A Girl in a Canyon - Part 5

So, as you can see, the first 2 days left me emotionally and physically drained. I was still getting used to "wild living" and pushing my body to limits I didn't know I could reach.

We decided on day 4 that we needed to get an earlier start in the morning - which is not that easy, because it is still dark until about 7am, and as I have explained, dark is dark in the canyon and you have walk carefully.

Having had a great sleep, I woke up full of the joys of spring - except for the pains in places, you don't even know are places. Packing up and having a quick breakfast and coffee is not a 5 minute job and never took us less than an hour, no matter how quickly we thought we were working.

We set out from our camp site, which was at the 20km mark (approximately). I could not believe we had been hiking for 2 days and had only covered 20 kms, we still had another 60 kms to go! Keith was not worried, because he had read that the first 2½ days were the slowest, because of the rough terrain.


We quickly got into the routine of hiking for an hour and stopping for 10 minutes to rest. The views were spectacular and as fore casted much easier. By lunch time we were going at a good pace and covering long distances. I found a second wind, and set the pace, together with Anthony. I even managed to forget how heavy my bag was and the bleeding hips.

We stopped that night on beautiful stretch of sandy beach next to the river. Once again the boys spent an hour collecting fire wood. We sat around that night, marveling at the beauty of the night sky. My spirits were high and I knew now that I could do anything and I had managed to over come huge personal obstacles.

Looking for firewood is a big job - here's Jason setting out again.

Keith was suffering with terrible blisters on his toes. We still have not worked out exactly why he got the blisters, as you know our boots were well walked in and he had never had a minute's trouble before. I think it shows just how hard the terrain is there.

Just to show you how we had to adapt to cooking, this is me sitting in the kitchen preparing supper!

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson