Finally the day has come for our Expedition Hike. We woke up early in the morning and had to leave right away to MacDonalds. At MacDonalds, they actually checked our hiking bags for emergency food, sunhat, sunscreen/insect repellent and hiking boots. I mean if we did not just any one of the items, we were not allowed on the hike. If I didn’t have any, I would be joining the 2 others who will not be attending our expedition. That would be such a waste because the goal of this Vancouver trip was to finish my Gold Qualifying Hike. And I would have accomplished next to nothing by not going on this trip. Also, while they were checking our hiking bags, I had a sudden nose bleed. This was like the worst time to ever have one and I had to go in MacDonalds to get tissue paper and a glass of water to soothe my nosebleed. I emptied the glass of water and during our long car ride to the Rocky Mountains, my bladder felt like it was about to explode.
As we got close to our designated spot, we had a very rocky and bumpy path. The whole car rocked as it drove past big ditches and the front windows were all scratched up from all the rocks on the path. But finally we arrived and I was glad to see a porta-potty (portable toilet) at the parking lot. However as we unloaded the vans, the counselors would not let all of us rush to the washrooms. He let us off by teams and my team was one of the last ones to go to the washrooms and so I had to hold off my almost-exploding bladder once again before I unloaded myself on the toilet.
After that, we were off on the trail to our campsite. It would take us at least 4 hours to get to the campsite if we hiked fast. I doubted that though. While we were hiking, I found a lot of mosquitoes and flies flying around my head and others that were hiking beside me. They were so annoying and I was jealous as some of my teammates had been prepared and brought out their bug hats. So when it came to lunch, I was always running around or swatting the bugs away as they flew around me. The people with their bug hats stood their happily eating their lunches. By the way, I had already put on bug repellent and it was this very strong kind that lasted for 6 hours. Usually bug repellent lasts for 2-3 hours and they were the spray kind. This kind of bug repellent was the lotion kind and it seemed pretty good at warding off bugs.
As we hiked up the mountains, the terrain changed from forest to just plain rocks. I felt pretty tired as we had to hike up an incline the whole time. It was this slow and dragging on kind of incline which never stops. Usually Toronto has really flat land but Vancouver was just different. The whole hike was either uphill or downhill, there was not flat path we could walk on. As we went up, we spotted the first snow patch pretty close to the trail. I was excited and was looking forward to seeing more snow. However as we got higher and higher, the air started getting more and more cool but I could not see any snow anymore.
Finally after 5 hours of hiking, we arrived at our campsite all tired and sweaty. Even though it was cool, we continued to sweat because hiking just produced so much heat. When we arrived at the campsite, we had to find a site to put up our tents, set up our tents, cook our food, filter water and most of all go to the washroom again. When we were setting our tents, I was surprised to see that our tent was broken. Like the string that was between each of the poles was broken but we still had to set up the tent even with this broken pole. I had also went down to a freshwater river to retrieve an almost filled up water bag. It took so much effort to bring my water bag from the river to the cooking area.
While doing this, one of the counselors came and told me that our teammate was crying. Apparently, she “believed” that she was doing all the work and that her teammates were not doing their job. I was like “what the F”… I am here, working hard and you just start bursting into tears. Although you are a girl, and maybe you are stressed. I don’t think that is enough for you to just cry. Ugh.. I hate it when that happens.
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