Date: 2013-01-22
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

We awoke to the beautiful sounds of Music spring... and Tiny's snoring. I must remember to bring ear plugs. Don't tell Tiny but really wasn't bad, although it sure is fun to harass him. After breaking camp we continued along the Red Tanks trail. We quickly came upon a large group of Boy Scouts that camped at Charlebois last night. We had stopped early...if we had gone another .25 miles we would have made it there. At first we were sad but quickly came across another group of scouts and then another. We quickly assessed it was good we stopped early as there would have been no where to camp and I suspect quite noisy if we had found a place. We transitioned back to the Dutchman trail and had an easy hike along the canyon floor. The Dutchman appears to be the easiest trail. Plenty of water, great views and some shade. We got to cross the springs/water in several locations but the crossings were easy and beautiful. One negative, there were plenty of places we had to push past cats claw and some thorny cacti during the two days of hiking. Hobbit and myself got cut up in numerous places and had blood running from several encounters. Including one time where I was dodging one cactus to flat out run into another. Luckily it was the kind with just a few big thorns, so I got one decent sized puncture wound instead of a lot of little thorns embedded in my arm. At some point we noticed Tiny didn't have a scratch on him. This continued the entire hike. He finally got his only scratch moving a branch for Hobbit. Now we don't call him Tiny because he is a small man. So we could not ever figure out how he did this. We finally decided as an Eagle scout one of his badges was Zen Plant Communication. He denied humming or softly singing to the plants as he pushed past them, we didn't believe him. Maybe he wasn't snoring last night, maybe he was calming the plants for the next day's hike?As we came to the junction for Terrapin trail and we turned left the trail immediately started to climb. We quickly learned Terrapin trail should have been named Terrapin summits. Then we recalled a Terrapin is a turtle. One hiking review wrote this, "This trail is not well cairned, (it doesn't need to be in most spots), and it is easy to get off trail on this climb if you're not paying attention. As long as you keep heading up, you should be just fine." That is an accurate description. At the different saddles it offers great views!! And was well worth the hike up. We also got to see Weavers Needle. In reality if it had not been my third day hiking in a row it might have been easier but this is why I pushed myself to find out if I could take multiple days of hiking in a row. After hiking down and replenishing our water at a spring we encountered a park ranger. He asked, "You just hike Terrapin?" We told him yes and he replied, "Butt kicker huh? I don't hike that one much." We all got a laugh and talked with him a bit. He seemed like a nice guy. We then hiked the last three miles out back to our car. Then immediately drove to a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant Tiny found with his smart phone. Oh boy did it taste great!! I will refrain from recommending it to anyone because I don't know if the food was fantastic or if cardboard with ketchup would have tasted as good after such a great hike.So I hiked just over 31 miles in three days, with every day having some elevation changes at a decent pace. Other than my knees being sore and one hot spot on my left big toe that never turned into a blister I think I did alright. I will try to continue to hike more in the next 6 weeks and continue to improve...