On the trail by 9, we made pretty good time for awhile. But then things started to get interesting. A lot of ups & downs, climbing over rocks and things. It made for quite the adventure! (and hopefully a few good pictures too!)
Ups & downs hurt though. Ups are just plain hard and I find myself sweating like a maniac and out of breath with my heart pounding out of my chest in no time at all. Downhills, well, they hurt too. Toes jammed down to the front of boots, achy knees. The up pains are different than the down pains, but it's just as difficult. But Man! Do I feel ALIVE! My knees hurt, my feet & toes hurt, my shoulders hurt... lolAnyway... We stopped for lunch at some site along the way. Cheese & crackers; the usual. NOT impressed with water access here. First off, it was down a cliff. Then, when we got to the bottom, the only shore access was right beside a beaver lodge. Not cool. I trust our water filter, but I also am not interested in getting beaver fever half way through an 8 day trip! Heather & I decided to just get enough water to get us to a nearby stream.
Things in the afternoon got interesting. We had to climb a pretty huge incline - the highest we've been so far. It was AMAZING!! The views we saw were spectacular! We got a sense today that we're actually in the middle of a mountain range.
Unfortunately, Deanne took one look out over the view that the rest of us thought was amazing, and realized an incredibly real and intense fear of heights! Vertigo, wobbly knees, the whole bit. It took some convincing to get her talked through that open bit of trail along the edge and back into the bush. Standing on the edge of a mountain really isn't the most ideal place to find out you're horribly afraid of open heights!
The last part of the hike was long and slow. I hurt. I think we all hurt. But, we pressed on and got to our site around 6pm. H32. Its a bit of a long walk into the site because you have to walk around the end of Lake Skiguag. But, its a pretty nice spot. The lake is a dead lake just like Acid Lake, so it's turquois blue and clear to the bottom. Tents and fire pit are up on the rocks - lots of big slabs here; the rocks stair-step themselves down to the water with the last few steps being 4 or 5 inches underwater. Great for getting cleaned up, doing laundry, dishes, swimming, for just standing in (after a long day shoved in a pair of boots, the ol' feet like to soak in some cool water). Watch out for that last step though! It looks like it's about 15ft of crystal clear water straight down! I can't help but think that my brother's fiance would probably love to scuba dive here! We cleaned up, set things up, went for a quick dip to get clean (it was cold; but we had also missed the sunshine), did some laundry...
We had a rice dinner at like 8pm. Made some pretty tasty bannock after that and then it was a pretty quick cleanup of the campsite after that because it was getting late and we were losing light. There was also a mouse scurrying around this site, so we had to get our food bag hung up before anything disappeared on us.We're sitting around a fire right now, but we'll likely be in bed by 10:30.
I hope I hurt less tomorrow!
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