We hiked the Vivian Creek approach to the summit which is an 8.5 mile hike with an altitude gain of 5400 feet. We made record time of 6.5 hiking hours. This might be a Troop record! Some of the factors this can be credited to are Jody Toole's mantra, "ultra light backpacking." I personally reduced my pack weight from 42 to 24 pounds! And various other lessons from earlier training hikes, like start early in the day and correctly plan the amount of water needed for that segment of the hike.
We encountered many insects namely mesquitoes, flies and moths. The mesquitoes were mostly at the lower altitudes. Flies up to 9,200 foot level at High Creek. And the surprise were the moths which seemed to come out of nowhere at dusk at the summit. These moths were poor drivers. They seemed to be flying in any and every direction and would often crash into you if you were standing or even sitting on a rock.
Having reached the top of the mountain, we were all hungry and started our dinner of beef stew. The boys soon had eaten and to our surprise were in there sleeping bags going to sleep! But the sun had not even begun to set. The photo here was taken just after 6:00 PM. They would get a good nights sleep this night.
I wanted to at least wait for the sun to go down before I went to sleep. It was a long wait as I was at least as tired as the boys. Jody had mentioned the "raising pyramid" that could be seen to the east of the mountain as the sun sets. I had to see this. By the time it was visible all the rest were asleep. So I shot some self portraits with the sunset and mountain shadow as backgrounds.
Next morning we slept in until 7:00 AM. We decided to get another early start and stop later to eat breakfast. We left the summitt at 7:50 AM, reached switchback ridge in 50 minutes and High Creek in another 25 minutes where we had a short breakfast break. We refilled our water stock and started off again and reached the trailhead at 12 noon and by 12:30 PM we were driving away.
