Today I was somewhat fully rested with a few hours of sleep and last minute packing up. I was totally not ready for today's journey and I am sure most of my teammates agree with me. We were totally not ready for this.. I mean TOTALLY. Completely beyond my imagination and should be considered insane! We met up at 6:45 but the school bus was late for like 45 minutes. So we left at like 7:30 but that was not it, our bus ride was 3 hours long because we were going to Frontenac Provincial Park.
Although it sounds kind of okay, yea-sure thing. I officially hate this park after the hike. We arrive at the park at around 10:30/11:00AM and we start walking. Since we were fresh off the bus, we parked pretty fast. At around 4km/hr which was pretty good considering we had a heavy backpack about 20-30 pounds? In the backpack, there was water, sleeping bag, tent, food, clothes and miscellaneous stuff to survive. After walking for like 2 hours, we started getting tired already! But we had only walked like 4 kilometers in that 2 hours which meant we were walking at around 2km/hr. Do you know why we walked so slow? The main reason was because of all the elevation. We walked up and down so many hills, and bigger hills and bigger hills and even mountains. There were rocks everywhere and bridges at the bottom of the hills. The trail of this hike was like this. We would climb up a hill and then walk down the hill to the bottom. Usually at the bottom, there is a small river and we would usually cross the bridge and then climb up another hill. This went on for like A LONG LONG TIME. Not only that, if you walked along the bridges, they were so wobbly! It was only a plank of wood and it wasn't even the good kind of wood because of all the erosion. As you walk on the bridge, it feels like its gonna break apart and let you fall into the river. However we came across some nice bridges too. While we were hiking, it was hard to notice the landscape because you were always concentrated on the trail. There would always be some kind of loose rock, loose branch or even roots that would trip you. Many of our teammates got a sprained ankle from this and I was one of them. My ankle was in pain the whole time I was hiking and I tried not to put weight on it. So I decided to burrow a walking stick to minimize the pressure on my legs. It worked for awhile and the recovery was pretty fast and I was back to normal soon enough. We were able to look at the scenery as we reached a look-out point or at the top of a mountain. There, we would see everything to the end of the horizon and it was all trees and hills. We would usually take long rests and eat our meals there which was pretty awesome because of the cool breezes and warm sunshine. But to be honest, the trail was endless and as we finished going up a big hill, another hill comes and we would have to climb another one. It was both tiring and boring. We hiked for like 12 hours from 11AM to 10:30PM. Many of us ran out of water on the way and we had to burrow our teammates. Good thing I brought soda because it was refreshing but it made you even more thirsty though.
On the way, we had to walk past a really wet trail and unfortunately, I missteped and my foot got submerged into the water. So I was walking with a wet shoe the whole way.
We were supposed to walk 22 km today but as we walked to 12km it was already 5PM which was a pretty bad sign. We knew for a fact that either we reach our destination before sunset or we would have to hike in the dark. Or even better yet, we would camp on the trail. But noo... we decided to continue walking even in the dark with flashlights and everything. Every once and then, we would trip on something and it felt like forever before we finally reached our campsite. We were supposed to follow a trail map but at the end, we gave up on looking at the map and just kept following signs which led to our campsite.
One of the groups were not so lucky and they got lost. They were behind us for like an hour and had to hike in the dark for more than an hour. Imagine hiking in the night, which weird sounds and only you and your partners on the trail. It is pitch black and you can barely see anything with a flashlight. All you can hope for is that the campsite is nearby and that your almost there.
But another group had arrived at the campsite just after the sunset so they did not need to hike in the dark.
Some interesting stuff that I saw was a really yellow river (looked like clay or poo)
P.S. I hate hiking up hills and elevation.
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