28 August 2006 19:41
Two o'clock did come around kind of early, but there was a good adrenaline rush that came with doing something new and exotic to help me wake up. Plus it was kinda chilly.We were up to fourteen now, but I was pleasantly surprised with how soon we got under steam. The moon was close to full and only had a thin cirrus layer to shine through so we were well lit. The first portion of our journey consisted of following the fairly even grade of the road for a while before turning off the road onto an actual trail that wasted no time but immediately launched into a series of switchbacks. Besides being fraught with mud puddles the road presented little obstacle, but regardless it quickly separated us into two groups: those who walk at a moderate pace, and those who walk like it's a race. The grouping persisted until the last half hour when things really got strung out, although a number of people traded groups a time or two.
Katrine and I were familiar with the trail to Portland Gap, and Ron of course had been to the top numerous times on previous Salt trips. We went to it with will and made pretty good time. Ron fell in a hole at one point, but survived uninjured (he had moved to the side of the trail to turn and ask Robert a question, but he stepped into a washout and apparently dropped about five feet in mid-question before his fall was arrested by the soft dirt at the bottom). Other than that no much out of the ordinary happened.
I was impressed with how alpine it seemed--or at the very least, how un-Jamaica-like it was. The wind was howling at points, we were mostly sheltered on the trail, but I could hear it whistling down across the trees below Portland Gap. The moonlight was quite bright yet still eerie at points with all the shadows lurking everywhere. It was cool too, I kept my sweatshirt on for a good portion of the hike to the Gap. Memories kept resurfacing of the last early morning hike I'd gone on in Colorado a number of summers ago with Kyle. That peak (Longs) was twice as high, the hike twice as long, and the weather twice as cold; but stumbling up a trail at three in the morning in the moonlight looked pretty much the same. The main thing that told me I was still in Jamaica was hearing the reggae thumping up from somewhere in the township of Arntully--a strong mile across the valley as the crow flies.
Until about forty-five minutes from the Gap the trail continues to switchback up the ridge through an assorted collection of coffee plantings. Then it reaches the east side of the ridge and begins a straight-line climbing traverse through untouched jungle. As evidenced elsewhere in the Blue Mountains, the vegetation above 4000' MSL is more of a rain forest than anything else due to the fact that it's the only ridge within 90 miles (the distance to Cuba in the north). One number I heard tossed out was rainfall in the range of 200" per year in the Blue Mountain area (a coffee estate I visited just north of Hollywell averages about 220 days a year where it sees little or nothing of the sun). When clouds are rolling over the area everything drips. Spanish moss and other lichens grow profusely in the wet climate...in all it's quite exotic and absolutely gorgeous to hike through.
We reached Portland Gap around quarter to four and stopped for a break to sit on the wet grass and freeze while everybody caught up. The moon was still shining full, but was now well on its way to setting on the western horizon. Soon it would be too far behind us (we were hiking east) to do much good, even if the foliage hadn't thickened. I snapped a few freehand shots (1/1.3 second exposure) of the moon silhouetted by the fir trees edging the small lawn at the gap, but didn't get anything too impressive (hard to hold still when your teeth are chattering).
Now we were a scant three miles from the summit and we continued in earnest. The trail here did much more winding, although switchbacks were still common. The true beauty of our surroundings went unnoticed...those were to be savoured during the descent (in daylight!). We continued by flashlight for another hour until dawn began to creep into consciousness. We were in the shadow of the mountain, but slowly the sky began to light up with some of the most uncanny oranges and pinks I have ever beheld in a sunrise. As the dawn commenced in earnest, I began a homestretch push to reach the top before the sunrise.
This involved some jogging until I'd maxed out my breathing capacity--I timed it, fifty-five breaths (a full inhale/exhale cycle) per minute. From then on my pace was determined by the oxygen demand; if my breathing slowed then I sped up, if I started gasping then I slowed down. I caught up with Ben and Nick who were in the lead. They picked up the pace to stay with me, although much to my chagrin they were still carrying on a conversation. Granted I'd used up any reserves just catching up, but they were still making it look a lot easier than it felt to me.
The most beautiful part of the day occurred before I caught up with them though. I'd crested one of the shoulders of the peak and had a several hundred yard stretch of fairly flat trail. It was now light enough to see everything quite clearly (about ten minutes before sunrise). Having crested the shoulder I could see to the north for the first time, the mountains fading north into purple haze about fifteen miles away (no seeing Cuba today). Meanwhile the sky directly overhead was lit up with orange and pink streaking through the water vapor that was ever-so-slightly condensing in the pressure drop as the southeast wind dropped over the Blue Ridge. The reflected light off the vapor lit up the entire shadow of the mountain in an exceptional ambient glow of the same pinkish orange--so that the trail i was walking on was lit up in luminous orange, just as if I were wearing orange-tinted sunglasses.
I would have loved to photograph it, but it's one of those things that doesn't photograph well so I kept moving on despite knowing that sunrise was less than five minutes away. We actually reached the top around twenty minutes later, and just in time for a pseudo sunrise as the sun peaked out above the cumulous clouds forming out over the Caribbean to the east. It had shown beneath them to give us the spectacular glow earlier before climbing behind the line of clouds. As it climbed higher the solar heat immediately began wrecking havoc and the visibility headed downhill in a handbasket. Haze and cumulous clouds sprang into being after a brief three minute glimpse of sunshine and we were enveloped in a steady stream of fog ripping across the peak.
I think I failed to mention that it was blowing about thirty to thirty-five knots across the peak with what I'm guessing was about a 55 degree ambient temperature (13°C). There was also more than enough moisture in the air to make everything damp. After some victory photographs, everybody eventually retired to what was left standing of a small two-room building standing in a clearing below the peak. We spent some time there eating the granola bars we'd lugged to the summit and huddling together to recoup lost body heat; swapping stories and in general just shooting the bull. I'd started shivering uncontrollably at some point (surprise, surprise considering the temperature drop I'd just subjected my body to), but eventually that subsided since the building was a very effective windbreak.
— Moon from Portland Gap
— Nick and myself at the summit, you can see the sun filtering through at the bottom. Did I mention that the iron of the tripod had cold-soaked over night?
— Nick, Diana, Leah, and Katrine a couple minutes later. Note the wind.
We spent almost an hour on top before starting back down through the scrub that covers the last 500 feet or so of elevation. Quickly enough though, we were back in the "rain forest" portion of things which proved true to its earlier promise to provide some very interesting vegetation to hike through. Katrine and I wound up in the back of the pack as we took our sweet time coming down; taking little detours to peer into gullies, stopping to take pictures of flowers, having a long discussion on the merits of walking sticks, haggling entry fees with a park ranger, dodging rain showers, or just admiring the scenery. We were never really far behind the group (half mile at most), but never did catch up to them before getting back to the lodge.
— The trail on our way down; very green and very wet.
— The view from below Portland Gap. If you look at this map we were right near where it says "Abbey Green" looking straight at Arntully and the road traversing the ridge from Hagley Gap on the left towards Penlyne Castle on the right.
— And this was the ridge Nick, Ben, and I climbed last night (approximate route up on the left, we crossed behind the ridge to follow the established trail back down). You can see the various areas with differing colours of vegetation where the various crops are planted. The dark green shrubs in the bottom left are coffee, coffee is also planted in the foreground (bottom right) where you can see a man working inside the red circle. Too small to see in the picture, but he was clearing weeds from around the young bushes with a machete.
Despite a late brunch, it was odd that nobody had any excessive amounts of energy to burn off right away. I wound up helping Robert change a flat on his company car (a Suzuki...why can my company own a 4x4, even if it is a wimpy SUV?). Turns out he's an engineer helping with the construction at Norman Manley for a year or two. He'd actually seen me two days earlier as I traipsed through the airport on my way to Customs after getting in from Mexico (and thought I looked rather young to be a pilot...oops). [I've kept an eye peeled for him ever since, but haven't seen him in the two months since].
Enjoying pancakes for brunch and kicking back (it was only 0940 when I took these).
Our ride showed up sometime around noon and we all piled back in for the trip to Mavis Bank. I managed to find a position that avoided banging any parts of my ribcage against the framework of the Landcruiser that were still bruised from our ride up the hill the day before and we set off. The ride down seemed quicker than the ride up, a combination of skewed perspective (now familiar with route) and gravity. There seemed to be less activity on the road, fewer children out playing. We had some fun watching Robert and Candy following us in their lower-slung Suzuki, and feeling somewhat more giddy on some of the steeply sloped stretches as the Landcruiser felt much less stable going down than it did up (it didn't help that I was standing on the wheel wells instead of ten inches lower in the main bed). Reaching Mavis Bank we quickly transferred to our waiting vehicles and continued down into town.
From the top of Blue Mountain Peak at 0600 to Waterloo Rd at 1400. What a change in climate, atmosphere, altitude, scenery, and population density--all in eight hours. That was kinda fun. Might have to do it again someday...
(uh, I'm going to need some help with that guys, you'll need to come back so I have the same company to go along with).
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