Hiking for Eleven Hours
It might as well sound like an advertising slogan but I would hardly find better words for this trip. We were planning this hike for couple of days. Our expectations were quite high since we heard about this idea but in the end it was even much better.
Civilized Beginning
We started at Eagle River Nature Centre. First few miles followed nicely maintained path. After 1, 5 hour we finally got to the Eagle River, which offered incredible views, and took our first break (and first photo!).
We went along the river for almost the rest of our journey. But the surrounding ladscape was changeable, each part was different, so we never got tired with watching. And even despite the forecast the weather was great so we could enjoy our every step.
Various trail
Most of the trail went through the forrest or dense bushes….
…and in one of these bushes we saw a BEAR!
…however, we climbed some rocks, as well…
…we also had to cross couple of creeks…
… three rivers…
…we had to ford one of them and it almost cost our lives how cold it was! And although it looks perfectly relaxing on this photo, it was really COLD, STRONG and with SHARP STONES!
…when after 5, 5 hours we reached our point! We took a break, relaxed lying on the sun and after an hour decided to go back.
Rapid Change
No matter how enjoyable was the first half, second part took a lot of power from us. It started raining really heavily and we still had four hours to go. Everything was immediately wet and slippery. That’s why we had couple of accidents falling into creeks… Bára was leaning on the stick when it cracked and she fell into really smelly mud! I was laughing so much that just couple of minutes later I slipped on a log and slided into a creek. So no matter how perfectly water-proof my shoes were, now there was a huge lake in each. And one of our guys – Mann – was just talking about how unpleasent this situation is and that it probably can’t be much worse when he tripped and fell on the ground really badly.
So when we finally reached our cars we were all really happy that we can sit and relax in a warm and dry place!
I was about to write a concluding paragraph starting with some super clever sentence such as „everything costs something“ and mentioning all our troubles and accidents. But I realized that this trip was simply awesome and even though it was raining for last four hours and we got completely wet, it is still not worth complaining how great the rest was.
«Aj»