Late yesterday as we approached the bear locker for our cached food, we were talking about the absence of people, cars, houses and human noise for the past 24 hours. How often do we experience this? Just then a hiker was coming down the hill behind us. We had a quiet introduction. He was Stargate from Seattle. He went ahead. He was tall and lean and faster than us. A stranger linked to us by this obsession to keep walking. To get there. He was just ahead of us to the cache. There was plenty of water but he choose to go on for a couple of miles to a murky pond leaving the cached water for others. We set up our tent under a juniper tree.
The tent goes up first and we’re in for our pre diner rest. We heard a car heading down the dirt road. He set up a table. His wife came heading down the trail. She was solo trekking and he was her angel. He had a pizza for her. She came to our tent and offered us pizza. She was Mango. We had seen her name on supplies in the last cache. We had food and needed to eat our supply. Her husband had hiked the trail before and gave us helpful information on how most hikers go down and up the Grand Canyon and get home from the finish. Two days to go rim to rim. And friends pick you up st the finish. We’ll need to solve the 3.5 hour drive back.
Our cache was heavy. Maybe 8 pounds. How would we carry that much plus 12 liters of water? That was our immediate problem. The next morning, I decided we couldn’t take it all, so we stashed it along with our garbage back in the pink cloth bag we had it stored in and left it in the locker to pick up after we retrieve our car.
Before we left for the trail, a friend was questioning me about why I would want to hike 20 miles a day. It’s really hard when the pack needs to be so heavy with water and food. The faster you hike, the fewer the days and the lighter the pack. This pace is essential. There is a huge difference between thru hiking and backpacking.
We’re on the trail by 6:00 at 7:00 we’ve traveled 3 miles. This was a flat trail push for us. At the end of the day, our average with stops and some ups and downs, was 2 mph.
The landscape is just that, not even an antenna on a hill. It’s a beautiful valley that is neatly dotted with deep green bushes and colored by white grasses all the way up the hill, and ever behind us the strong-shouldered snow capped mountain of yesterday. The wind was wild, forcing our heads down, making out breaks cold and miserable. At 5:00, we tucked our tent under a juniper tree and smiled at our well-earned, heavenly rest.
Mountain Peace 