Dear family and friends,
My plan is to write a Kili update on Sunday nights. So--here's the first one.
Dave and I need to get our knees strong for the two day descent of Kilimanjaro. So, today's hike was an attempt to check out our elder-knees. We hiked a 12 mile loop on Greylock: Hooper Trail (off Rt. 7) to the summit of Greylock, then to the summit of Mt. Fitch and on to the summit of Mt. Williams and a long downhill hike back to our car at Hooper Trail. We started at 10 am and finished at 6:30, which means we hiked about 1.5 miles per hour. The trail was slippery with wet leaves and rain-damp rocks. We both took spills, but survived with no damage.
It was beautiful weather, warm for this late in the season. The crowd today was very internationale: We met French Canadians (they had hiked in the Himalayas), a Parisian, a group from India singing India folk songs, and a few Germans. Thoreau's favorite mountain felt like the Alps.
These hikes provide great opportunities to think about some of the Kili problems, such as how to avoid getting dysentry from all the new bacteria we will be exposed to. To help with altitude sickness we are supposed to drink 3-5 liters of water while hiking.--to keep up with that demand I have to constantly drink. I use a camelbak system, and can easily sip water as I hike. Every time I sipped water today I noticed how my hands touched the bite valve that I sipped on---hmmmmm....or the bite valve touches the ground, rocks, trees and leaves whenever I took my backpack off. Hmmmmmm.....there goes my plan for meditative calmness!
Happy trails,
Linda and David
Awesome that you hiked 12 miles! Bring a little travel sized bottle of hand sanitizer. Dysentery on the mountain does not sound like fun!
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