After the conference that I talked about last week,
a few of the grad students in my lab
decided to stick around in Vancouver
and explore and go hiking.
Now, I am not a hiker but I'm always up for an adventure
so I decided to stick around and go with them.
We drove up to Squamish and started our first hike
on Saturday, and it started off so beautiful.
We started off at Shannon Falls and then
we walked over to the trailhead for our first hike, Stawamus
Chief, and it had an ominous sign.
Steep and rough trails, only experienced
climbers, something about having to scramble up with my hands.
But then, before any of that could sink in, we were off.
I mean up.
I expected that the stairs were just bringing us up
to the trailhead, but no.
They went up, and up, and up.
The trail was stairs.
We climbed something like 1800 feet
straight up and all of this in my hot pink running shoes.
But then we reached the look out and it was beautiful.
There were views of a forest, and of a bit of a valley,
and I thought, wow, this is really nice.
We made it!
But I was wrong.
We kept going up, and up, and up some more, and then at one
point we hit a ladder on the side of the mountain
and I just thought, you've got to be kidding me.
But I said OK, and up the ladder I went.
And you know, it wasn't that bad.
It was a little slippery and a little wet,
but I made it up the ladder.
And then we went up, and up, and up some more and then at one
point we hit, like, this ravine that
had a chain in the middle of it to help yank yourself
up the ravine and I just thought, seriously?
But up the ravine I went!
Now at this point, I don't have a picture of it,
but I was literally clinging to a tree
because I was worried that I was going to slide down
the side of this, like, ravine, steep rock face thing
that we were on.
And so I'm clinging to this tree, and then from below us
we hear a shout.
In fact, it wound up being other Stanford genetics graduate
students who had also somehow happened
to climb up the same mountain at the same exact time
and meet us almost right at the top.
And so with a little encouragement,
I let go of my tree and then up we kept
going up this sheer rock face--
or at least sheer rock face to someone who isn't a hiker.
And then we were at the top and it truly was a beautiful view,
and I was glad that I had made it up there
and it was so nice to be up there with my friends.
But then also suddenly more friends, and we were up there
and we'd all climbed this mountain.
And it was great, it was exciting
even though it had taken me a lot to get up there.
But then we had to get down the mountain,
and I have no video of this because we were
trying to beat the sun down.
The sun was going down and we had to get down the mountain
and it was backwards down all these stairs.
And then at one point, we had to lower ourselves back down
on this chain, and it was wet, and slippery, and at one point
I sort of slid and I bashed my knee.
But we made it.
We made it down the mountain and with jiggly jello,
wobbly legs I managed to get back to the car.
And then after an amazing shower and a really big dinner
and a few hours of great, great sleep, we did it again.
Less steep this time, but 11 miles round trip.
We hiked up to Garibaldi Lake.
It felt like something out of Lord of the Rings,
with moss covered trees and a gentle rain,
and it was so pleasant seeing snow
covered mountains right across from us
until it started to get colder and colder.
And I realized that we were hiking high enough
up in my hot pink sneakers for there to be snow.
But we kept going, and bundled up,
and layered up, and finally hit a beautiful lake.
The water was truly turquoise and I'd never
seen anything like it.
And looking into it later, it turns out
that the color comes from something called
glacial flower, fine particles of rock created
by glacial erosion that becomes suspended in the meltwater
from--
that's right-- the glaciers we were right near.
But after hiking three hours up, we then, again,
had to hike three hours down.
And at the time, I was tired, and hungry,
and really wished that I could suddenly gain
the power of teleportation.
But I was also and am also still so, so glad that I did it.
I climbed a mountain.
Two mountains, and I saw some amazing, beautiful things
that just don't translate into pictures.
And I learned that I can do it and I
learned that running shoes are not hiking shoes,
and I learned that somewhere in all of there
is a metaphor for grad school.
Go forth and climb a frigging mountain.