Day 10

Today was a rather slow day as far as stops go, seeing that we actually never got in the bus to go anywhere. However, we did opt to take two hikes on local trails, one led by Dr. Ranson and one led by Dr. Suresh. The former would lead his group up a nearby trail that was rumored to go all the way to the next town approximately 10 km away, while the latter would lead his group along a less strenuous seaside trail with hopes of spotting whales. Because I did not think that there was a particularly good chance of actually seeing any whales and because I wanted to get in a better workout, I decided to go with Dr. Ranson's route, which ended up having more participants. The hike started with some confusion since we couldn't actually find the trailhead, but luckily we came across a local woman who pointed us in the right direction. The trail was not particularly well marked, which led to us getting led astray by some wooden posts that apparently didn't actually mark the trail. After crossing a broken old concrete bridge, we eventually found an old service road that we hoped would take us farther. This path did seem well blazed for a while, but eventually it disappeared into a maze of crow berry bushes further up the mountain. At this point our legs were beginning to feel a but tired and our stomachs were rumbling, so we stopped for lunch in a low point out of the wind and ate sandwiches and cookies. After lunch, the hike began to get more precarious. The crow berries disappeared and gave way to lichens, and the grasses we had been hiking on ceded to broken up boulders that were loose and difficult to traverse. The temperature also started to drop and snow became more abundant on the ground. Though we were freezing and our legs were barely holding us up, we sum mired one of the peaks and stopped to take a moment of silence and rest, then took a group picture. When we started back down, there was some confusion with the route we were taking, and Brightin, Eric and I decided to go down a different way than the rest of the group. This resulted in a stern lesson from Dr. Ranson about the two most important rules of being in the field: 1) don't leave the group and 2) communicate with the group leader before doing anything. In the end it was harmless, but it was a mistake we won't make again. Eventually we made it back down, our legs absolutely wrecked at this point. I crashed on a sofa as soon as I got in the hostel. Suresh's group had gotten back just before us, and they had actually seen Dolphins, which was surprising and fortunate. We dined on a delicious vegetable soup, and spent the rest of the night journaling and doing our group report.