Achievement

I crested the brow of the hill and looked down at the view that met me. Stumbling Norwegian, Pigpen, Bernie, Pony, Yvo and Origami were just behind me. Cliffs striped with differing hues of colour fell abruptly into the White Water River, a few thousand feet below us.

We stumbled down, letting our legs run away with us because of the steep gradient, dumped our packs by the water, stripped down to underwear and let the frigid water rush over us. We stayed there for 2 hours, laughing and relaxing under the shadow of the cliff and making the most of an escape from the sun.

I left before the others, sensing a little time on my own would be good. I walked for a couple of hours following a creek bed before a burst blister forced me to camp by the water. The following day I woke early, cooked some oats and was just on the verge of leaving when Yvo caught me up, he had started on the trail at 6.30am, as most of us do when the sun comes up.

We walked all day. Yvo is Swiss, his scruffy hair meets an unkempt beard, spaced by wiry spectacles. He bears a striking resemblance to John Lennon and walks quickly but appears to exert no effort. He just glides along without breaking sweat, stops every 30 minutes, comments on the view and carrys on with me gasping somewhere behind him, leaving a trail of perspiration in the grit. It's like trying to keep up with a pacemaker, if you need to be somewhere quickly, Evo is the guy to stick with, if you can.

We fumbled our way aimlessly along Mission Creek, hemmed in by towering cliffs either side of us. Feeling the heat of the sun as we walked out of the shade, and a chill when we returned to it. With the constant gurgle of water with us, we must have crossed the Creek 30 times, hopping from one side to the other searching for the right place to cross. Sometimes we balanced our feet on one side ready to leap over and the weak soil would give way beneath us, the icy water chilling our toes.With strained eyes we tried, sometimes in vain, to locate a trail playing hide and seek with us. A Rattlesnake glided casually across the path startling me. Normally they would signal as a warning but this one was silent, without malice or confrontation and my fear subsided. White trees, the remnants of a past forest fire where the bark had burnt away to be left with a stark albino finish twisted and bent into bizarre shapes clawed at us from the trail edge.

We climbed up, and up, and up. Praying for an end to unrelenting hills, the end came 10 hours later. Yvo, who had long since pulled away from me, had camped under the fir trees at 8000 feet. I nodded a greeting and gestured I was carrying on, he signalled that he understood.

2 miles further on, 21 miles for the day and some 4500 feet of climbing later, I pulled off the trail at 7.30pm. I lay down my pack, set up the tent, watched the sun sink over the mountains to my west and a crescent moon rise. Stars slowly began to pierce the black sky as my saucepan lid rattled, signaling food was near. It was the only sound up there.

I collapsed into my sleeping bag at 9.00pm, this is bed time out here. You get up when the sun comes up and you sleep when the sun goes down.