Distance: 18km
By Elliot
We woke up early, to a gorgeous sunrise. Ruth’s mattress was right next to a window, so she had front row seats to the sunrise, as soon as I prodded her to look.
As Ruth mentioned yesterday, I am struggling. Though today was better than yesterday, it still wasn’t ideal. After the first 1.5 hours to the summit of Mt. Crawford, I was lacking enthusiasm for where I was and what I was doing. We were on a mountain ridge with blue skies and views all around us, but I didn’t feel like I was appreciating it. Instead, it felt like work.
And then we started the steep descent from the ridge to the hut we stopped at for lunch. Physically, I felt great. But for the first time on this trip, I felt like I would rather be in front of my computer working than walking. There is a physical comfort that an office, especially home office, job provides that is missing from my current life.
I’ve lately been doubting whether through hiking is for me. We’ve gotten this far, but I find myself having more and more days where even though nothing is wrong, I can’t muster enthusiasm. Instead the prospect of tenting or sleeping in huts, camping meals, not being able to shower and not having clean clothes seem to be affecting me more. It probably doesn’t help being surrounded by people who seem unbothered by all the above.
All that being said, my mood seemed to turn as we washed our socks and shoes before swimming in the river at lunch. That’s when I discovered that both my shoes have giant holes in the side, which would explain how my insoles had mud caked on them. Somehow, the absurdity of the situation, knowing that I needed to walk another day and a half with these shoes, and having something to blame for my mood revived me. I had much more energy and enjoyed the trail more for the rest of the day.
Which was necessary, as we still had 5.5 more hours to go. We wasted a bunch of time crossing a river and crossing it back doing what was dubbed the dry weather route, only to discover that the other way would have only been 10 minutes longer. But because the weather wasn’t dry enough, the route we took ended up taking an hour instead of 20 minutes. And my shorts and underpants got completely soaked. And yet somehow that was still better than the morning.
In the end, the day took us 12.5 hours: we started just before seven am and ended just before seven thirty pm.