When not to go – *important*
Never on a weekend with too many that is literally 1000 people on the mountain to look at Larches. I’m not sure how the news spread but social media is definitely the culprit. Of course, I’m also people for other people but I mind my own business, move as quickly as possible to the Summit and don’t linger in the middle of the hiking trail or be oblivious that there may be someone else hiking faster than me so I would step aside when possible. Normally, I don’t encounter anybody on the mountain but this is end of the hiking season and everybody and their Dog was there, literally 25 dogs on the mountain.
I was hoping to not get any disaster news the next day and I really hope everybody made it safe up and down the mountain. Previously, there has been disasters on this mountain in October so be careful, know your route, altitude weather, start early enough, carry a headlamp, Bear Spray (Even if you don’t intend to use it), pocket knife, enough food and water with electrolytes. All Trails Map which I rarely use could only go to North East small summit not E1. So, get the appropriate gpx file. If you wish to scramble down to West summit, it would take an extra 2 hours but don’t do it if you don’t have enough time or not sure if you could handle heights.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
The day prior to the trip, we had just bought new shoes which were not broken into. Generally, I would break into the hiking shoes then go on long hikes. So, I wasn’t sure if I would wear a worn out shoes or the new ones, I checked weather and noticed nothing extraordinary about weather. I decided not to use new shoes and it turned out to be a good decision.
In the morning, I was supposed to be ready by 3AM which is our usual driving time for a climb. Whole week of real hard work, runs and some weight training made me tired and not sleeping till 12AM caught up. So, we got late and left at 7.30AM which is very late by our standards. Alight, we drive to the manning park parking lot. As we left number 3 highway towards the parking lot, I noticed a few cars parked on the side of the road, a few more cars further and now cars on both sides. I thought people are camping here but probably that many people won’t go for a 20km hike. I was wrong. We drive further to the parking lot and it was over full. I drove out and parked at the end about 600m away from the parking lot.
We got ready by 9.30AM and started plodding towards the trail head. As we were walking, loud, real loud people even if they were walking right beside each other. Their conversations about their office, emails, life etc. were too loud and one could just make sense about their lifestyle. However, extremely annoying crowd and as we reached the trail head, literally 500m right before us in packs of 5-10 at a time right off the bat. Now either I walk behind these big packs of people and go slow to the Summit and descend in dark if we decide to traverse to West Summit or go hard and skip the West Summit and beat every single pack if we wanted pictures on the Summit.
Stay positive the result will be positive
So, I decided to turn this plodding into a gear 5 hike to catch one pack at a time. I kind of started having an idea that this many people are going to the Mountain for a purpose; it just can’t be that all these people are avid hikers, climbers or mountaineers. I was right this time. All these people were going to see the larches turned yellow in October and this was the last week to do so. I found this out when I met one of our Club Coach with his wife and dogs in the meadows. However, in the rush to get to the meadows, I had collected enough lead to be able to record some videos and pictures. From the meadows, the trail turns into a Talus field. The talus is wobbly. I wondered how would this many people make it to the summit in the wobbly talus field. As I looked above, I saw 500 more people walking along the ridge like ants. Again, there never was a time to sit or have lunch until the North col where we had lunch and about 5 minutes from there we were at the Summit. We decided not to traverse to the Western Frosty Summit and leave it for some other time.
