On Sunday I hiked with an American and a Canadian, Alden and Dean, up from the Lodge to a ridge where we hoped to get a good view of the mountains. When we woke up in the morning it was misting and cloudy, but we hoped for the best and set out with our day packs. Dean in particular is a real maniac about photos, and wanted to get some good ones of the Himalayas to make the folks at home really jealous. The trail took us through mossy oak forest, through an apparently abandoned camp with a few houses, and up into a blooming alpine meadow. There were flowers everywhere, asters and orchids and lots of delicate and strange spongy things. As we climbed further up the flora changed with the elevation, until at the top we saw these lumpy plants that looked like green coral. Neat! We finally got to the ridge where we climbed along for a bit and peered over the edge, but felt a too chicken to go further, so we hung out a few minutes and then turned around. We ended up climbing to an elevation of 13,500', which I'm sure is the highest I've ever hiked. Amazingly, we weren't even cold. It never did clear up all the way, but the clouds swirled in and out across the peaks, offering a tantalizing and incomplete vista.
No comments:
Post a Comment