Stolby

Yesterday we had the incredible opportunity to hike up to Stolby Forest just outside of Krasnoyarsk. Our new friends here arranged for one of their friends, a cab driver named Andrey, to give us a ride to the park and back. Saved us from taking the bus, which is an adventure in itself. Andrey apologized for his poor English, which was light-years better than our Russian. We had a nice conversation. He is a man with a truly wonderful heart. The drive instead of taking the bus saved us about 1 1/2 miles of hiking each way, which was nice. But we still had our work cut out for us. When I say we hiked "up" to Stolby, that's exactly what it was. UP! Just to get to the first of the beautiful rock formations was at least 3 miles up hill. The morning started out frigid with the sun not yet overhead. Snow was still very much on the ground and the road up was covered in slush. We were feeling fairly underdressed in tennis shoes, pants, and a fleece over a t-shirt. But we quickly warmed up as the blood started pumping. An absolutely beautiful hike up to the pillars (Stolby means "pillar" in Russian). We ate lunch on one of the rocks, thought about climbing up one of the big pillars and then thought better of it (found out later from Andrey that the memorial we saw at the base of the park was for all the people that have died at Stolby from falling off the rocks. Good call after all.). We took a bunch of pictures, including some of Elmo rock climbing and making a snowman, and just enjoyed every second we were there. We slipped and slid our way down the trail heading back and the legs felt the burn by the time we reached the bottom. We had a truly wonderful day, and we are looking forward to going to church this morning with friends and having lunch afterward. With all this fun, we are not going to want to come home...

JP