First mile or so, it is nice and easy forest walk. Before you get out the forest, there is a restroom. We stashed 1 liter of water per person behind a tree here for the hike back, just in case we were out of water completely. Everything was fine until now.
After this, next section is boulder fields. one after another. Trail is very well marked with wooden poles, even at night you can see them easily. we had no trouble finding them. We kept a tight group until this point, since we didn't want to loose anyone in the dark. One guy in my group was really slow and not feeling well. He tried to continue up, but at some point he fell behind and got separated from the group. He then decided to go back down. We on the other hand kept shouting his name and waited 30 mins for him. No signs! Worried , but having known that he had done this before we convinced ourselves that he'd be fine.
There was another group that passed us very early on in the forest area, from the same group two girls were left behind, they decided to join us for the company. We share fun moments to the summit.
After we crossed our last boulder field, ~1200 feet below the summit,we came across this huge scree slope. It looked terrifying. Eveyone was in great shape until this, but last mile and 1200 feet of scree field, proved much more difficult than it seemed earlier. Two step forward and one step back! I kept looking at my GPS and to the ridge line standing in front of me, thinking this is it… few more steps and I will be at the top! But, for quite awhile, summit did not seem to get any closer.
It was getting brighter as it was getting closer to sunrise. I was carrying my camera and tripod and hoping for a great sunrise. I wanted to catch the first light. 100 feet below the summit, I got a huge adrenaline rush as I saw the sun was about to come up. I ran up the slope, didn't care how my legs felt during that time, setup my camera just in time to catch this amazing sunrise!
You can see the crater and steam coming out of it on the lower left of the photo. In the diastase, Spirit Lake (formed by the volcanic eruption) is visible with reflection of the clouds.
After soaking up the views, it was time to go back. We all thought going down would be much easier! Sure -- 1st mile was piece of cake, as we ran down the scree slope in 30 mins. It took us well over an hour to get up this slope. After that, getting through the boulder field was very painful. My knees were completely dead by the time I got to the forest. Every single person that we came across during our decent, asked about friend that we lost in the beginning and said he is waiting at the trailhead.
Overall, it was 9 miles and 4600 feet elevation gain. Great experience, but I felt exhausted after this. We stopped for celebratory beer after the hike and re-lived our moments.
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