![]() ![]() Getting to her feet and cursing her own stupidity she ran the last few steps and swung the door open, slamming it against the sudden downpour. The roads were muddy already and they sucked at her boots until she tripped, sprawling in the grime. After a moment of indecision, Anastasia grabbed his cloak and dashed off to the tavern. There was no sign of Zaxa when she stepped into the two-room apartment they shared in the loft of Errol and Gemma’s house. ![]() Go up and rest, I’ll call you when it’s ready.” Wiping her hands on her apron, Gemma came to stand at Anastasia’s side, gazing down into the crib. “That’s my Selwin,” Anastasia murmured fondly. I wish my girls had been as calm and quiet as him when they were young.” “He’s a funny one that boy,” Gemma continued, stirring a pinch of herbs and salt into the pot, “never a peep and always smiling. Smiling, Anastasia touched the golden curls, same color as his mother’s though with his father’s texture, lightly so as not to disturb the sleeping babe. Storms seem to calm him, they always make me nervous,” Gemma said. Anastasia peeked over her shoulder, humming in anticipation before she approached the crib in the corner. Laughing she dashed into the house, catching the tail end of Gemma’s grin where she stirred the pot over the fire. It was autumn again, a year and two seasons since Anastasia first set foot in the Riverlands, but she had yet to get used to the deluge when it did decide to rain. Squinting at the sky Anastasia saw clouds gathering on the horizon and managed to get everything in before the first drops fell. “Anne, could you bring in the washing?” Gemma called from her place at the window. Our ears clearly needed to be attentive, and our eyes needed to be peeled.Leaning back to stretch Anastasia saw the sun had begun to set, washing the fields in reds and golds. At one point, hearing rockfall reverberating through the basin, we looked back and horrifyingly watched as a massive rock crashed through an area that we had just hiked through. On this day, however, Aaron blazed a brilliant path through the rocks – our conversation through the basin consisted of, “Watch that one, it wobbles!”, and “This one’s loose!”, and “Don’t step on that!”, or “Careful here!” as we slowly made our way through the endless boulder fields. Over the years, I’ve learned that I can no longer keep up when Aaron is hiking up hill in front of me (he’s too fast), but “letting go” of route finding is a little harder for me. On this particular day in the Wind River Range, I couldn’t help but grin as Aaron confidently picked our route through the Alpine Lakes Basin – this may sound trivial, but I assure you that picking an efficient, safe route in an area comprised of 97% boulders, is anything but trivial. That first hike led to more hikes, which led to training for hikes, which led to climbing mountains, which led to climbing all the volcanoes in Washington, which led to hiking and climbing anywhere that we could go together. I remember that first hike together vividly – Aaron was out of breath practically instantly, and I was left wondering not only if he could keep up with me, but also if he would even want to keep up with me. Poo Poo Point is 4 miles round trip, with meager elevation gain. Our first hike together was a simple local hike called “Poo Poo Point” (I have no clue why it has such a horrible name). When Aaron and I met a few years ago, he was not what I would have called a, “hardcore hiker”. ![]() Anastasia staring at the sun Patch#I had been imagining where we needed to go for months and months, and now I could see it.Ī rare patch of grass during the rock-hopping through Alpine Lakes Basin. No longer were our eyes staring at the ground in front of us – for a moment, we were devouring the landscape… absorbing the monstrous scale of the mountains, rocks, lakes and the route before us. But cresting a pass, the view would hit us so powerfully that we could almost feel it. Climbing for an hour or two – staring at the rocks on the ground in front of us and concentrating on carefully picking our line, we were sometimes in an exhausted stupor. And yet, absolutely nothing prepared me for the overwhelming sense of scale and beauty that struck me at each high pass. If you had showed me a photograph from the area, prior to even stepping foot on the high route, I could have told you exactly where it was. I knew what each pass would look like, and what was beyond each pass. Prior to our hike, I had scoured the internet for trip reports and photos – I had seen images of where we were going, and I had the entire route completely memorized. Hugging the wall towards Douglas Peak Pass. ![]()
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