El Yelmo

I was planning on doing a blog posting about school yesterday, but seeing as I had only had four days of it by then, it is probably better that I didn't have time to. The reason I didn't have time to was because I spent much of my day climbing El Yelmo, which is one of the taller peaks in the mountain range next to Soto. We left the house around 11:00 and reached the start of the trail by 11:30. Unfortunately, we weren't able to start hiking up the trail at a normal pace due to an unexpected event:

Surprisingly enough, there was a trail-running race coming down the trail that we were intending to hike up. Luckily, it was nearing the end by time we got there, so we only had to spend the first kilometer or so hiking in short bursts up the path and then jumping off to the side so that the racers could stumble by. Other than that, the hike was quite nice and fun, although it was quite hot and their wasn't a lot of shade. For the first part of the hike I was walking at roughly the same pace as my host family because I had my camera out and was snapping pictures, but once the hike got more difficult and rockier and I put away my camera, I ended up having to wait for them to catch up a few times. This was partially due to the fact that I walk at a slightly faster pace than them, partially due to the fact Esperanza struggled a little and had to slow down while going over some of the rocks, and partially due to the fact that Dani and Lorenzo took a wrong turn at one point. It took us roughly three and a half hours to reach the top, which was longer than I expected it to take. Obviously, the race slowed us down some, but the climb itself was a lot harder, but also more fun, than I expected. The last part was easily the hardest though.

The last part consisted of climbing roughly 200 feet up a crevice in which I usually couldn't square my shoulders with my hips due to lack of room (the third picture shows what is the widest part by far). These 200 feet took us just under 10 minutes to climb, partially due to the fact that we were having to pass packs to the person in front of us because we could not fit between the rocks with them on and partially due to the fact that I got stuck between the rock walls and couldn't move or maneuver for a minute or so. But, once we got to the top it was easily worth the trouble because of the views.

The first picture (the one with the huge bridge) features Soto del Real (the town I'm staying in) in the middle. As you can probably tell, it is a little dry here, but I've been told that it is much prettier after the rains during the spring, so I'm hoping that we can do this climb again then so that I can see the difference. If we do I'll make sure to post photos from these same angles to show you guys the difference. Overall, I really enjoyed this hike. I usually don't like doing anything other than sitting on the couch and watching American football on Sundays, but I enjoyed this hike a lot. Anyway, due to the time difference between here and the USA, the hike didn't cause me to miss any games. Unfortunately though, the games aren't televised here so I have to follow the Jets game from my ipod on espn, which gives my live play-by-play coverage.
Anyway, to finish off here are a couple more pictures. I'm hoping to do a posting about school this weekend, so you'll probably here from me then.