In Erin's case, I think she had more experience than she let on at first, so her scheme sounded pretty hare-brained, to say the least.

Imager, One thing you will find here is that we get a lot of questions from new backpackers and some of them intend to take challenging trips with little or no experience.

Most of the members actively discourage that, except Earthling, who is a true Darwinist (and a guy who sailed his homemade boat from the East Coast all the way to the West Coast of Mexico).

Your friends may be ready for this trip and have done it or ones like it before, but the question is whether you can do it. They think you can, but they might not be the best judges of that for a lot of reasons. The first being that they've done it so of course, you, their friend, can do it because they wouldn't have a wussie for a friend.

This is really flawed thinking. You could be in the best shape possible, but slip or otherwise make a simple mistake because of inexperience and then find yourself with a problem.

My guess is regardless of what you read here, you are going. Have fun, but be careful. We could regale you with story after story about both novice and experienced hikers and climbers who made simple mistakes that were costly, but I'm not sure those have any value.

Just don't let your buddies talk you into anything. The only time I let someone do that to me, I wound up getting hurt; not badly, but enough to be a good lesson. And I knew better.