Getting on top of that Shqip

How should one start a piece about hiking up a mountain? I don't really have a clue so I'll start in the middle and see how it pans out from there.

So there I was leaning against a cube like block on the side of a mountain about 5 miles west of Librazdh. Ben and I were were both trying to push ourselves back onto the path and make our way up the last leg of the mountain. On the way up the mountain the group had split and Ben and I were now the tails of the group which had fallen behind. We had to do something to get our minds off how tired we were and how far we had yet to go. Being that nerds that we are we turned to movie quotes. Soon I was singing “I love block. Block, Block, Block. There it goes down my throat” while Ben asked           “What is this? Why is it here? What does it mean?”. Those ridiculous lines sparked enough laughter that we were able to break free from our lethargy and return to the task at hand.

We had already bushwacked our way up through the foothills close to the highway and crawled our way up a rocky hillside and were now taking an old mining road that wound its way back and fourth across the mountain. The two other volunteers in our group, Sean and Zoe, were further up the path than we were but that was mostly due to Sean's indomitable will ( Zoe was quite the trooper but had only managed to order a plate a fries at the resturant we had a lunch at hours before which meant she had very little energy). Ben and I quickly catch up the the pair and we head up the rest of the path together. We keep thinking that the path must end soon and that we'll be with the other group in no time. Sometime later we here a few distant yells and look around. There on the spire stood some of the other members of group. They were waving at us and telling us to keep going but honestly when we rounded the next bend and saw how much further we had to go Ben and I seriously thought about stopping. Instead decided that perhaps the best way to go on was to try checkpoints like in many of the video games we played before we flew to Albania. So we pointed to a turn in the road and said ok let's go there and then take a break (we were joking that maybe the guy with the mouse would forget about us for awhile while he checked on some other stack of volunteers as we headed towards the corner).

About 30-45 minutes later we finally make it to the base of the spire and the final section.  When we arrived we heard someone talking on a cell pone only to find that Narith, another volunteer, had received a call from a family member and so decided not to tackle the last leg of the hike. We talk with Narith  for awhile and then began our way up the last leg. We had to do some more bushwacking and scramble up some more lose rocks but we made it.

Or so we thought. It ended up that we arrived not at the spire but at a grassy knoll somewhat below it. Here the other volunteers had a made a pseudo basecamp where we found them much on fresh apples and hunks of cheese. Ben and Sean decided to make the final push to the summit but Zoe and I said to hell with it and set about getting some much needed rest.

It's really too bad I hadn't thought to charge my camera the night before. The views were awesome. I'll have to grab some pictures from some of my fellows and put them up here.