One of the older women warned us that she snored before we went to bed–she wasn’t exaggerating. I asked Pam at 3a how she didn’t wake herself up. Luckily for us, she rolled around quite a bit so she would only snore for short bursts occasionally but I’m still giving her a referral to Jill.
We weren’t in a hurry at all this morning; the itinerary today is only 7.5 miles with 4400′ of gain and 2600′ of loss. It was apparent that I was delaying starting and Pam actually said “Let’s get going. We only have a 900 to 1000 meter climb to start.” The only criteria to starting was to leave earlier than yesterday. We made it at 9:45. At this rate of improvement, we will be leaving before 8 by the time we finish Mount Blanc.
We started out at a pretty good clip. I could hear drums in the distance, so I stopped to listen. They went silent. I started walking again and they were back. I guess I was pushing myself a little too hard. Once I slowed down a bit, the pulse echo in my ears disappeared. I wish that would have been the end of my health woes today, but it wasn’t. After climbing a couple thousand feet, I felt the pop in my ankle that I felt a few weeks ago that made it hard for me to walk downhill. I immediately took 400 mg of vitamin I and hoped for the best.
The projected time to hike to the pass was 2 hours and 40 minutes. We made it in three and a half hours with 2 food breaks–dry bread with flavorless butter and prune jam just doesn’t go that far when hiking uphill. Today was a Goldilocks day for weather–not too hot, not too cold, just right.
We had beautiful views in all directions at the pass. There was a cabin just 1/4 mile away which we headed to for a shoes and socks off break. There were a few other hikers out, but not that many considering it is a weekend. The Ariege is not too popular for the day hikers because there just isn’t a developed infrastructure in the area yet. I was wrong on my initial assessment of the trail conditions in this district; there is lots of evidence of trail work going on. Overall, today’s trails were well maintained with lots of new sections of trail being just built. The district is obviously making an effort to attract hikers.
After resting for about 20 minutes in the cabin, we started down. The ibuprofen didn’t handle the situation with my ankle. It was painful and radiating up to my knee. I took another 800 mg and played with different positions to alleviate the pain while walking down. I discovered that the pain is worst on moderate downhill sections. Being the GR10, most of the time, the decline is rather steep and I can avoid a lot of the pain.
Pam was very patient with me (something I’m not always with her when she’s in pain). It took us longer than usual to climb down the 2600′ of drop. We came across a nice stream and decided to soak our feet for a bit. We haven’t done this for a couple of weeks and I’ve missed it. This helped Pam’s feet and my ankle a great deal. We felt we had another couple of good hiking hours left in us now. We couldn’t help but imagine how Fred would react if we told him we were going to stop to soak our feet when he is so goal oriented that he doesn’t even seem to want to take breaks. I know my mouth and our laid back hiking style drove him crazy.
Once we got to the valley floor, we still had another 1200′ to climb to get to our cabin. We were hoping no one would be there and that it would be nice enough to sleep in (Pam is a bit picky about cabins and dirt). After what seemed to be a bigger climb than expected, we got there and the water supply was a slow drip and no reserve. I ran out of water on the way up and Pam was down to 1/2 liter–looks like no hot meal for supper tonight.
If you are reading this online, we made it out fine. If you’ve found my iPad, Pam obviously insisted on brushing her teeth and cleaning her toothbrush using her usual 200 ml of water causing me to fly in a rage and take us both off a cliff.
Instead of our dehydrated meals (which I have been carrying for almost two weeks in anticipation of tonight) we had peanut butter and jelly wraps. Yes, peanut butter without anything to drink afterwards. On the bright side, I probably won’t have to get up in the middle of the night to pee. The cabin did meet the minimum standards for Pam to agree to sleep inside–no evidence of mouse droppings, not a lot of bugs or spiders present, no obnoxious odors (yet, wait until all the doors and windows get closed and the gas attacks begin), no trash piles inside, relatively clean, and, most importantly, no snakes.
Before going to bed, I checked my set up to collect the water drops coming out of the line. After only 3 hours, I was able to filter another 300 ml of water. We have almost a liter to make it over the pass in the morning. Now we are hoping to collect enough additional water over night to have coffee in the morning. First basic need is survival, then comes coffee–first world proverb.
