28kms!

This weekend was so full of hikes! I ended up doing 4 hikes over three days, and got to make lots of new friends. It was a really great weekend to help prepare my endurance for the ECT.

If you're following along with my blog, you'll remember that when I was on my way out of Bluff last weekend I met a lady on her way in. We met very early in the morning, I was a little sleep deprived, and slightly spooked over a (imaginary?) bear. We chatted briefly about my overnight and how she’d like to try that. She ended up finding me on Facebook and sending me a message! I absolutely love the community here in Nova Scotia for this reason.

I've mostly hiked with family, friends or alone and even though I met her on the trail I didn't want to jump right into an overnight with her. We went for a quick 5KM hike Friday morning to get a feel for each other and our hiking styles. Her experience with hiking has primarily been for geocaching but she's really fallen in love with it. Thor even got to try out geocaching! Everything went well so we made plans for an overnight the next night.

I had also posted in a local hiking group that I was looking for people interested in longer hikes, and overnights. When I first moved to Halifax I looked for groups like this but didn't really find anything. I knew that MeetUps existed but hadn't yet tried any for hiking. This facebook group was relatively newer and most posts seemed to be for Cape Breton. I wasn't really sure what to expect for my post as I hadn't seen a lot of other posts like it. I had significantly more response to the post than I expected. I got around 15 people messaging me and commenting that they'd love to go. I picked a longer trail (Crowbar Lake) that I had heard good things about but never done and we made plans to meet there Saturday morning.

I was really happy to see how many people showed up! I only set it for 8am because it was the first group and I wanted to ensure people came. In the summer, I prefer hitting the trail before 7 but I was going with strangers so I didn't want to scare anyone off. I had seven people show up and we hiked about 14kms, there was an option to do more but maybe next weekend!

The trail was more challenging than I had expected, there was a lot more elevation than previous trails I had done. I was also wearing my pack loaded with about 25lbs as training which no one else was doing so we were moving at different speeds.

I finally got my new trekking poles this week though! This is something I put off getting for a long time, I fell into the myth that the poles are only for elderly or people with physical problems. However, I did some research this summer and discovered all the benefits of them and decided I should get some. The benefits that appealed to me were; taking pressure off your joints, distributing the pack weight over your body, and for balance on rough terrain. I did find them quite helpful with the elevation on this trail although they will take some adjusting.

After the group hike, I went home showered, ate and repacked to meet up with Julie again at the Bluff Trail for our overnight. She was also on the group hike that morning, and we definitely got called crazy when they found out we were going to do another hike. I've taken a lot of friends on overnights who have never gone before and it's something I really enjoy doing. I do find there can be a little bit of snobbery in the backpacking community, both online and in person. It's really frustrating to encounter it and I understand why a lot of beginners struggle to dive in fully. I was more than happy to take Julie on her first overnight and help her gain the confidence to fully embrace this hobby.

We hiked about 8km into the second loop to my preferred campsite. It was quite a different scene from last weekend where I was alone. We passed two guys setting up hammocks in the trees, the first campsite had about 9 guys on it, there was a couple on the second site and even people set up in a clearing by the lake. I had told a couple of people about my struggle to find somewhere to hang my hammock at this campsite and was told off a clearing where hammock campers go. While I am a big supporter of LNT camping and respecting the designated sites, I choose to camp on this unofficial one. I think it's important to understand that LNT is not about perfection, like many other environmental movements and I do the best I can.

It was a lot easier to set the hammock up in this clearing. The trees were very well set up for it, no wonder this has become the unofficial hammock site. I think I did much better job at it this time. I set it up higher, maybe a little too high as getting in took a little bit, but it was definitely more spacious inside.

We took the stunning sunset and rainbow as a sign we were meant to be out there that night.

It did take a bit to fall asleep in the hammock as I'm still getting used to the position. I'm usually a stomach sleeper and move around a lot so I did find it a little bit restraining. We could also hear the young guys up at the first campsite for quite a bit. However, with how much I hiked that day it was still easy enough to sleep.

We had an uneventful morning, a quick breakfast overlooking the lake and we were off. I do feel like I pushed myself physically and mentally hiking this much this weekend and I'm grateful I have the opportunity to do so before going to Newfoundland.