There are few things that unnerve me as much as tall grass in the spring. So when we reached the turnaround point of our hike and Ben sat down next to what’s left of Moberly Cabin to dig into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small part of my brain whispered DANGER. ABORT. TAKE THE SANDWICH AND RUN. 

I hate ticks. Ticks love tall grass in spring. Being early April, our inaugural hike of the season was early early, but this trail – a 15km point-to-point called the Overlander – is known for being a common tick hideout. But the snow had barely melted from the hillside; surely it was too early for them to emerge and wreak their annual havoc on my psyche. So I plopped down next to Ben. I needed something to block the wind, after all. 

At this point last year, a hike wouldn’t have been possible (at least not without hefty crampons or snowshoes). So we were delighted to be able to head out to the trailhead, especially with Spain a mere month and a half away. Ben’s been getting lots of multi-hour slow walks with Poe and I’ve been running consistently, but hiking for long hours in steep conditions is its own beast. Our winter fitness will help us greatly in the Picos de Europa, but I need more time on feet and Ben needs to occasionally push the pace without Poe dawdling.

The Overlander trail is lower elevation (we gained 540 metres today, but it was all just undulating trail), has good views and is a pleasant shoulder season option. We hadn’t arranged a car shuttle between the two trailheads, so we decided to start at the more scenic side by Morro Mountain and just go to the historic Moberly Cabin and back. 

It was the perfect first hike of the season. By the end my feet were toasted but the rest of me was merely pleasantly tired. Ben felt similarly. We both enjoyed being back on the trail and just chatting as the kilometres fell away. We turned our faces to the sun in the morning, and donned our buffs when the wind got chilly. We took our time on the way back to ease the pounding my feet were feeling, and arrived back at the car four hours and twenty minutes after we left it. All told, we hiked about 17.5 km. This feels like a good starting point. But as we talked in the car about which prominent peak we each wanted to bag by the fall, I’m already looking ahead to the training that has to happen sooner rather than later. 

When we got home, we decided better safe than sorry and stripped naked in the mudroom, tossing all our clothes immediately into the washing machine. Ben hopped in the shower while I started on dinner. When he came out, he informed me that he’d found a tick on his lower leg. After he’d gotten out of the shower. The sticky bugger resisted the waterfall. My lips peeled back from my teeth as the tick-anxiety crawled its way up my spine and into my scalp, which was now riddled with itches. A tick check of my hair is practically useless. It’s a black hole of volume that leaves Ben exasperated, confused, and okay we can say it, a little frightened. So Ben took over dinner prep and I hopped in the shower to scrub. If a tick remains in my hair (was that an itch I just felt?) we can only hope it gets lost and dies before finding skin.