Flume Slide and Liberty

It's been forever since I hiked Flume and Liberty, and now I remember why. It's hard! I decided to go all in on my hiking training, though, and decided that the loop would be a good practice hike, which it definitely was. I got up early - about 6:15 and was out the door by 6:45. I had to stop once on the way up, but made it there by 8:45 (one thing that's nice is that it's a straight shot up Rt 93 - only 2 hours! One of the shorter drives. 

I was hiking by 9, and thought I would make a 9-5 day of it, but it took me way longer. The first part was very nice, I did a gentle saunter and really enjoyed the first few miles, because I knew it was going to get harder. And it did. At first it was a gentle uphill, I definitely knew I was going up, but nothing killer. It took me about 2 hrs and 20 min to get to the slide part, and that's when things got real. At first it was just some rocks, but then I got to the slab. I forgot how much slab there was! So so much. This time it was all wet - which I kind of knew was going to happen because it rained yesterday. But, I didn't really think about how much I would slip on the rock and how sketchy it would be. (Hint, I slipped a lot, and it was really sketchy). I also forgot that when you finally get to the top of the slabby bits, you still have to go up an insane amount of steep, rocky trail. It was brutal. I could feel my heart pounding for some of the climbing, and had to stop and let it slow down before starting again. (Might need to do more aerobic?)

Once I got to the top, there was this really nice lookout with a great view, which I went and sat at, and ate a half a cheese sandwich on sourdough, and admired the mountains. I had a lot more to go, so I soon left to summit Flume - the hard parts done, it wasn't too bad. I sat on Flume for about 5 minutes, but I remembered that the view from Liberty is more 360, and decided to go over there for the second half of my sandwich and an orange. 

It was a long way down and then a long way up on the ridgeline, so, not like one of those awesome ridgelines. I was pretty excited to get to the top and be done with climbing up - also the view was amazing and it was so nice up there. I spent a while sitting up top, admiring the view, and eating. I people watched as others came up, and took some people's photos for them. Finally it was time to head back down.

It's a pretty steep downhill on this one. I started doing pretty well with trusting my feet and using parkour. I felt pretty good about it! After a while, though, I was so tired of going down that things got slower. I also had to stop at Liberty Spring because, even though I put 2 liters of water in my bladder, I was out of water. The hike down seemed pretty long and brutal. A couple times I accidentally turned off all trails, which was a bummer because I don't have the full stats for the hike. But, I can say that it was slow. 

At the end, I felt tired and sore, but my meniscus feels fine, which is good news. I wore my new hiking boots which were mostly perfect, but unfortunately I think they are a little loose - my feet were moving around in them on the downhill, and I have some "hot spots" that aren't quite blisters. I'm going to try insoles. I love that the new boots are fully waterproof - there were a few times that I was crossing a stream and the stepping stone was a couple inches under water, but I just used it anyhow, and it was no problem! Here are my incomplete statistics - really slow on the super uphill bit!