Crampons

Leaving at 5 is more code word for 515. I can not seem to get ready fast enough no matter how early I wake up.

Right out of camp we hit snow and it was a completely new experience for me. The snow was hard so it was pretty easy to walk on and if you planted your feet well enough you would not slide very much. I was still pretty skittish about this new terrain but I was trying my best. About 30 minutes into hiking I started to feel a little queasy. I had not eaten breakfast yet so I quickly ate a bar, not wanting to make P and AH wait for me. A couple questionable traverses later, I finally put my crampons on for the first time. Boy. Wow. Crampons may be a pain to put on your feet but they are SO worth it. After a morning of questioning each step and just waiting for the slide that would take me off a cliff, once I had the crampons on I felt invincible. Probably one of my favorite pieces of gears at that moment.

After getting to the end of the snow fields we heard a whistle and went down to check what was going on. A woman that we had met the day before from France had gotten sick, presumably from the altitude. As a group we took her pack and helped get her down to lower elevation. After we got the woman and her hiking partner safely down lower we went a few more miles and ate lunch. I ate my dinner so I would not have to carry more water up to camp than necessary.

Throughout the day we heard fighter jets flying overhead and on a couple of occasions they flew right over us through the middle of mountains in the valleys we were walking in. Pretty cool stuff.

We ended the day with a bit of climbing (not actual climbing but going up the mountain rather than down) to get us back up to 10,000 feet. We made it to camp by 3 and I had my house all set up by 4pm.

I explored a little around the site and was able to see the mountain that we had walked on this morning.