I don't really have many pics from the first real hiking day, because I was worried the battery on the camera was going to run out before the end of the trip. The morning went pretty well. We made good progress through the forest, found our rest stops and a lot of bear poo. When we stopped for lunch we were well ahead of schedule, I think that might have been when everybody switched off. We set off after lunch heading north, thinking it was just a few kilometres over a hill or two to a lake and our campsite. I'm not sure what happened? We didn't find the lake, but we did find a massive bog.
Apparently we had passed the lake a few hours ago, but it seems as if no-one had been paying any attention to the maps. But we were now. We were lost! After Tim had got sucked into the bog up to his knee's and we helped him out, it looked like it was going to start getting dark soon. Our guides decided to head south east to try and get out of the bog and back on track or at least find solid ground to camp on for the night. A few more people got stuck in the bog on our way out, but it was nothing serious..
This was our camp the next morning. We had to put our shelters up in the dark again. Me and Seishi put our shelters up together this time so we had a fire in the middle. The heat from the fire gets reflected from the inside of the shelters keeping us a little warmer.
Thursday was a scheduled rest day, just because we had been travelling since Monday. I found this lot making all sorts of noise doing some kind of hippy forest yoga.
Because we still didn't really know where we were after getting lost the day before, in the afternoon a few us went on a mission to find out. We went up-stream from where we had camped to hopefully find a lake and not another bog.
Here's a picture of an eagle (if you can see it) I snapped with my mint wildlife photography skills.
We found a lake! which meant our campsite was about 2.5km north west of where it should've been. It meant a little more Hiking the next day.
That night Seishi tried a different fire technique. Got 2 decent sized logs, shaved the top off of one and put the shavings on it, lit the shaving's and put the other log on top and they burnt hot and for a long time. It took a while to get it going, because it was raining, but it worked well.
We were up at six every morning (except rest days) and packed up and on our way by eight. Crossing another bog above. Trying to find a good place to stop for lunch.
Filling with a few pictures here.
Someone had a feast. We think the bones are of a young moose, but we don't know what ate it?
The orienteering went really well this day. Even though we had extra kilometres to walk we
got to our camp early enough to put up our shelters in day light. It was a really nice place and probably the most comfortable nights sleep I had the entire trip.
Here we are cooking spag bol and drying our stuff for the next day. We did this every night, some nights because of the rain, but most nights because of the sweat. Rubber boots are good for hiking through bogs and this type of terrain, but not so good at letting your feet breathe.
The next day it was mine and Seishi's turn to be the daily guides. Which will be coming soon.
Laters.
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