11 miles of hiking • 5000' elevation gain •
Had to spend last weekend (with it's beautiful weather) in self imposed quarantine, as many of my coworkers tested positive for Covid 19. Ended up doing a 20 mile bike ride once I got my negative results Sunday afternoon.
As a result of them testing positive, my skeleton crew of 3 did everything we could to keep our department going minus 5 people. Lot's of anger, as I had previously complained to my HR that the guys didn't take proper precautions. My personal crew and myself were almost to our second vaccination dose, and we were very lucky with our negative test results. Kind of amazed it took this long to have this happen.
Anyway, a week off of hiking (aka anger management), with lots of extra work and frustration leads to... the biggest sufferfest I can think of. Defiance. Kat suggested it, and at first I was like, "I'll let you know how I feel on Saturday..."
Then I said screw it, let's go.
Our friend Tom was added to the mix and a meetup time of 9 am was decided. I had the most fatigue and I'm the slowest, so I was chosen to lead. It was very slow going up. I've been up Defiance twice before but somehow I forget how relentless the up is. Somehow, it ended up being a completely magical day, despite the suffering.
We had so many different types of weather. Sunshine, fog, rain, snow, sleet. We were going up in t-shirts, then a snowstorm where we put on rain layers, and just as quickly, the sunshine overcame all and we were back to shedding layers. We originally had intended to do the entire loop, but with my slow lead, I decided we should just follow our footsteps back through the snow rather than spend more time finding the route the other way. I've been down Starvation and seen the views, but honestly, my knees hate either way. The worst part of going up Defiance is coming down Defiance.
