Woke up and headed back to Greenstone to use the bathroom. One of the pros and cons of being vegan/veggie–more #2 visits. Good for health… a bit less convenient.
Then we drove back across all the fords, past… Isengard 🙃… and toward Mt. Earnslaw.
As we drove, we came across a large van full of tourists from I think China. They had high… reared their van trying to do a 1000 point u-turn on a road that was only as wide as the van was long (big van).
We tried to help, but a local with a tractor was coming to pull them out, and my immediate efforts only proved they had high reared the van–the rear drive wheels off the ground–so we headed onward to the Earnslaw track parking lot.
It was nearly noon by the time we got started with the hike, one that was supposed to be 8-9 hours, I think, according to the sign, which would get us back just before dark.
I’ve been having issues with my hip, as you know, so I let Chase know that I might not make it very far, but I started on up.
It was a cloudy day, completely overcast, but the clouds were high enough that they weren’t obscuring the view of the peak. 🥳
We didn’t… check to see how long the hike was in distance… we just knew it was…long.
We didn’t realize how long.
😶
We’ll get to that.
The first part of the trail was deja vu of the Blue River track. Steep up, up, up trail where the tree roots made the steps. The deja vu of the Blue River track was so present and so fresh that I very quickly, maybe after just one kilometer, told Chase that I was going to go back down and take the river up.
I was wanting to do that anyway, so I headed back down, and started trying to climb the the mountain via the river.
Immediately, I was forced to cross the river, and with the canyon as narrow as it was, i had many crossings–again and again and again.
And the water was fast.
And there was a lot of it.
The amount of water and the narrowness of the little canyon made for several challenging crossings, trying not to lose my footing. I wasn’t so much worried, at this point, about getting hurt, just getting all my gear soaked.
The canyon walls were filled with landslides, seemingly one right after another, which, with impassable river obstacles, necessitated going around via the slides.
I wasn’t very confident on the slides. They looked fairly fresh, and in many places, it looked like I could trigger a large collapse by stepping on rocks.
After a little over an hour of fighting along the river and not getting very far at all, I gave up, the river obstacles just too much. I pointed my nose up the canyon side, gratefully not as steep at that point, and bushwhacked my way all the way back to the trail, which I knew ran parallel, just much higher to the river.
Along the way, I tangled with some natural razor wire (vines with super sharp razor bladish things on them that shredded the top layers of skin on a couple fingers, just deep enough to make them bleed a decent bit).
Up, up, up… And then, finally, the trail.
I was way behind now. And already tired. And barely even part way on the normal trail, having taken I think over an hour to do probably 15 minutes worth of distance. On the regular track.
Wanting to try to catch up to Chase, despite being really tired already, I decided to jog the trail as much as I could, stopping only long enough to drink my lifestaw bottle down a few times and refill it in the streams that crossed the trail, and also to talk to passing hikers who, if they remembered Chase at all (with most didn’t) said he was going really fast.
Lovely.
So i kept running/jogging, carrying my not light but not crazy-heavy either pack bouncing around on my back.
On and on I went. Most of the hike was through forest. Lots of muddy places to navigate, some really long stretches. Lots of obstacles to go around/over/under (mostly fallen trees).
On and on I went, the adrenaline flowing because I was trying to catch up with Chase was I think my main source of fuel.
Gratefully, the water coming off the side streams didn’t cause an allergic reaction (itchy throat) like the blue water coming from the glaciers. I’m not sure why I was having allergic reactions to the blue water. Might be good to know.). 🙃
The Chase updates from other hikers went from an hour/over an hour to 30 minutes to an hour… so presumably, I was catching up.
I hoped. 🤞
Just not very quickly.
The last people I talked to about Chase said that he’d passed them probably two miles prior.
Did that mean I was making progress?
At that point, we were out of the trees and into a basin with mostly lots of short shrubs. I was getting much closer to the end of the trail, so either way, I was going to catch up with him at some point. I just hoped it was before he started coming down.
In the basin, I started seeing waterfalls coming down on all sides. So beautiful.
And then it happened.
I could see the upper part of the mountain getting closer and closer, but not the part below it, as the bends in the canyon has been in the way, but as i went around the next bend, I just stopped on the trail and the word “wow” audibly slipped past my lips.
Wow, indeed.
😍😍😍
Before me was easily one of the most beautiful vistas I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The mountain peak directly in front of me, a glacier spanning the entire bowl from one end to the other, and waterfalls–everywhere–cascading down.
It was gorgeous. Gor-geous.
Pictures don’t do it justice, not in the least, as I’ll detail a little bit later.
And what else?!?! Though I was still a long ways from the cliffs at the base of the glacier bowl, I saw someone sitting on the wash of the river, red backpack, dark sun hat.
Chase!
I hiked over to him, he only seeing me at the last minute as I was walking up. At first, it seemed to take a moment to register it was really me, but when he did, his eyes went wide, and a look of shock and amazement flooded over the features of his face.
I wish I had a picture of his face. 😆
I was so glad to see him, and he was so glad i made it, having seen the vista and thinking (realistically), that I was never going to make it.
As i had been going along the hike, I periodically would look down at the river, and I knew Chase would know that there was no way I was going to make it up the mountain in the river. So he figured I wouldn’t make it, and he was almost right. I almost gave up, but for better or for worse, I had kept going.
Chase had been thinking exactly that, that i won’t make it, and that was part of the reason he was hiking so quickly, because he has the car keys, and he figured that I’d likely be waiting for him for a long time.
When I got to him in the basin, he had been about ready to head back, not wanting me to be stuck waiting for a long time.
Now that I was there, though, I wanted to hike all the way to the base of the cliffs, another 45-minute hike from where we were basking in the beauty before us. So I rested for only 10 minutes or so before heading right back out.
If I wanted to explore further, I had to go quickly, as time wasn’t on our side, and we’d need to be heading back down the mountain almost as soon as we got to the bottom of the cliffs of we wanted to be down before dark.
So off we went following the path until there was no longer a path–the vista just getting more and more beautiful as we got closer. It was–incredible. I wish I could have had other loved ones with me. I wish I could have stayed for days up there, but we were unprepared for that. We hadn’t brought our tent or our rain gear. We prepared only for a long day hike.
As we drew closer, i looked up and noticed a super tall waterfall I hadn’t seen the entire time to that point–way up at the top. It had to face been at least a few hundred feet tall, if not more.
I mentioned it to Chase, who hadn’t noticed it either, which was weird because we’d both been looking over and over again, and it was super tall and easy to see.
And then…
One minute later…
It was gone.
The same cliff view. The same… everything. But… it was gone.
😶
When i looked back through my pictures, none of them captured that falls.
I’m thinking maybe an ice dam broke, sent a beautiful cascade down hundreds, if not a thousand feet, and then… as quickly as it appeared, it was… gone.
When we arrived at the very bottom, the base of the cliffs with the glacier towering in the bowl way over our heads, the waterfalls gushing down, I… was still in exploratory/adventure mode, so i left Chase there, and I scrambled up some of the shorter cliff thingies to see if jmI could see behind the two large falls on the one side of the cliffs. It looked, from where Chase and I had been standing, that it could have a big pool or something else beautiful behind/below.
So on up I went, trying to go quickly because we were basically out of time and needed to head back to the car.
But… I kept going, up and over, looking to see what i might find. 🙃
The view from the top of those first little cliff thingies was beautiful as well, seeing the waterfalls from a different angle.
I’d hoped to come down via the falls to save time, and I didn’t really want to climb back down the scrambles I’d gone up; but I didn’t see a good way down that I could see without further exploring, and further exploring would take some pretty good time, and I was out of time, already late getting back to Chase to head down.
So I stopped exploring and headed back, this time going up and over and around most of the scrambles I’d gone up. I ended up following one of the streams where it went through the snow, like a snow cave down a few short, wet scrambles. Then i went across some slides with short cliffs at the bottom 🙃, across a creek, and finally jogged back to Chase, feeling badly for having taken so long.
On the walk back, I turned around again and again and again and again, but never did my disappearing waterfall reappear.
My knees were starting to hurt.
I’d been jogging with all that extra weight on my back, and now we were going downhill, putting exponentially more strain on my knees.
I jogged for a ways on the first part of the way down, trying to get far enough ahead of Chase that I could stop for a water break without slowing us down.
For the next hour after that, I just tried to keep up with Chase, but my knees were starting to hurt pretty good, such that I was restraining my pain grunts a bit. But after a little while, I called to Chase, who was maybe 50 meters ahead of me, and I told him to go ahead and not wait up for me. I was going to be slower.
At first, I thought I wouldn’t be that far behind, but… oh man. 😬 The last two hours, or so, of the hike back were… miserable. 🥺
My knees hurt so badly. Every downhill step elicited a grunt or some animalistic noise, or an audible exclamation either berating myself for being so stupid in so many ways (for going back down and trying to go up the river, for running with a pack that jarred my knees for… miles, for not even thinking to take my pack off for the last 45-minute exploration by myself climbing all over the cliff stuff… for only taking a 10-minute break at the top, etc.) or trying to encourage my self with audible affirmations (you can do this! You’ve got this! Etc).
Every. Single. Downhill. Step. hurt. Even little 4 inch drops.
I took them so slowly, like you might imagine a 100 year old doing. And it still hurt.
I was absolutely miserable.
I considered just staying on the mountain, though I wasn’t prepared if it were to rain. And i likely would have been really cold.
I kept going.
Down. Down. Down.
It hurt so much I just wanted to cry, but… I couldn’t.
I figured Chase was miles ahead of me, but i found out that he’d been hurting a lot too. Once i had cell signal, I’d texted him, and when he finally replied, he said he’d been doing the same thing, going really slowly because it hurt so much.
Ugh. What a hike.
On the final decsent to the car, my knees hurt so badly that they felt like something was just going to snap from overuse.
Actually being concerned about that (the possibility that i could have something snap or tear completely), I walked much of the last descent backwards, so as to use different muscle and ligament groups.
That worked decently well, gratefully, and I made it down.
I was also, and still am, concerned about lasting damage. I’d badly damaged those joints 6+ years before, and it had taken a long time before i could carry even moderately heavy things without pain that would keep them aching for a long time after.
I still have that if i carry really heavy things or try to push a broken down car.
And as you know, I have regular joint pain that at times has me wishing i weren’t alive.
I’m hoping I didn’t make all that worse. 😬🤞
I nearly broke down crying as i got back to the car and Chase, having only beaten me my 15 minutes, asked how I was doing.
This time, I easily could have just let the tears flow, as they were all set to explode, but I held them back.
I was soaking wet from sweat, and i wanted to take a bath in the river, but that was a several-hundred-meter walk, so I just put on dry clothes, hobbled around to get ready for bed, also trying to eat and drink a bit to prevent a migraine disaster, and I then we crashed for the night right there where we’d parked to hike up.
What a day. Breathtaking paradise, debilitating pain.
Funny, the road to the trail starting point is called paradise, and the view was exactly that.
Oh, how I wish I’d been better prepared. And been smarter.
But it was an amazing place. Amazing. One of the most amazing I’ve ever been to.
So there you go. As always, may we LEPAEPBTWFT.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 