{"id":1487,"date":"2012-08-19T18:34:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T01:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2012-08-19T18:39:17","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T01:39:17","slug":"atalaya-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=1487","title":{"rendered":"Atalaya Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15015.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1488\" title=\"mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501\" src=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15015.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Rising from the high desert plateau just north of Santa Fe, Atalaya Mountain culminates in a 9,121-foot peak that looks down on both New Mexico\u2019s capitol and the rugged Rio Grande River Valley. The Atalaya Trail, which starts on the north perimeter of the city\u00a0near St. John\u2019s College, climbs over 1500 feet in under three miles.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the perfect \u201chalf-marathon\u201d for a Wheeler attempt, and it\u2019s where our Finisher hikers decided to go this Friday. It wasn\u2019t an easy decision. They still have their hearts set on New Mexico\u2019s highest, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll be satisfied if their peak-climbing ends at Atalaya.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s a good place to start. Because it\u2019s much more likely we can do this as a team\u2014getting everyone at or near the top\u2014which is what Finishers tries to do with students\u2019 academic dreams.<\/p>\n<p>And the students didn\u2019t say this, but I think it illustrates another point: Sometimes one must lower expectations in order to meet higher expectations later\u2014like taking those dreadful remedial classes to get ready for College Algebra. No one likes them, but they\u2019re part of the deal. And if we\u2019re too impatient (or proud) to take them first, well, you know what happens.<\/p>\n<p>That said, Atalaya is no \u201cremedial hike.\u201d The trail guide rates portions of it as \u201cdifficult,\u201d and, when I\u2019ve led other college teachers on it, less than half decide to reach the top.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not expecting those results with these Finishers. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rising from the high desert plateau just north of Santa Fe, Atalaya Mountain culminates in a 9,121-foot peak that looks down on both New Mexico\u2019s capitol and the rugged Rio Grande River Valley. The Atalaya Trail, which starts on the north perimeter of the city\u00a0near St. John\u2019s College, climbs over 1500 feet in under three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1494,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}