Day Five ~ Tuesday, April 30

We took on Mt. Helvellyn today! It was about 7 miles and took us a good 6 hours or so, and was about 2200 feet change in elevation I believe?
There’s really two parts to the hike up Helvellyn. 1) You go up to the lake at the base of Helvellyn. 2) You hike up Helvellyn.
The hike up to the base took us about an hour to do. We took breaks about every 20 minutes. On the last stretch, we saw (and had to wait for) a helicopter dropping off bags full of rocks. Not exactly sure what they were doing that.
Then we had lunch at the lake. We took about an hour break, and then started on the Helvellyn hike.
There are two trails going to the summit. 1) Swirral edge. This is the one we took. 2) Striding edge. This is the trail to the left (when standing at the base on the lake side and looking up). It looks more like an extreme spine against the sky. We took this one going in the downward direction.
The thing with both trails is that the trail gives out at points as it goes over the rock. It leads to you having to scramble over the rocks, using both hands and feet to get up. It’s terrifying and it pumps adrenaline through your body. You forget you’re cold, you forget you’re tired. You just go, and support each other until everyone has made it.
The view is unbelievable. Even at Philmont, I only got view of the rest of the Rocky Mountains range. Here, I got view of a significant part of the whole country. It truly was breath taking.
The hike down was even more challenging. There was less footing on the rocky part, and we really had to guide each other between good and bad trails. But we made it. And the rest was easy. It took us about an hour to get down and that was with one break I believe.

-Joseph Bruner