Climb Every Mountain

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The hike up Scafell Pike was insanely hard. I didn’t even imagine how draining this whole thing would be. I was okay at first because we had a nice level 3.5 mile walk from our hostel to the trailhead. I was snuffling a bit (I’ve had a slight cold since the 28th), but otherwise okay. Then we got to the uphill part: literally steep stone steps up the mountainside. With my broken arm, I don’t have a whole lot of balance, but I still managed okay. Then we get to fields of rocks. You can’t even see a path, just giant chunks of rock all over the hills like someone’s dropped a quarry on the mountain side. It was so hard and I was so tired. But since we were traveling through to our destination (not back to where we started), I had no choice but to keep pushing on through it.

After about an hour of picking our way through rocks, we finally made it to the top. That was the best feeling in the world: Scafell Pike is the tallest mountain in England and I was on top of it!

Getting down was a different story. We went down the backside of the mountain, which was still more of those stupid rock piles only now we’re on the windy side of the mountain, so it feels like you could be blown off at any second. I didn’t have the balance to be able to go down by myself, so different people hiked alongside me, letting me use their arm for balance. Very frustrating for me, but I’m sure you’re all happy that I asked for help.

Anyway, the way down the mountain was longer than the way up. I hadn’t worn any sunscreen and by the time you’ve been hiking for 9 hours, you get burned to a crisp. My legs were turning to jelly from climbing down rocks and watching every step, plus my pain relievers for my arm were starting to wear off. And I was really missing George after three days of no email. Between all that and my wounded dignity, I was completely miserable for the last few hours and didn’t even care about the beautiful stuff we were hiking through, even though I took some pictures anyway.

At the end of the hike, John had us sit down and write for an hour, which helped me feel a lot less miserable even though it reminded me that I still can’t write as fast with a broken arm. What helped the most was getting back to the hostel and taking a nice cold shower and eating a big spaghetti dinner. But first I got interviewed by the film crew about my experience of asking for help on the hike. (KBYU is making our trip into a one-hour special. I don’t know how they’re going to do it, but I might be in it. Hopefully they’ll cut the days when my hair looks gross!)

The hostel in Keswick is really nice, and I’m looking forward to finally posting these entries and getting to spend some free-time in the touristy shops here.

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