Corridor 9

The night at Granite Rapids was awesome. Listening to the water rushing over the rapids can sure drown out others snoring.
I woke up fairly early, but took my time getting packed. I knew that today was going to be an easy day with the only tough part being the climb back out of the riverbed. We all set off sometime around 9 am at a leisurely pace. Paige had already hiked out, Sam headed out an hour or so earlier with Crash’s group, and Helen had taken off early in the morning to get as far up the trail towards the car as she could.

Along the path, we stopped to look at a baby tarantula that was walking along the trail with us. It wasn’t much bigger than the size of a quarter and was grey rather than black. We left it be and trekked on some more toward Hermit Ridge. About 12:00 we finally made it to the trail head. I decided now would be a good time to drop pack and examine our options. I was really concerned that out last days hike was going to be a bit extreme. I wanted to get as far up trail as possible with Gwen so we wouldn’t have to worry about tomorrows hike. The only problem was the fact that Sam had already gone down to the campsite and I didn’t want to leave him there alone.

In the end I decided it would be best to send Dad down to the campsite, while Gwen and I hiked as far out as we could. My plan was either to reach Helen, or to get out to the truck.

It took us a bit over three hours, and we had covered over 1/3 of the trail before we reached Helen. I wanted to push on a bit, but the weather was getting worse. I knew that Helen had picked a good spot to stop, so we just decided to stay the night there. The weather had turned bitterly cold with winds gusting to 45 mph. None of us really wanted to be blown off the side of a cliff so we setup camp right there on an overlook that offered plenty of protection from the elements.