We departed the Zealand Road parking area at 7:45am, considerably later than we had hoped to and made good time along the easy terrain of Zealand Trail to the hut where we stopped briefly.
Losing a few minutes trying to find Twinway where it crosses the brook above the falls, we started the real climb up to our first destination, the summit of Zealand. There we ran into the Zealand team who left the parking lot about the same time we did but beat us there by what looked like a few minutes.
Then it happened. Coming down off of Zealand I was hit with some pretty severe cramps in my quadriceps that would stay with me for several miles to come. This, along with a minor knee injury to another member of our team slowed us down quite a bit for the rest of the day and changed the dynamic of our trip.
At the summit of Guyot, we decided we would no longer attempt to bag West Bond or Bondcliff knowing we wouldn’t be able to accomplish the feat before nightfall in our sorry condition.
We finally made it onto the summit of Bond a little after 1pm. Yes, we were late and yes, we caught plenty of flak for it already. Our flag was raised without incident and we enjoyed the view and photo ops with others until 2pm when we observed a moment of silence for those lost on 9/11 and disassembled our set-up.
We could see the flags on Bondcliff and West Bond and were unspeakably thankful to the couple who came offering homemade cookies. We all commented later that we regretted not taking more!
We hobbled back to Zealand Road shortly after 7pm pretty beat up but also happy to have participated in such a unique and important event. Truth be told, most of us bit off a tad bit more than we could reasonably chew but we survived, learned a few lessons, and look forward to next year. :flag:
