of minerals are in the rock to make this rainbow of color.

Then we come to this chain.  It is a little interesting to manage, but the dogs scramble up without too much incident and we are on our way again.  By now the trail is getting busier and bottle necking.  After this chain, there is another chain that is steeper, then a crevice that you need to shuffle along, up a ladder, then up to the top.  There wasn’t much opportunity for photos while carrying the dogs.

The view from the top was lovely again – and totally worth it.  We had lunch up here.  We picked up subway subs for lunch (and cookies).

It was very windy and chilly, so we didn’t stay long, but had some fun while we were up here.

Here is a view of the third peak from the second.... just need to figure out when to tackle it!

The way back down was hard on the legs.  It was steep and every step had to be controlled.

Heading back down the ladder was tricky.

Jenny took Koko down which saved me a trip.  I actually felt sorry for her.

So down the ladder, through the crevice to the chains.

We had a small incident at the last chain on the way down – Tika tried to get down by herself and didn’t have enough traction and slide part way down the hill and panicked.  I couldn’t get her to move from the spot she stopped at.  I had to crawl out on the edge – with no grip, and get her.  Of course Koko decided not to hang out with Jenny, and then he was stuck too.  A nice guy offered to help us, but Koko was not having any of it.  I had to shuffle, carefully down the side with both dogs to get down safely.  Not my favorite time.

So we continued on our way down.  Just before we joined the trail coming down from the first peak I see this sign... I think it should have been slightly better signed.  Oh well.

Overall a nice day for a hike, new experiences had.  Both our legs were like Jelly by the time we go back down to the car and proceeded on our way back to town (after a detour for ice cream, of course).

Again, more photos to follow in the gallery once they have been edited.