Life advice: if a friend asks if you want to join them on a walk, say yes. Walks with friends are good for the soul and good for the body.
However, if your friend is a known psychopath who once walked most of the way from Canada to Mexico with a baby, you should ask detailed questions about the route before agreeing.
Further life advice: if near the beginning of the walk your psycopathic friend casually says “yeah, most people actually do this route as an overnight,” remember that it isn’t too late to turn around.
Last Saturday Jack and I drove to the end of Chena Hot Springs Road and parked at the entrance to the resort.
The internet gave directions to find a track up to the ridge but either the directions were unclear or we’re both kinda dumb because we couldn’t find it. We just walked up the hill to the ridge through the birch forest.
The route description is, essentially, “follow the ridge around the headwaters and come back down the far side.” There is no real trail for most of it. You just walk along the alpine tundra.
You also don’t really switchback the grades. When you come to a steep dome you either just walk straight up it and straight down the far side, or sometimes you can sidehill around it on contour. So the 9,000feet of gain we did on the walk was mostly very steep, and all off-trail.
It became clear about eight hours in that the 3L each water we’d brought wasn’t going to be enough. We found a clean-ish looking puddle and refilled our water bottles. I figured if I didn’t drink the puddle water, I’d be more likely to stumble and break my ankle or something due to dehydration. So. I drank the puddle water.
Our chosen route was 25 miles. Since we started walking at 11am we figured we’d make it back to the car by ten or eleven pm. We actually got back at 0300, for 16 hours of walking.
The day started clear but wildfire smoke blew in as we walked.
Jack, plus some of the local wildlife. This was just past midnight, about a half hour before sunset.