Day Off

 (Thursday 14^th) Today since the weather was nice I decided to be off from paddling and go for a hike.  The area is completely surrounded by snow covered mountains that I have been itching to try and get to the top of.  Anxiously I woke up early started walking up the road by 6:30 since I had no clue where to go I just took a picture of a map of the area and started heading up the nicest road that headed uphill.  This road just kept going up and up.  After an hour I knew I had made progress but was nowhere near the top.

As the second hour rolled by and my gps read 10miles I was starting to worry, but I could see the end of the treeline was near.

Eventually at about 2hours and 30mins I made it to the top of the snow covered ridge with different snow covered peaks in 3 directions.  I picked the least snowy one and headed that way.

Once I made it to the top and peered over the other side, the world just fell away, 1000feet drop easy and you could even see a small road snaking its way up to the top.

After spending about an hour checking out the view along the ridge I decided I should start to head back since it would be several hours till I would actually be back

I worked my way back along the ride to the saddle where the road was and headed out of the snowfield

Once back on the gravel road there was nothing more I wanted more than a mountain bike with fat knobby tires

The nice thing about the whole hike was the numerous water sources, every village has a spring and up towards the top they are every mile or so along the road

Going back down wasn't nearly as much fun as coming up especially since it had warmed up a bit but it was a great hike and while it definitely wasn't a rest day I was glad to have done it.