Escalating Grouse Mountain ! Three kilometers of climbing a slope estimated at 56% (30 °). It tells you maybe nothing, or high-level athletes that you will surely say that it is a "peace of cake" but ... I do not have quite the profile top athlete in question (any level whatsoever for that matter). The time varies climbed an average of one to three hours. Three hours or more, who cares! The challenge is: even if what it would take me all day, I happen ... and I did!
I cling to my backpack, I check my water supply, I lose myself in reading the dozens of alerts danger at the foot of the mountain (yes that's reassuring!) And go . Time is mixed which gives me the luxury of a solo experience. It is warm but cloudy and humid.
I begin to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures but I quickly understand that if I do not want to be literally swallowed by mosquitoes, it is perhaps better to keep moving. The hard work begins.
The course is divided into four quarters. At each step, a small sign tells you and where you stand. But I'm focused please! Walking, good rhythm, breathing, photos (past a certain height mosquitoes are no longer a problem), I probably spend the first quarter of them realizing it. After all I walk and I climb since what seems like forever and I'm starting to feel ... What do I say "begins" ... all truths are going to put dish: I'm dead! My legs are about to buckle under the weight of my body and my heart makes me clearly understand that if I keep on putting them through this ordeal, I loose there and no regrets, even if I make me eaten by bears. Basically I look like a little dear
Wolf Merlin (one class and distinction rarely equaled we all agree). But who cares! I'm near the end, I feel, I know, I ... > "Stage: 1 / 4" ... Aaaaaaahhhh!! #@!$* Ù%!
Good what? Continue down seems impossible but is equally (and incidentally also prohibited). Go it would be too stupid and then I am promised, I'm back. There, I feigned a little my body, makes him believe that the end is near, swallows half my water bottle, a banana and the air I take nothing my way to the summit. So 3 quarts of climbing, an incessant monologue between encouragement and defeatism, an array of photos and the revelation of an unsuspected strength later: that's it! I am and - against all odds - alive! Although I would not have been against a host committee or some confetti, my personal satisfaction is sufficient and inflated to block. The icing on the cake, he took me in everything and for everything (including breaks) 1 hour and 35 minutes before finally claiming victory. Not bad given the average.
course up there, the table of honor trying to fuck you a little gene (more than being exceed by grandpas when climbing, and yes it happened) when you see all the records that revolve around twenty minutes. But you and me, it did not work for the masses. These names on the lists and I simply do not belong to the same species, so why get tired?
Joking aside, this was quite a while since I had not excelled in this way or that at least I had not felt the effects with much vivacity. I might also add that the experience was a feast for the eyes, the clouds caught in trees and swept from time to time by the sunbeams were able to confer the time and place, an infinite poetry and real intensity. The climbing was one of his meetings between nature and humanity muscular, deep, almost meditative way ...
next on White Skin and Blue Eyes:
Whale Watching: Stay Tunned
© Pictures: Ally (myself)
