sábado, 13 de julho de 2013

Have you ever walked uphill?

I don't think so... Our hike up to Garibaldi Lake with our super heavy bags took us more than 5 hours! It was a big group with different capacities and it's quite a hill. However, upon arrival the view is just out of this world, it actually strikes you as almost fake, because the blue of the water seems to be colored out of Photoshop. Unbelievable! I'm not too sure the photos will translate that beauty so well. As we got to the top more towards the end of the afternoon, we had time to set up our tents, unpack and start dinner. Luckily, this campsite has a shelter for food storage and cooking, so it felt like a true camping party having us all in that small house gathered around the tables and cooking over the counters. The first menu was our so appreciated squash soup and the even more desired macaroni and cheese. At night, it naturally got much colder and we all had to wrap up really warm to sleep. All in all, I think we all got reasonable sleep after a day's hike and would be ready for a good relaxing day by the lake. Well... actually... not really... Let's hike up another mountain? What do you mean? Is it too far? Oh no, much less than coming up Garibaldi, it's just 5Km (as opposed to the 9Km of the previous day). Any chance of changing the plan? Not exactly, so we might as well enjoy the ride. Now the story: we left at 11:00 am and only came back at 7:00 pm, with only a couple of breaks to eat and of course, rest. It was harder than the previous day because we had to go through narrow trails under and over trees, climb rocks and the hardest, walk up the snowy mountain trying not to slip. The last part was the hardest because it was just dry rocks mostly loose which didn't give you much grip and safety to hold yourself up. Cadu and I decided to stop almost at the top of the mountain; we had had reached our top in all respects and just about had the most beautiful view one could wish for, the whole lake as blue as ever! Davi was forced to go up because his sweater was in Rafa's bag and he wouldn't be safe only in a T-shirt sitting with us in that altitude. We reached around 1,900 m elevation! As we got back to our campsite we immediately started dinner and ended up going to bed early. We were all beyond ourselves and the next day had another hike down the mountain waiting for us. It turns out the hike down was much easier and we didn't even stop that much, so we ended up having lunch after we had gotten down. What a feeling!!! Seeing our yellow bus in the parking lot and already dreaming of our hot showers and cozy beds... No words to describe... Well, we had lunch (tortillas, humus, vegetables and sausage) and quickly hopped on the bus to go back to our residence.
After cleaning up and resting a bit, we gathered again to return our borrowed equipment or the food we had carried together. We also had a circle of sharing our impressions of the trip and what our counselor called "warm fuzzies", which is somehting they had done with me in Counseling in 7th grade: we write our name on top of a blank page and then these papers get passed around so each one can leave a special positive message to theat person about him or her. It's always a great pleasure when you get your back full of great compliments and loving messages!
Ok, today is Saturday and there's no hike! But it's Disco Night and we'll have Rainbow Park and Village during the day, so stay tuned for more soon. Oh, and tomorrow we're headed to Vancouver!
See you then.

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