I call him my best bud but I think it is a kind of one way thing - he is friendly with any and everyone. I think he could take or leave me. He is also very social - he will go up to anyone and greet them... and they always greet him back. Me, I am a bit shy, I don't just wander up to people...
We planned to leave at 3am Friday morning, and we were both ready to go at 3.45, not bad. We had to stop at Sportchek on the way, I had a gas stove buried in the bushes there... I had bought all my hiking gear including this brilliant little stove, unfortunately they never put the stove in the box... brilliant. But they were okay, we did some covert ops drop/pick up exercise and we were off.
So I drove the whole way, he never offered once but that is okay, I prefer to drive. Most of the time he just looked out of the window or slept. We stopped for burgers on the way - I am not really a burgers kind of guy but he loves them and with the calories we would burn over the next few days...
We got to the trail head around 2pm and after adjusting our packs and repacking and adjusting again and testing and paying our camp fee and adjusting again and loading our water bladders, adjusting again... we were instantly off.
The trail is broken down into various sections, different lengths and varying degrees of difficulty. The first two sections were 2km & 6.6km respectively and rated moderate... a couple of hours I thought - 4k per hour is reasonable, no?
I set off and even though it was all downhill I very soon discovered my glutes did not like hiking with a backpack, no not at all. Just a quick two hours over the estimated two, we arrived at Bear Beach; a little tired. Some German guy started talking to me (why?) and I tried to have a conversation with him - man I could not get a coherent sentence out, I was almost slurring my words... and no I had not been drinking.
Anyway the German guy quickly scurried off from the crazy dude and I set about pitching camp - I was pretty excited (delirious) and I got everything out - tent, sleeping bag, mat dehydrated food (Pad Thai - I had even bought some extra hot sauce to spice things up...) stove and gas canister. Now I was responsible for the cooking and the stove (I had done my covert ops thing...) everything was ready... or so I thought - I had my stove and I had my gas canister (one of those green ones, weigh about 5lbs or 25lbs after three days, the kind that don't fit my brand new stove... yes those kind... Kudos to my buddy, he never said a word, he gave me that tilted head look... and then went to have a pee.
The Pad Thai package said boiling water... now a dumb-ass would think it could rehydrate with cold water... the dumb-ass tested his theory. A hour... 11 hours... 18 hours... damn Pad Thai rock hard noodles. After a very crunchy dinner, a crunchy breakfast and a semi crunchy lunch... my buddy and I finally managed to finish the first package...
Now the next morning I assessed the situation -
- I was exhausted after doing the moderate 8km.
- I had no food. I have peanuts, tail mix and 7 solo bars.
- I had no coffee (have I mentioned my addiction to the bean? A lack of caffeine means a big whole miserable Chris, and yes crying is involved)
- The next leg is 12km and it is rated the 'most difficult'
- I still have 41 km to go... if I don't do any detours... (why would I do detours...? Well I wouldn't want to do them would I... did you not see the dumb-ass bit?)
- I have to be home on Tuesday or my wife will kill me.
But, I have wanted to do this hike for two years - who needs food. And my buddy was 'whatever'. So the next day, we packed up camp, ate some crunchy noodles picked up our packs (which despite consuming the quarter packet of noodles had strangely doubled in weight). And much to the annoyance of my glutes set off for day two of our adventure...
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