Wherein Things Begin to go Downhill

Station 7, at at last! It is now 11:20 a.m., and we've been hiking for over four hours. We began our hike a bit under 2000 meters above sea level, and are now at 3000 meters with 776 left to go. It's raining. We continued on a bit beyond this point, but decided to turn back before too long. You can see a photo of us at our turning point at Ben's blog, here. (And I'm in that photo! Click on it to zoom in and see how wet we really were.) Our reasoning? We knew that we still had a few hours to go before reaching the top, and a long hike down as well. We had no idea whether or not the weather would clear. Four hours of climbing in the rain with no guarantee of any kind of view once we finally did get to the top wasn't too inspiring - especially since we were already wet to the skin. We were disappointed not to have made it all the way to the top, but we all agreed that it was the right choice in the end - especially since the clouds only increased, both on our hike-day and into the next. Turning around saved it from being an altogether miserable experience. Instead, it's something that I can look back on and still say, "That was a lot of fun! We had a couple rough spots, but what a great experience!"