Castro's Crest - Wait, what?

I have a question - is there anything good that has the name or word "Castro" in it?  Can someone name something positive that the name "Castro" has contributed to society?

I ask this for a reason.  My hike today was on a trail called Castro's Crest.  Now, I remember last week every time someone got their assignment for Castro's Crest that they reacted negatively.  After talking to some of the stay-over guests, this is one of the toughest hikes offered.  Other tough hikes include one called Solstice and another one called Zuma, or Zuma from the other end, called Reverse Zuma.

This week I am in the advanced group for hikes.  So let's take a guy from Houston with no previous hiking experience, put him in the most advanced hiking group and start the week on one of the hardest hikes that has the word "Castro" in its name.  Can anything good come from this?

When we showed up at the start of the hike, the guide told us that the peak in front of us is called Castro's Peak and the crest part is the hike up the peak.  No one knew if this peak is related to Fidel or Cuba in any way.  The guide told us to look at the top of the peak and notice the towers.  I don't know what kind of towers they were exactly, but they looked like power line towers or microwave towers.

At this point it was obvious that the first half would be hiking uphill until we reached the top, then the second half is the walk down the crest.  Well, I was half right.  The hike actually starts going downhill into a valley, then we start the hike up the crest to the top of the peak.

Alright picture time.  Above is a picture of the menu for today.  I took this picture to give y'all some idea of the menu and also because it contains an error.  Look closely and you'll figure it out.  If you do figure it out, let me know.  I'll talk more on the food in later postings.

Here is a picture of the start at Castro's Crest before we went down to the valley so we can come up.  At the top you can see the towers I was talking about earlier.

About a third up the crest, I had to stop for a picture because the scenery was great.

One of the professional skateboarder's that lives out here built a half pipe ramp on his property.  You can see some of it sticking out of the hills.  Here is a zoomed in picture.  You can kinda see it in the middle of the picture.

I remembered the advice that I received the first day regarding the hikes, and that is to put one foot in front of the other and keep it going.  Well, that's what I did and eventually we reached the top of the peak.  Actually the very top is private property, so we hiked to the top until we hit the private property.  Alright, for those that don't believe me, here's a victory picture.  Thank goodness the wind was blowing for a nice breeze.

Remember the towers in the first picture that looked so far away?  Well, here's a picture at the top and you can see how far we made it.

The result is that I have a couple of new blisters to show for my first hike up Castro's Crest because the terrain really is steep and goes on for a long time.  For me, it is the going down part that messes up the feet.  What goes up must come down, and we had a pretty long way down today.

After this, the rest of the day was good.  As usual, we had a class in the pool, one in the gym, and one in the aerobics room.  One of the cool things that I've seen here is the weights in the water.  No, they aren't free weights from the gym, but they are made of foam and are in the shape of dumbbells.

The weights for the pool are based on buoyancy and are effective under the water.  The more buoyant the foam, the higher the resistance under water.  I'll take some pictures because they look a little different.

Closing thought for the day:  At the end of the day, the score is Brian 1, Castro's Crest 0.  Enough said.