Today was a tough day!! We knew going into it that it was a 10 mile hike, going from 11,100 feet to 14,100 feet. To me, after hiking the PCT last summer, 10 miles did not sound like to much of a push. However, at the elevation we were at, and with each of us carrying from 70 to 80 pounds on our backs, it was a long, hard day. The signs leaving Confluencia told us it would take 8 hours, and it actually ended up taking us 9 hours. The views were not quite as impressive as they were yesterday, but it was still a pretty incredible hike. We did meet a couple of people along the way, however we came across a lot more mules. Some of the nicest people along the way were the muleteers, always smiling and riding their horses like they were just out enjoying life. Chris may have started to doubt our 'not using mules' decision about half way, but at the end of the day, we were both pretty proud of ourselves for making it to base camp without getting help with our gear. The entire time we were on the mountain, we did not meet another climber that didn't use mules. It did, however, present us with some problems when we got to base camp, we were required to rent bathroom services from one of the many companies. This may sound like a simple feat until you factor in the fact that we were exhausted, very short of breath, and couldn't speak the language very well. I am sure we gave some people a pretty good laugh when we arrived. The rangers were quite amused with me just getting my pack back on to walk from the check in to a tent site. We pretty much went to the first place we saw a good site, talked to that company, agreed to pay 5 USD each per day we needed to stay in base camp. This also included use of their water, which was directed into camp from the river above. Then we got to setting up our tent, which took an incredibly long time since we were so tired, we had to take breaks! This was really quite funny to us, but we did manage to get our tent set up well, thank goodness! We then went and let the rangers know who we were renting bathroom services from, made some dinner, and went to bed absolutely exhausted but very happy to be at base camp!
Today was a tough day!! We knew going into it that it was a 10 mile hike, going from 11,100 feet to 14,100 feet. To me, after hiking the PCT last summer, 10 miles did not sound like to much of a push. However, at the elevation we were at, and with each of us carrying from 70 to 80 pounds on our backs, it was a long, hard day. The signs leaving Confluencia told us it would take 8 hours, and it actually ended up taking us 9 hours. The views were not quite as impressive as they were yesterday, but it was still a pretty incredible hike. We did meet a couple of people along the way, however we came across a lot more mules. Some of the nicest people along the way were the muleteers, always smiling and riding their horses like they were just out enjoying life. Chris may have started to doubt our 'not using mules' decision about half way, but at the end of the day, we were both pretty proud of ourselves for making it to base camp without getting help with our gear. The entire time we were on the mountain, we did not meet another climber that didn't use mules. It did, however, present us with some problems when we got to base camp, we were required to rent bathroom services from one of the many companies. This may sound like a simple feat until you factor in the fact that we were exhausted, very short of breath, and couldn't speak the language very well. I am sure we gave some people a pretty good laugh when we arrived. The rangers were quite amused with me just getting my pack back on to walk from the check in to a tent site. We pretty much went to the first place we saw a good site, talked to that company, agreed to pay 5 USD each per day we needed to stay in base camp. This also included use of their water, which was directed into camp from the river above. Then we got to setting up our tent, which took an incredibly long time since we were so tired, we had to take breaks! This was really quite funny to us, but we did manage to get our tent set up well, thank goodness! We then went and let the rangers know who we were renting bathroom services from, made some dinner, and went to bed absolutely exhausted but very happy to be at base camp!
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