April seems to be a time of pushing myself to new physical abilities!
My previous backpacking experience was pretty limited to when I was a camp counselor at Camp Celo. We took short hikes with groups of 7, 8 and 9 years old, carrying packs with our tents, supplies and some of our food.
This easter weekend, my gringa friends and I deecided to hike to a glaciar and camp out for the night. We drove up to the park (up, and up and up), which is about an hour outside the city.
We had been told the hike was about 8 hours to the glacier and we wern´t quite sure about the level of difficulty, rather we just figured, that we´d find out soon.
Classic gringa style, I didn´t wake up to my alarm (two of us had gone out dancing the night before so didn´t get quite as much sleep as we would have liked). I arrived to our meeting place late, but I wasn´t the only one running a little behind schedule.
We left a little late than planned, around 10, when had hoped to leave at 8:30. Oops.
The hike was incredibly beautiful and didn´t start out too hard. It went back and forth from flat to incline, some brief downhills, although we were generally hiking up, with the glaciar in the verrrry far off distance the whole time.
After we stopped for lunch 3 hrs in, the hike got a little harder. We stopped for snack 2 hrs later, it got a LOT harder. By this time, our packs were digging into our shoulders and feeling really heavy. We were sunburtn, had some blisters, and our thights were burning from the incline.
The path was often confusing, whether we were walking through swamp, brambles, grass, streams or rocks and rocks and rocks.
We reached a place where the path seemed to end and all we could see was a huge cliff ahead of us that I could not imagine how in the world we were going to climb. There were a couple of hikers on the ledge on the cliff and we asked them about the path. They just pointed up, of course.
We did find it; it was a switchback path but still, straight up. At this point, we were all feeling the altitude and were literally walking 10 feet and then stopping to wrest our backs, thighs and catch our breath.
We soon ran into some other hikers coming down and they gave us the incredible news that we were only 30 minutes from the campsite! It ended up being more like an hour and when we made it over the cliff and walked a short bit down the other side to a large open clearing, there was one other tent set up.
The nice fellow whos tent it was, informed us that we had indeed reached the camp site and we were overjoyed.
The camp sight was an hours hike from the glaciar, but we´d been planning on hiking there in the morning anyway.
We set up our tents and cooked a lovely, hot dinner of rice and lentils. Although we hiked all day in t-shirts, by this time it was cold and we were as bundled up as possible.
The night ended up being awful. We were so cold that we barely slept even though my friend and I both slept in the same sleeping bag to try and stay warm.
When the sun finally showed its face, we were still so cold that we didn´t bother making breakfast but decided to hike to the glaciar to warm up.
Again, the path was straight up, switchback and really scary at times it was so steep. We were so grateful to have left our packs at the campsite.
When we had hiked about an hour and could see the glaciar really well, but would probably have to hike another day to touch it, (and we didn´t think we could take another step up) we stopped, took some pictures and hiked down, back to camp to eat, and pack up.
I felt great on the hike back. although we didn´t have much water cause boiling snow took way to long and although we boiled stream water, it tasted so coppery it felt dangerous to drink.
My pack was lighter since we´d eaten most of our food, it was all down hill and I was so happy to be in the warmth of the sun even if I was turning even more red (we focused so much on the cold when getting ready that we forgot to bring sun block).
About 4 hrs in, we were getting a little nervous about making it back before dark, but we ended up arriving at the car (and clean drinking water!) with daylight to spare.
We were exhausted, burnt, aching and so proud of ourselves.
I got back to my house a little before 8pm and was in bed and sound asleep by 9:30. The next day I had a little trouble walking and was sore for about 3 days.
We later read that the hike was 20 kilometres there, and 20 back. After a half marathon and this hike, I feel prepared for a cold winter and hopefully my body won´t be mad at me if I use the cold as an excuse to not exercise that much!
