We chose the Clackamas River Trail, about 15 miles outside Estacada, because it has some flat stretches of trail where I can run (and more importantly, no snow). It's only 1400 feet elevation gain over eight miles (from the trial head to the Indian Henry Campground), so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Not that a 16.2 mile round trip hike is anything to scoff at. It's a mile longer than the last hike and we were exhausted after that (granted, we were trudging through snow). We need to keep it challenging...at this same distance in the marathon, we'll still have 10 miles to go. Yikes!

Our book is full of freaky challenging hikes, but most I want to do start out at like, 3,000 feet and climb up another 2-3,000 feet. So even if we could get to them (which I doubt), there'd be too much snow. Summer can't get here fast enough.

Yocum Ridge (18.2 miles RT, 3800 feet elevation gain) is the closest in distance and elevation gain to Half Dome, except that it peaks at 6,000 rather than 8,000 feet, and it doesn't have the 400 meter rock climb at the end. But other than that, they're pretty similar. I can't wait to do this...I'm insanely curious if my sweetie will flat-out tell me after we're done to forget the Dome and that if I want to get married, I'll find him at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. He'll be the drunk one. Heh.