I took me about 2,5 hours to get down to the river. On the way down I saw a ranger and he told me to drink and eat a lot because it was going to be very hot. He also told me to take my time when I was down by the river so I could get some rest and some shade and of course drink a lot of water!!! I reached the river around 9.30am. There I just relaxed and listened to the crickets. I also refreshed myself with the nice cold water at the ranger station and refilled my waterbottles too. I took some pictures of the Bright Angle Creek and the suspension bridge over the Colorado River. After about half an hour I started to go up again the same trail I came down because I had to be back at 3pm(so I thought :-(.
It was very hard and the sun was really brutal. About 1/3 up, just before the third stopover I met up with a group of people who where going up from 7am and they were climbing for 5 hours already and they still had a long way to go. There were also 2 guys as well who looked to be good hikers so I decided to keep up with them so I had a good pace. But I was running low on water because I drank a lot more water than I thought. But thank God :-) there was some emergency water at Skeleton Point so I could fill my bottles again. From that point on I was back on the more positive side and I said to myself to get back up by 2.30pm. I tried so hard, but I didn't make my goal. I reached the top around 3.10pm. The last few miles(the ones which were very easy at the beginning of the trail, remember) were really hard, I was getting so tired and my legs were killing me. Plus the trail went up very steeply and not very gradually like before. |
