This is a hike with no victory story at the end, no grand climax, no “I pushed through and conquered”. It’s a very, very, difficult hike and I knew that going in, but I didn’t realize HOW taxing it would be. I’m going to open with a picture of the one, of many, technical challenges we faced along the way. We had to get through this jungle gym of a fallen tree.
This hike, when accomplished, has it all – waterfalls, views, and a hidden volcanic crater – by journeying in a loop. However, it’s also very difficult, and my goal this time was just to do an out and back to the first waterfall. Well, we got about 2.5 miles in, and I had tripped over myself more times than I could count (this is irregular for me, it was a combo of my defective spikes and PMSing). I didn’t want to keep chancing it. It felt like every 10ft there was some technical part, and we finally got to a spot where there was very little actual path, and I couldn’t do one more thing. I wish I took a picture, but essentially we follow this pipe up, and at one point that path that is well defined here, essentially narrows to next to nothing.
Some day I’ll go the opposite direction and hope I make it to the crater – I am ok with missing out on a couple waterfalls, but I really want to see the hidden crater.
