The next day was our big hiking day. We planned on going up The Loop trail which gains 2300 feet of elevation in about 4 miles. So we got an early start heading out on the shuttle, it still takes a good hour and a half to get out to the Loop on the shuttle due to the ongoing construction on the Going-to-the-Sun road. So finally we arrived and since we were already behind schedule we just ate our sandwiches as we headed up the mountain. This particular hike takes you up to the Granite Park Chalet which is one of the oldest functional chalets in the park. You can reserve to spend the night here after hiking up or going on horseback. Well unfortunately this wasn’t our plan, we will be coming right back down after arriving at the top. We were on a serious time constraint to make it to the top since we had to be back at the bottom again before the last shuttle left, otherwise we would be hitchhiking from there. So we started strong up the hill, Antoine was carrying Elisabeth because she wouldn’t make it 5 minutes on these steep climbs. The heat and humidity was unbearable. Plus there had been a forest fire here recently so all of the trees looked like bare toothpicks, not offering any shade. Well the first hour and a half wasn’t too bad but after that my legs were screaming for a break, but we pushed ahead, encouraged by those coming down the mountain….which looked a lot easier!
We were about a half an hour from the chalet and I started seeing storm clouds off in the distance and heard the thunder. We decided to try to make it to the top before the storm hit since we had come this far. Well I told Antoine that if we saw a lightning bolt we were turning around right away, considering that at this point we were above treeline and Elisabeth’s kid carrier has metal poles in it. So we saw a big flash in the distance and sadly turned back. It started pouring rain, but not just raining but hailing!! Well there is one thing that needs to be understood…we have been travelling three weeks know and have not had the least bit of rain the entire time so, being a bit spoiled, we didn’t pack our raingear in our daypack. So Elisabeth was fine because she had a cover on the backpack but Antoine and I were being pelted by the hail on our bare arms and legs. This wasn’t even the worst of it….the worst was the fact that we were on a bare ledge with practically no trees around, which is never good to be the tallest thing around when there is lightning. The other major risk was that the temperature must have dropped like 20 degrees with the storm and we were freezing. I’m sure with our clothes soaked through in those temperatures hypothermia was a risk. So we started into a jog down the mountain side trying at least to get between the trees to be more sheltered and to hopefully get warmer by running. There weren’t even any ledges to huddle under, because we tried this but it didn’t shelter us at all and we just got colder. So we just booked it down until the rain and hail slowed. We came across this family with three kids that we had seen when we were heading up the hill. They had a four year old boy and two girls, one 7 and one 9. The little boy was crying when we came up to them and we stopped to see if they needed anything. He had just taken a little tumble but was okay, but he was just exhausted. They had done the entire hike from the highline trail. Well this is not a hike for the weak. It starts with a trail that runs along a Cliffside with a death defying drop on one side then continues 12 miles up a gradually climbing hill past the Granite Park Chalet and down the steep hillside that we had just hiked up. I didn’t feel like it was a good idea to do the beginning of this hike with Elisabeth due to the drop-offs and they did the entire hike with the three kids!!! Not only that but every one of them hiked the entire way, never being carried, including the little 4 year old boy! Well I couldn’t believe it and I felt so bad for the little boy that I almost offered to carry him. But his dad was determined that he would make it to the end and he did! We hiked the rest of the trail with them and climbed soaking wet into the shuttle. We were all shivering so bad that a lady even gave some of her daughter’s dry clothes to Elisabeth to warm her up a little. We were miserable until we made it back to the campsite where we quickly got changed into warm clothes and headed to the storm for a good bottle of wine! We sat outside the store with some drinks before heading back to the campsite for dinner with our bottle of wine. This was our little celebration that we were still alive after this crazy adventure! We met some cool people that night when Elisabeth spotted a little girl about her age. We started talking to them, they were from Canada. Ni, the mother, was from Thailand and Martin was a teacher in BC. They had a little girl named Anda who was just a couple weeks younger than Elisabeth and another 2 year-old little boy named Niti. We spent some time chatting until a lady camping near us came to let us know that we had left our dirty dishes out on the table and there had been bears spotted in the campground lately. Well we knew this because we had seen a black bear on the hillside just 20 feet from our campsite this morning. It is a rule in the campsites that you don’t leave anything that could smell or look like food out because of bears. But I think she was a bit paranoid because we weren’t that from our site and hadn’t left our dishes out that long while we were talking, it’s not even like we had left food out! But in any case we didn’t want to risk the $50 fine that you get if you leave stuff unattended for more than a few minutes and said goodbye to the little family, planning on meeting up again the next day.
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