Lake Blanche

 

So in our efforts to prepare more for King's Peak we did the Lake Blanche hike last weekend. The reason for my tardy post on this one is we've both been recuperating from this hike. It is TOUGH! I've done rough hikes before, but none where the trail just ends to a rock slide area at one point (top left picture of the first collage). I recall halfway turning around to Larry saying "are you sure you wanna go to the end still?" (mostly because he sounded like he was having a REALLY hard time breathing, but also because I wanted an excuse to stop haha). I'm actually really glad we kept going and made it to the end, it felt good to get to the top and see the beautiful scenery. We had a little picnic, lied down to just watch the clouds, and even got to see a moose on the way back! I got a couple pictures of it, but they didn't turn out excellent, the best one is top right of the second collage. We even made some friends along the way. There was this other couple going and at first they started out really fast so we let them pass us so we could take our time, then later we ended up passing them and then they had some weird deal where the guy would rest and the girl would catch up to us and then turn around to go get him...not really sure how it worked, but they made it up to the top too a few minutes after we did. We cheered each other on :)

The view was amazing at the top and it was kind of nice to get to the bottom and look back at what we had just done. I remember thinking as we got closer to the top that my breathing must sound ridiculous to people coming down and then as we were coming down there was this family with a young girl (maybe 10 or 11) who was just wheezing her little lungs out, poor girl, but I did make a point to let them know how close they were so she could be a little happy she wouldn't die for nothing haha.

This will be our last hike till we do King's Peak (partly because we don't have time to fit any helpful ones in until then and partly because we want to get back to 100%-my calves STILL kill me from this one). But the good news is we got a real backpack, a cool 3-lb/2 person tent, a first aid kit, a bunch of MRE's, some good hiking shoes (the ones I wore to these past two were NOT good ones and I ended up rolling my ankles a few times on this one), and some other little necessities. I can't WAIT for Kings Peak now :)

 

Should make for an interesting post when we come back...