The dream of pancakes in the sun was
quickly shattered at 3am when I woke to thundering rain on the tent fly, I was
too tired to think much of it, and optimistically hoped it would have passed by
the morning.
Unfortunately, at 6am it was still roaring
outside, the wind whipping through the nearby forest that was thankfully
sheltering our tent. We waited for an hour, then thought we’d better get
moving. I looked around for my dry clothes… and discovered they were in a
puddle at the bottom of the tent. Not good. The thought of putting on cold and
wet clothes at the end of a day of being cold and wet was not that appealing!
My happy place fever increased to 6…or maybe 7. Billy was very patient, and
coaxed me out of bed. The rain stopped momentarily, and we had time to pack our
gear before starting along the trail on a grey and cold day.
 |
| Cold & wet start to the day |
We did have a lovely pancake breakfast, and
full mugs of steaming coffee in the Jay Camp shelter not far below our camp.
The clouds lightened and we took out our sopping gear to dry. Over our lengthy
breakfast and a few bursts of sunlight, we actually managed to dry most things
(at least until they were just damp). My happy place fever returned to 1.
 |
| Drying out at Jay Camp Shelter |
For the rest of the day we continued
through the forest over a number of small mountains – Domey Dome, which was,
unsurprisingly, quite dome shaped, Buchanan Mtn and Bruce Peak.
By 4:30pm, we’d finished our short day and
arrived at Hazen’s Notch where we were greeted by “Smash” and his crew of
Summer Campers, out on their wilderness hike.
The kids seemed tired from a big day of
walking, but were happy to chat with us as they listened to music on their
ipods. A couple of boys were from Venezuala, and another from Spain, with the
rest of the girls from Montreal and other parts of the States. They were on a
2month Camp where they alternated weeks of mountain biking, hiking, rock
climbing and canoeing. Sounded ideal to me!
Even better, their leader, Smash, had lit a
huge fire, so we huddled around chatting and cooking well into the evening. He
had a great gig! During the rest of the year he worked for a company called
Natures Classroom, who bring children from public high schools to the forest to
learn biology and ecology a week at a time. For many of them, it’s the first
time they’ve left urban areas, so it’s very rewarding to see their reaction to
the woods. In his time off, he leads Summer Camp groups. A great way to get
paid for working outdoors!
 |
| Campfire with the "Wilderness" Summer Campers |
We set up the tent on some dubiously spongy
ground. Worried about another night of puddles in the tent we laid out a layer
of ferns and birch bark. I felt like we’d landed on the set of “Survivor – the
Woods” as we contemplated the positive attributes of the birch bark and looked
for a tall enough tree for our bear bag of food.
 |
| Our Survivor tent footprint |
The
day in statistics
Total
Miles: 7.0
Total
up: 400m
Total
down: 630m
No.
of Moose: 0
Happy
Place Fever rating: Billy – 0, Shell – 7 (morning) back down to 2
No comments:
Post a Comment