Like a dog who has been walked too long, I stopped and refused to continue until the conditions were right. All around us were the aged and infirm, and somehow these unready looking folks were hiking the same route we were. "What is different about these two people from Denver," you ask? First hint: you read a poem about it in eighth grade, and in this poem somebody shoots a bird. Hint two: "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink." Answer: Fifteen kilos of albatross around our necks, that's what.
We inventoried our packs, found out that we are insane, and decided to send fifteen kilos of stuff we will not use back to home base in Pfullendorf.
We dragged the full load up a steep, 800 meter climb, and after the climb down the other side of the mountain this morning, I simply refused to do the next, much longer hike without rethinking the amount of gear we had.
We began hike two for the day with much less weight (about 25 pounds each according to the post office scale), and it was a surreal mix of joy and suck. We climbed steep and steady for about two hours, then it got beautiful and ugly at the same time. We left a thickly-wooded forest, and started a long climb through a shaky scree field. To spice it up some, we scrambled and prayed up narrow paths with long drops, and we emerged into a lush field. The last section consisted of about an hour of steep switchbacks, and we finally got to the hut. The view reminds me of what the Grand Tetons would look like if you copied
Them, and dropped them into the landscape every mile or so for as long as you could see. Crazy beautiful. No cell reception up here (thank god) so this post will go up a day late.
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Holy albatross, Sea Captain! After your first snow post, I began to rethink if were packing enough winter gear. Now, I'm considering bringing only my bikini, a snow layer and a flask.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's s big change. What did you delete?
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