You Are Here: Mt Garfield

Today was a day for mental strength, not just physical strength. Karen and I headed out to hike Mt Garfield. We consulted with Karen's father-in-law who is a very experienced hiker. Now whether he misunderstood us, or whether he was messing with us.. he told us to take the Gale River Trail.. which being in the area we figured OK, he knows what he's talking about. The other faux pas I undertook was reading the description for the Garfield Trail.. even though I was convinced I had read the description for the Gale River Trail. We arrived at the trailhead and set out uneventfully. Anticipating 4-ish miles to the intersection with the Garfield Ridge Trail, initially all was well. Other than of course it being as challenging as a 4K trail is expected to be, there were no major mishaps. We reached the intersection and took the right for what we were expecting to be about a 0.2 mile hike to the summit. 0.2 turned into 0.4, which turned into a mile.. and it just kept going. By now I start going into panic mode. Not that I felt unsafe or in danger.. but I am a slave to the numbers. I wear a Garmin, I read trail descriptions.. I anticipate mileage and expect to complete that mileage. At this point, we had no clue how far we had to go. We knew we were heading in the right direction as there was signage at the intersection.. just no mileage indicators, or we would have realized and likely called an audible by heading to Galehead instead which was much closer.. just left instead of right. We eventually ran into some AT thru-hikers who had come from Garfield and asked them how much further.. the response was "gosh, I'm not sure, a couple of miles.. go straight for a while then up and over and straight up". I kid you not, that was what this guy said. What does that even mean? And a couple more miles???? So now I'm letting my head get the best of me. Thank goodness Karen is a complete and total saint. She lets me complain, she lets me ramble, she encourages me.. she plows on and knows I have to keep going to catch up with her. And I love that about her. We eventually found out that the up and over and straight up was a section of trail that I called "the waterfall".. literally straight up what would probably be a cascade with enough water.. as it was there were several sections with small trickles of water you had to navigate.. but nothing extreme on this day (I imagine as Winter melts into Spring it could be a rather different story). At the top is the Garfield Ridge campsite. With Karen's guidance and encouragement we pushed on... and EVENTUALLY reached the intersection we initially thought we were at.. which was at the top of the Garfield Trail.. not the Gale River Trail. The final push to the top... and total white out. So all that work, and other than being able to say we had completed another 4K, we had nothing to show for it! Comical, really.. My Garmin died shortly into our descent.. so we had no clue how we were pacing. Which thankfully (again) for Karen's patience, isn't a priority to her.. and was a lesson for me, since I so heavily rely on that technology for my mental state of being. It started to rain lightly on the way back to the car, just to top off the day. We eventually made it and were able to have a laugh. Things would have been fine if we (actually me) had been mentally prepared for that.. but not being just threw me right off. Lesson learned. Go with the flow. Still an accomplishment.

Strava Activity (battery died on descent)