Post by Grubb.
Searching my AllTrails app I found a trail labeled “moderate” that was midway between the Aerosilla chair lift and where we’re staying. I downloaded the directions. After we were unloaded from the lift and fortified by a cappuccino (for me) and a smoothie (for Ella), we caught a #20 bus and went up the highway. We got off at an intersecting road that my app indicated would lead to the trail head. A mile up the road, Ella asked what the hell we were doing. I checked my app. Hmm. I told her we needed to take a left in about a quarter mile and then go six blocks before we took a right and then go four more blocks. Ella marched ahead saying things that luckily I couldn’t hear.
By the time we made the left turn on a dusty road where blocks weren’t clearly distinguished (is that a road or a long driveway?), Ella was complaining about a headache. I had a slight cold that came on when I was in Córdoba, so I was slogging. I checked my app again, then Google maps. We’d gone a mile-and-a-half and Google said we had another mile to go…before we reached the trail head! And although AllTrails said the difficulty was moderate, Ella pointed out that nine-tenths of a mile in, the trail had a thirty-degree incline. So by the time we would make it to the trail it would be late afternoon. The prospect of descending a thirty-degree incline in the dark was not a welcoming thought. Turning around and going back to the highway was the other option. Again, looking at the steam coming out of Ella’s ears, this was an option I didn’t want to entertain.
Then—what’s this? I see a woman standing under a makeshift shelter…waiting. Could this be a bus stop? On some dirt back road? I ask the woman what bus stopped there. She said, “21”, the number of one of the buses that went by where we were staying. Here was an option we could celebrate!
Once we were on the bus the question arose (when the steam stopped coming out of Ella’s ears) as to why we hadn’t taken the #21 bus to begin with. Well AllTrails was no help in that regard, and I had been so fixated on #20 being our primary mode of transport I had neglected to check out the alternatives. Cross-checking AllTrails with Google maps sometimes is tricky because AllTrails isn’t able a lot of times to give an address.
And that moderate hike that morphed into a difficult climb? After the Aerosilla, why kill myself for what amounted to the same view only less dramatic. Instead we got to break away from the tourist traps and choke on the dust of some authentically dismal roads. Nothing like the real thing!
Ella’s clarification…as to steam coming out of my ears, we’ll, we all know how Grubb loves to take artistic license…And here is a beauty I saw as we marched along the road.
