The severity of the task ahead begun to sink in today. After a long morning’s accent, which felt like straight up, i would glimpse my first view of the mountains proper. And they, were terrifying…
Up through a mighty forest we’d climbed. Up, up, sweating gallons upon gallons, “Don’t stop, keep going, don’t stop, keep going” stomping on and up and on and up. It never ended. A mighty forest we passed through, near flattened by wind storms. Miles of solid chunks of wood, lay sleeping on the slopes. What kind of force of nature could possibly uproot even one of these monsters? Never mind a literal mountain of them. The weather up here was clearly of a different magnitude of fierceness than I could imagine. Or dared to imagine. Looking up, the sun shining, I put the wooden carnage out of my mind, put my blinkers on and trudged away relinquishing myself to the rhythm of some uninvited cheesy song, invasively worming it’s way into my apprehensive consciousness. “La la la, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I mumble to myself.
Terrifying? Ha, wait until we get to Mount Cook Nicky! The only thing I’m worried about on this section is whether my 4 camera batteries will hold out, I fear the shutter count will be off the chart the higher up we go.
After cursing the trail builders for not sticking to one side of Hackett Creek, I took my hat off to them on the climb up to Starveall Hut. It seemed like 50% of the trees had been uprooted in some previous storm and the amount of chainsaw work gone into clearing the path was quite impressive.
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