A new day, new adventures. Life is now a strange mix of CrossFit, hiking, climbing, kayaking and rafting. All because of new plans and goals. So exciting, so scary, so much fun.

Friday nights are always a nice finish of a full week. We usually meet up with our extra family and have dinner. Not this Friday. I had a busy day and I squeezed in a CrossFit class with some snatches and jump rope since I really need to work on my snatches. I finally left the house 5.30 and drove towards the mountains. A very full and heavy backpack, food for 24h just to be sure (or packed calories that tastes mostly like chocolate), new hiking shoes to break in and an extra puffy coat. Picked up Robin and an extra sleeping bag on the way and took off. The plan was to reach the ridge by Navaho peak and sleep a few hours and then move east instead of west as we did last time. It was a lot of snow from around 6000ft that we wanted to avoid. We left the parking lot at 9pm and started walking. We reached the ridge as planned, it didn’t feel as hard as it did last time when we had lighter packs. I remember the last steep part that looks like you’re on the moon as the worst possible hill. I think we walked it in 5 minutes this time. Hopefully a good sign. We got the tiny tent up, got dressed and ate a little. After sliding around like a worm in a very tight sleeping bag I actually think I slept a few hours divided up in 15 minutes chunks. Sweaty on my upper body and freezing knees down. I need to bring more clothes next time so I have something dry to put on.

One peanutbutter bar and a big bottle of almost warm tea and we felt ready to move. Before the sun was up we started walking again. The view up there is indescribable. I need to get myself a tiny camera to keep hand, the phone is not enough.

We walked and scrambled for a few hours and moved west over the ridge following goat tracks. It was a bit sketchy and tricky from time to time. A lot of ice/snow and loose rocks. Robin is a lot more confident and faster than I am and sliding around on the mountain edge with a heavy pack is not really my cup of tea.

We ended the day with what felt like an eternity of bushwhacking before we reached the trail that took us back to the car. A long walk/slide downhill, climbing over fallen trees after years of avalanches.

A beautiful outing!