Today is the last day of our father/son 28-mile Mother Mountain Loop
hike. We have only 10 miles left to hike
to get back to the car. Today will be
our longest day yet. According to Josh
we only have 100 feet of elevation gain today, and the rest is all
downhill. I sure hope his research is
correct.
It is getting harder and harder to get up and out of the
tent every morning. Today I really wanted to just roll over and go back to
sleep when I woke up. As much as my body
was telling me more sleep would be good, we have a long hike out today, and the
sooner we get going the better.
I threw all my stuff out of the tent this morning first
thing. No sense in crawling back in
again just to pack up. It was around 6:45
AM when I finally got to gaze up at the sky to check out what kind of day it
would be. There was blue sky
above. I’m guessing that means another
hot and sweaty day of hiking.
First order of business today was to head over to the bear
pole to get my pack. It was then that I
found out Josh was also awake. He said
“Leave my pack up on the pole, I’ll get it myself”. After retrieving my pack and returning to camp,
I realized I couldn’t even heat any water for my morning coffee and oatmeal. This was because Josh had our only stove in
his pack. Possible we should have each
had a stove. Always good to have a
spare.
It wasn’t long until Josh got up and retrieved his
pack. While the water was heating for
breakfast, we both started taking our tent down and loading our packs. You would think we, where both in a hurry to
get out of the mountain and return to normal life in the city.
We were fed, packed up, and ready to go by 7:45 AM. A record for breaking camp on this trip. Last order of business before leaving
Cataract Camp was to get drinking water.
We each up with 2 liters of water.
With our water bottles topped off, we took off on the Spray
Park trail toward Carbon River Camp. The trail to the camp as steep. We carefully moved along the trail. By the
time we got to Carbon River Camp we had descended over 1, 300 feet, and
traveled 1.5 miles. We turned to take a
side trip to check out Carbon River Camp.
There were a number of downed trees that made the trail difficult to
travel, so we keep on heading down the trail toward our final destination.
It wasn’t long until we reached a suspension bridge that
crossed the Carbon River. A sign on the
bridge said only one person on bridge at a time, and no bouncing. As I walked across it, my heavy weight alone
made the bridge bounce and sway. This
made me a little nervous. I slowed down
and gently placed one foot in front of the other as I worked my way across the
span.
The suspension bridge had old 2X6 wood slates to walk along
and some of those had been replaced with new ones. There were other slates that were cracked,
and some were missing small little pieces.
Then there were those that looked like they could not handle my weight,
so I made big steps to avoid these. I
walked slowly and carefully across the bridge, as I looked down at my feet and
the raging carbon river below. I was
hoping I picked the right boards to step on, so I wouldn’t have to experience a
real-life scene where I was hanging on for my life, like so many different
action movies I’ve watched over the year.
I did pause in the middle of the bridge to take a picture. I was very careful not to drop my camera or hiking
poles while I took my shot up the valley made by Carbon River over the ions of
time. I was glad none of the boards gave
way when I transited across. I breathe a
sigh of relief when I finally stepped on to solid TerraFirma after crossing the
bouncy, swaying suspension bridge.
The trail on the north side of the suspension bridge meanders
down the valley through the tree. The
day was getting hot, so the shade was helping keep us a little cooler. The closer we got to the end of our hike the
faster along we went. We were not
holding back today, mainly because there was no real steep uphill to climbs today.
The trail eventually led back to the Carbon River. As we started crossing the river bed there
were boulders everywhere, and no rushing water.
You could see numerous washed out old log bridges. This tells me the river changes course here over
the years. I know the big run offs this
year had taken out the log bridge at this location, and the new one was only
put in place a few days before we left on our hike. With all the boulders, it was hard to follow
the trail, let alone find the new log bridge.
We worked our way across the boulder field, and flood debris. Eventually we spotted the new log bridge. It
was easy to spot because of the yellow color of the freshly cut log, plus it
had yet to be be bleached by the sun.
We each took turns crossing the log bridge. Because the water was rushing so fast under
the bridge, we decided to unfastened our waste belts, and took one arm out of a
shoulder strap. That way if we fell in,
at least it would be easy to lose the pack, instead of losing our life when we
sank because we couldn’t remove our pack.
We had just crossed our last big obstacle. If you can call
it that. There is now just 6 more miles
of downhill trekking to the car. It was
10:45 AM and we still had more than ½ way to go. Will we ever get there?
We continued down the valley. Along the trail we pass many day hikers and a
few multi-day backpackers. Eventually, we go to Ipsut Campground.
By now we were on a mission to get to the end of the
hike. Plus, we were now hiking along a
familiar trail, that we had hike in the other direction just 3 days earlier. We
picked up the pace once again. We were
booking down the old washed-out road that led to the park entrance, and talking
about that pizza we would get in Wilkerson.
We started talking about what type of pizza we would purchase. My mouth was watering just from the
discussion. I even mentioned going off
the wagon temporality, just so I could have an ice-cold beer when we stopped
for pizza. That just sounded so good after
this hard hike.
We saw no bears, whistling marmots, elk, or other big fame on
this trip. But we did lots of birds,
squirrels, a small critter without a tail, and a few deer. In fact, one of the deer we saw was grazing
along the road as we approached the park entrance. The deer seemed very tame, and most we saw
just only saunters off, instead
of jumping away, I n big leaps and
bounds as the wilder ones would do.
We eventually got to the park entrance. It was 2:10 PM. I was so glad I made it. Our muscles were a little tired because we
pushed it so hard to cover the 10 miles today.
A lady took our picture to document the momentous accomplishment of
successfully finishing our father/son loop hike adventure. In total we covered 28.1
mile, and had scrabbled up 6,300 feet of elevation gain during our trek. Maybe I’m not so old after all.
I do like hiking
ReplyDelete