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Red Group (D2 B4)
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After being woken up by my bunk mates, we got on our socks and headed downstairs. We were pleased with warm hot chocolate. After breakfast was fully set up and cooked, we began to eat. We had scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit. Continuing breakfast, we discussed the Ort Report, which was far too high, and then went back upstairs to get ready for our hikes. After everyone was outside and with their counselors, we started our long trek. The hiking trails at the AMC Lodge are an example of human and environment interaction because the trails are man made. A lot of the AMC workers help to keep the trails accessible, and easy to hike. The trails would not be as nice as they are now if nobody worked on them, and let them grow out. Earlier, Gretchen had agreed we were hiking all 5 peaks: Firescrew, Cardigan, South Peak, Rimrock, and Mt. Gilman (Orange). We had decided to hike the Manning Trail, which is the entire loop. Throughout the hike, we sketched lots of things like a boulder and the view from Firescrew to Cardigan. Finally, after many water, food, and sketch breaks, we reached the summit of Firescrew. It was amazing. We had gotten so lucky with the weather as it was supposed to rain that day, yet there were no clouds in sight and the sun was shining down on us the entire time. Exactly to the right we could see the top of Cardigan, our next destination. We stopped for about 7 minutes on Firescrew before me moved onto hiking the saddle from Firescrew to Cardigan. From where we were on Firescrew, to the summit of Cardigan, was only about 0.5 miles. Within around 5-10, we were at the summit of Mt. Cardigan! The first thing we did when we reached the top was mark the waypoint and look at the amazing view and rock cleavage atop and on the side of the mountain. We then got to eat our lunches we had packed after breakfast. My sandwich was turkey and lettuce on white bread, and an apple and cookie for sides. It was ridiculously windy, so we decided to climb down from the top of the cliff to a small area surrounded by rocks to block the wind. It worked very well. After I finished my lunch, I started sketching the fire tower at the center of the summit. Then, we took a few group photos of our entire hiking group. We then started our way to our next stop, South Peak. Along the way, we sketched only about one or two things. I'm not exactly sure the distance from Cardigan to South Peak, but it wasn't long at all. Once at South Peak, we could see a helicopter come from Firescrew and circle Cardigan. It disappeared for a while but then went back to Firescrew. After our short stop at South Peak, we then headed on to Rimrock. It took about twice as long as it took to get from Cardigan to South Peak, but that was still fairly short. We then stopped at what we thought was the top of Rimrock, yet we found out as we went along that it actually wasn't. Gretchen was kind enough to give us each a healthy energy bar and a few helpings of trail mix. After we finished eating, we kept hiking along the trail. Eventually, we got to our fifth and final peak, Mt. Gilman (Orange). We were overjoyed to reach our second to last destination, whereas the lodge was our last destination. Once we took a short break there, we continued. The entire group was definitely a lot more silent on the way down then normal, possibly because of tiredness and energy loss. It felt like close to forever before we reached the junction that was close to the lodge. When we stopped there, we all began to come awake again as Gretchen pulled out a full stash of M&M's from her hiking pack. We were lucky enough to each get a handful of chocolate M&M's to devour. Within minutes, we could see the parking lot! Gretchen had a short meeting with us and we did our last group cheer, as she let us freely run to the lodge in relief. After unpacking, and taking hot showers, before we knew it, it was dinner time. All of us starving 7th graders sat down at the dining room tables and waited for the food to be served. For the final dinner, we ate lasagna and cheesy bread. Delicious. For dessert, we had ice cream sundaes to pipe us up. We then did the very well practiced ort report, and headed back upstairs. It was not long after that it was bed time. Everyone was extremely tired from our hikes. I crawled into my sleeping bag, turned off the lights, and said goodnight to my bunk mates.
Day 2 At Cardigan by Anna O. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.