The rest of the story

I wake up at 4:15am; sorta get dressed as best I can, jump on my motorcycle and fly to my buddies house.

We get all packed up / ready to go and drive out to the mountains for a day of hiking fun.

Only a 3 1/2 hour drive; stop by subway for 'lunch & supper to go'.

The guy I'm with is a vegetarian, very smartly says "I'm allergic to bacon" to the first person. She calls back "this gentlemen is allergic to bacon, please change all gloves and wash all knives before coming into contact with his sandwitch."

I was floored. Typically, someone would be like "oh... ok... I'll just change gloves and good luck!" but these subway people demonstrated a step above (in my books).

Not only that, but they wrapped our large subs in 2 halvs; instead of just cutting the sub in half and wrapping it all together. The lady said she usually gets crews and workers coming and started wrapping their subs like that.

A+ service in my books.

We get going, I take a quick car nap. Jump out and start our hike.

Todays journey consists of a 15km hike up to thes small waterfalls, climbing above the falls (definately not a trail at all) doin another 5 km of hiking. Coming back, climbing down and hiking to the car.

40Km (approximately)

The hike out was pretty uneventfull. I got a small blister on my right foot; changed shoes, dressed the blister and pushed on.

Got to the falls with plenty of gas in our tanks... climbed above.

The view from up there was spectacular!

I swear, what I was looking at is represented in exhibits across the world as breathtaking... Its not 1/10 of what really being there is.

Above the falls is what can be described as a japaneese garden. Over the course of about a kilometer (and at least a few hundred feet elevation) are hundreds of small waterfalls, all filling pools which overflows at one end to fall into the next. Some of these are huge, others are no larger than the table I'm sitting in front of.

We explored for a time; watched some sand pipers play in the sand.

Started to head back.

Just above one of the main falls was a huge boulder. We lay across it absorbing the sun; breathing pure ionised air and feeling the ground shudder through our bones in tune with the water flowing around us.

Magic!

Climbed down and started the return journey.

I'm going back there next weekend with my martial arts class; we were just doing the advance scout... (looking for sign of bears, finding a trail above the falls, seeing what we might want to do next weekend - n'stuff)

There is this mountain top that ends in an almost sheer cliff... must be a few thousand feet above the tree level... but looks down across the whole valley. Sure its stupid to try; but I'm going to sit on top of it saturday and see the world for what it is.

I've been redressing my blister (which is now the size of my last thumb joint - 1cmx2cm) and am in almost constant pain from it. I've been using the sunscreen quite thouroughly; but buddy hasn't... may have a slight sunburn by now. I'm pretty sure we both have heat stroke... with nothing to do about it. I've dranken at least 6 liters of water and am 'marking territory' every 3-500 meters.

Stop about a quarter of the way back, take off our packs and climb a hundred or so meters into scree... so we can do some "scree running". Its like surfing; but involves sliding down a mountain on fist sized rocks which have razor edges and offer no support.

I've never done that before... it was terrifying. Fun.

So far there has been 3-4 times where only quick reflexes and an iron grip (born out of terror) kept me from falling at least 50 feet onto some rock face. Not only scree running, but up the falls and down. When your climbing almost vertical rock and your feet all slipout from under you... with only your hand gripping something the size of a wallet... *laugh*

The walk back took forever.

For some reason my right leg frooze up completely; I was dealing with the pain on a step by step basis... the trail (somehow?) turned to mud over the course of the day which ment every time we saw some bog; had to circle around (or in my case try to find a safe way thruogh). Buddy slipped on a log (of all things) and fell into a rather large sinkhole... smashed his left knee and twisted his right leg pretty good.

Needless to say, by the time we got to the vehicle; we'd been hiking for the last 10 hours and were 'broken'.

*laugh*

I'm not doing too bad today, but I dressed what I could as well as I could... other than my right calf not wanting to work; I'm doing rather well.

(yes , I fell asleep in the bathroom before I turned on the shower, yes, I went back to bed for a minute, woke up when all hell broke loose at the office and they needed their IT guy. Oops.)

Buddy on the other hand is seriously crispy from the sun; munged legs and might not be coming into work today.

I think all will be good enough for our hike on the weekend (coming up).

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Oh and a quick update; if my perception is serving correctly, my roomate (who owns the apartment I'm living in) doesn't appear to have been to work in several days... the signs of the kitchen look like he has stopped caring about keeping things tidy...

If forced to guess I would say he's lost his job.

I'll keep you all posted.