We finally got the thunderstorm they have been promising for the last 5 days. At 2:30 this morning I was woke by lightening. Let me repeat that, I was awoke by lightening, and not Pam freaking out. She was amazingly calm. The reason, I found out, was because there was no thunder. The main body of the storm was over the ridge behind us so the sound didn’t make it to us. Note to self: buy some sound dampening headphones for Pam for use in storms when at home (wherever that may one day be).
My only concern was how big the rain really was because we were camped in a somewhat narrow valley and I was a little worried about a flash flood washing us away. We had chosen our campsite on a high spot above the stream, but one never knows for sure. I wasn’t going to say anything when Pam brought it up. I stuck my head out of the tent to check the stream level only to discover it wasn’t really raining as hard as it sounded. Now we could relax and enjoy the storm for the rest of the night.
At 6:30, I couldn’t wait any longer and had to go out of the tent (for the obvious reason–53 year old man). It was still raining, but not real hard. I know my wife wouldn’t choose to pack up in the rain, so I heeded her wishes and went back to bed. I didn’t wake back up until 9:30. The rain was now just a mist in the air, so we made breakfast (oatmeal and coffee) and then packed up. Pete will love this–we hit the trail at 11:15.
First off was an 1100′ climb right up the corner and over the shoulder of Iraukotuturru (now you can see why I haven’t been giving the mountain names). The mist turned to fog then back to mist and finally light rain. We were hoping the clouds would burn off by early afternoon. As with all climbs, we took our sweet time. It was very other worldly climbing through the clouds and mist. After a couple hours, though, it just got old.
We made it to road on the shoulder of the mountain only to hit an early afternoon traffic jam. We’ve seen a lot of sheep between Wales, Spain, and France, but this was the largest number of sheep we’ve seen at once. They covered the road further than we could see in the mist.
The next 1/2 mile was a gentle down and up along the road. The sheep readily scattered to let us pass. When we got to the pass, it was 1:30 and Pam felt nature calling in the second way. We decided to drop packs, answer nature’s call, and have a snack (chocolate was off the menu for this break). When Pam walked about 20′ from me, I could barely see her. I told her to meet me back down on the road when she was done.
I searched out a dry location out of the rain. The only place I could find was a livestock shelter used for loading animals onto trailers for transport. It was relatively clean (only ground in poop on the concrete). Pam reluctantly agreed to get out of the rain and eat a snack. We discussed taking the bad weather alternative route and skipping the next mountain. We were already at 3100′ and were looking at 1400′ climb in a light rain to get to a peak with no visibility. To both of us, this looked dangerous and not worth the risk. We decided to wait an hour in the shelter before we made a final decision.
30 minutes later, we had made up our minds. There was a wall of black clouds approaching us and the mist was turning back to rain. We took the road alternative route. I was bummed but am pretty sure we made the right decision. Even along the road, we still covered the same distance as the main route. But only had about a 500′ gain in elevation.
The map indicated a bar and camping where the alternative rejoins the main route. We though we’d make a decision there as to what to do next because we would still have another 1200′ of total gains even after what we had skipped. On the road walk, my body made the call. My ankle started acting up again on the downhill sections. I’ve got to rest and stretch it this evening.
We stopped in the bar thinking we might get something to eat and drink but were turned against that idea by the sheer number of flies in the place. We settled for a cafe-au-lait and a prepackaged ice cream bar thinking the hot water in the coffee would kill any germs and hoping the Hagendaas factory was sanitary.
Siting down for a bit felt good, but we both decided to call it a day. It was just a little past 5. We saw some nice spots on the other side of the river and decided to go pick a spot there. We had to change into our Crocs to get across the water and it felt great on our feet. With the air temperature, the water almost felt warm (as long as blue feet are considered a warm color).
We set up camp and dried out our stuff the best we could. Even though it was still misting, there was a nice breeze and we have lots of tree cover over our camp. The rest of the week is supposed to be dry and sunny with temps below 80F so we should get completely dried out and back on track. We just ate light and had some hot tea before turning in at 8–it was a stressful 11 hour day.
