I woke up to find that I had in fact endured the night of stench. Apparently there is enough oxygen in pure stink to survive on. I crawled out of the tent and wished I could put on some clean clothes. I wandered down to the kitchen to find a few others up. I silently wished they could put on clean clothes too.
Today is the start of what Outward Bound calls “finals”. Matt and Jasmin will no longer be with us. They will be “up to six hours behind us’ according to the Outward Bound rule book. Our group is to navigate, camp, cook, hike, set up, tear down, resolve issues, and mountaineer all on our own. We are to use all of the skills that Matt and Jasmin have bestowed upon us for the next four days as we find our way back to a prearranged pick up spot.
After another quick compass & map lesson the ten of us hike off alone. Matt and Jasmin stay back at camp and wave us off. We did manage to tie a million knots in their tent cords on our way by their still set up tent. We heard verbal confirmation of our prank about 15 minutes later when Matt howled his frustration into the mountain air. That was the last we’d hear Matt for the whole day.
The weather was brilliant. The sky was blue and the temperature was perfect to hike. It wasn’t too warm, wasn’t too cool. We hiked a long grueling morning to a creek bed where we ate a pita/honey/peanut butter lunch while watching a nearby marmot that was as equally entertained by us as we him.
Right after lunch we climbed a very steep creek bed up to a flat plateau just below a ridge. It was covered in beautiful alpine heather and we could see up our path for miles. Flat hiking. Perfect. After a group picture we fanned out a little and walked two by two. We laughed, told stories, enjoyed the scenery and generally had a good time. This was probably the single best moment to date in the trip.
We stopped for a snack and a water break. While we ate our peanuts and raisins we began to romanticize about what foods we would like to eat. Julie and I were particularly lonesome for pizza. We began discussing different pizza options. Meat, veggie, should there be pineapple on a pizza? etc… As we talked about the pizza everyone began to lust after the round disc of culinary love. At some point a few days ago Jasmin had told us it cost 1000.00/hour to rent a chopper and that we were a half hour from a chopper site. We started to do the math. It would cost us roughly 110 dollars each to get an extra large pizza up to this plateau. Julie and I immediately put our money where our mouths were. We would have to wait for Jasmin and Matt as they had the satellite phone. After a few minutes we realized the absurdity of the proposal and geared back up to continue hiking. We had gelled though. As a team we were sitting around cracking jokes as if we had known each other for years. And in a way we had. Spending 24 hours a day with people for 16 days puts your “hours together” rate as high as some good friends would have after years of friendship.
We hiked on for another mile or so and then crossed over the spine of the ridge as it neared the end of its path across the mountain. We descended down onto another huge plateau that was crissed-crossed with small streams. It had tall peaks on both sides, framing it much like a photographer would have. We aimed for the middle of the plateau, it was after all the camp site we had picked off of the map that morning. We arrived, set up the kitchen in the small grove of trees and pitched our tents around the plateau. I cooked supper with Super Vero. We all sat, ate and watched a magnificent mountain sunset. We had chocolate pudding for desert to celebrate. Sometimes we talked and laughed. But sometimes we could all just sit there and enjoy the view.
Matt appeared off in the distance and came to check in on us. Apparently he was supposed to do this. He made sure we were fine then went back to where he and Jasmin were camping, which was just out of sight to us. We cleaned up and went to bed.
Bed was interesting. Mice had also decided to enjoy this large plateau. At one point while trying to get to sleep in the frigid night air a mouse ran the entire circumference of the tent multiple times. It seemed like he was racing laps around us. To increase his time he used the inside of the tent walls as NASCAR drivers use the banks of the turns to maintain their speed.
I fell asleep thinking of how big the sky was.