Hidden Spring Jct to Buesch Lake

Hidden Spring Jct to Buesch Lake

by | Aug 16, 2014 | Hikertrash Cont... Part 1, Pacific Crest Trail

Saturday, August 16, 2014
Day 2: Hidden Spring Trail Junction to Buesch Lake (2309.0)
Miles: 24.8
Miles to Go: 93

Dusty, Trenchstar and Bearclaw were all relieved I didn’t wake them up at the ass-crack of dawn so we could “be on the trail early.” When my eyes popped open at 5:30, I’d briefly considered deflating my air mattress as a joke, but somehow I think I’m the only one who would have considered it funny. It was almost 8 o’clock when I finally rolled over and unscrewed the valve on my NeoAir.

“Oh, there’s the alarm! She’s up!” Dusty joked from their tent.

Breakfast was a Mountain House Breakfast Skillet wrapped in tortillas with hot sauce.

“Ugh, Mountain House is so gross.” Dusty sighed. “That’s the only one worth eating.”

This didn’t bode well for us. Two-thirds of our meals were going to be Mountain House. I’d been lazy with our meal prep this trip because I’d been too busy with work to make my own. Costco had a whole box of Mountain House for fifty bucks. It was so easy. I’m only human! I caved in and bought it.

“It’s not gross!” Trenchstar assured us. “Dusty just got tired of it on the trail because we ate it at every meal for like a month. It does make your poo look like soft-serve ice cream though.” Wow! Now there was something to look forward too!

We hadn’t even been on the trail for an hour when we stopped on a saddle overlooking Shoe Lake for a snack. From high above, it looked more like a giant letter “U” than a shoe. Where the land jutted into the lake, we could see a few beautiful campsites nestled in the tall pines. We should have walked the extra couple of miles last night: it looked pretty sweet down there.

The trail past Shoe Lake was almost all downhill right into White Pass. We picked up speed crossing under the lifts of the White Pass Ski Area and didn’t stop until we popped out at the trailhead parking lot in White Pass. Next to the trail was a table full of people, sitting beside a BBQ. Trail magic!

“You guys thru-hiking? Want a hamburger?” The gentleman closest to the grill hollered over to us.

There are no words to express how badly I wanted to answer that first question with a “yes.” But I wasn’t a thru-hiker. And I really didn’t need a hamburger. I looked over at Bearclaw; it was obvious he was having the same dilemma.

“No. We’re just section hiking.” He sighed before quickly adding, “We thru-hiked last year but got shut out in Packwood by that big winter storm that hit mid-September. We’re just trying to finish up some of what we missed.”

“Oh, yeah. That was a hell of a storm. You guys want a burger?”

Bearclaw looked at Trenchstar. Trenchstar looked at Dusty. Dusty looked at me. I looked at Bearclaw. We all wanted a hamburger, but those hamburgers were meant for starving thru-hikers and hungry section hikers, who’d been hiking more than twenty-four hours. We weren’t even hungry. In fact, the only reason I wanted a burger was to feel like I was part of the club again. And that’s when I realized how much our thru-hike had really meant to me. I’d never been prouder of myself for anything, ever and I desperately wanted that feeling back.

“Nah, we haven’t even hiked twenty miles yet,” Bearclaw finally responded. “Save them for someone that really deserves them.”

I could tell it pained him to say that, as much as it pained me to hear it.

Dusty and Trenchstar needed to head back to Olympia to work in the morning, so they’d left a car at the trailhead. Before taking off, they gave us a quick ride to the gas station to pick up a few snacks and a cold bottle of Gatorade. The store was crawling with thru-hikers.

“You thru-hiking?” A spunky girl in her early twenties asked as I exited the bathroom.

Feeling a little cranky I kinda wanted to be like, “I think it’s pretty obvious from my muffin top that I’m not.” But she was just trying to be nice, so instead I responded with, “We actually hiked in 2013! How’s your hike going?”

She informed me their hike was going really well, though they were trying to slow down and stretch it out as long as possible. I warned her not to stretch it out too long because September in Washington could be a huge bitch. She nodded in agreement but admitted that none of them wanted the trail to end. They weren’t ready for it to be over.

“No one ever wants the trail to end. No one is ever ready for it to be over.”

“Are the hiker blues really as bad as people say they are?” She asked.

“You have no idea,” I answered truthfully.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that. What are you trail names by the way?” She asked.

“I’m Hummingbird, and my husband is Bearclaw.”

“I’ve seen your names in registers all the way up the trail!” She said excitedly. I don’t think she had any idea but that totally made my day.

The trail out of White Pass wound its way around the backside of Leech Lake and into the Snoqualmie National Forest. The trail was wide with little to no elevation gain, as it wandered deep into the forest past a handful shallow lakes and ponds. We had every intention of camping at Sand Lake but when we arrived neither of us felt much like stopping. We were in hiker mode.

Arriving at Buesch Lake in the early evening, we set up camp in a flat site between the trail and the lake. As our Mountain House dinner rehydrated, I looked at our map.

“We hiked almost twenty-five miles today,” I said.

“What? Are you sure?” Bearclaw looked as confused I was.

I recalculated the numbers.

“Yup.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“I have no idea. But I bet we sleep like the dead tonight.” I smiled.

Washington Views For Days
Washington Views For Days
Shoe Lake
Shoe Lake
One Last Trail Family Photo
One Last Trail Family Photo
Mist Over Buesch Lake
Mist Over Buesch Lake
Snowgrass to Hidden Springs Jct.

Snowgrass to Hidden Springs Jct.

by | Aug 15, 2014 | Hikertrash Cont... Part 1, Pacific Crest Trail

Friday, August 15, 2014
Day 1: Snowgrass Trailhead to Hidden Spring Trail Junction (2284.2)
Miles: 17
Miles to Go: 117.8

“Woah… How did you escape the sixties intact?”

We were raiding the grocery store for a quick and easy breakfast we could eat on our way to the trailhead when Trenchstar caught the attention of an old hippie. Dusty, Bearclaw and I stifled a giggle as Trench tried to explain to his new friend that he had unfortunately missed the sixties by at least a decade.

The hippie didn’t believe him for one second. He went on about LSD and 60’s music as if Trenchstar had time warped out of 1968 earlier in the morning and landed right smack dab in the middle of the grocery store. Looking at Trenchstar, an amused smile on my face, I could totally see the confusion. With his chest-length, curly black hair and his thick mustache, he had the timeless look of a philosopher-poet. Slap some bell-bottoms, a paisley printed dress shirt and a tasseled leather jacket on him, add a guitar and a flower garland for good measure, and you’d have yourself a bona fide hippie. We laughed about this all the way to the trailhead.

Snowgrass Trail #96 was a lot steeper than I remembered it being, or maybe I was just super out-of-shape. Either way, I was happy for the bumper-crop of blueberries that lined the trail because it gave me an excuse to stop every hundred and fifty feet to catch my breath. I mean, pick blueberries. Yeah, that! Fistful after blue fistful, we made our way up the mountainside.

Eventually, the trail led out of the forest and into brilliant green meadows brimming with wildflowers— orange Indian paintbrushes blended flawlessly with purple alpine lupine and white yarrow. All this was punctuated by puffy, ivory colored flowers that looked like truffula trees from Dr. Suess’ The Lorax.
None of it looked familiar, and it wasn’t until we stumbled upon a familiar sign, that I realized why. The last time we’d been here the entire meadow was buried under half a foot of snow. This was the meadow that enveloped the PCT at the Snowgrass Junction!

“I’M ON THE PCT!” I yelled in an ode to the Aussie we’d met back on our first day out of Campo. And then, in true hiker fashion, we plopped down under the sign for a snack.

“You think those guys are thru-hikers?” Bearclaw asked watching two northbound hikers headed up the trail towards us.

There was no doubt about it. Their smooth, long gait and perfect foot placement reeked of a oneness with the trail that only comes from hiking long distances. Not to mention the fact that they were hauling-ass. We were only twenty miles from White Pass. Today was definitely a town day for them; pizza was calling.

Within minutes, they’d spanned the gap between the edge of the meadow and us. They didn’t speak much English, just enough to let us know that they were German thru-hikers. They were so lean and fit; they probably could have snapped the head off a grizzly bear with their thighs. I wondered with a twinge of jealousy and sadness if that was how we’d looked by the time we’d arrived in Washington.

They gratefully accepted an apple and a handful of gummy worms, which they devoured in two bites and then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone, up and over Old Snowy.

Excited to finally be home, we packed up and eagerly set off up the trail behind them. I was 97% sure Old Snowy hated me. The higher up the mountain we climbed, the worse the weather became. It wasn’t a blinding snowstorm, as it had been the previous fall, but it was nearly as cold, and by the time we reached the Junction of the Packwood Glacier pack animal trail and the Official PCT, the clouds were kissing the hard packed snow.

Last summer, after they had gotten off the trail in Independence, Trenchstar had sectioned hiked from the Bridge of the God’s on the Washington/ Oregon border to Snoqualmie. Standing at the junction marker, he warned us that the last time he’d been there he’d gone up and over on the official trail and it was scary as hell. This year there was more snow. He also knew I would absolutely hate it, since my fear of heights rivals my fear of butterflies. He thought it would be in our best interest to try the pack route over the glacier.

The glacier hung steeply on the side of Old Snowy, though it was impossible to see more than thirty feet in any direction with all the cloud and fog. I wasn’t sure what was worse: being able to see the crazy steep drop-off that undoubtedly lay to my left, or letting my imagination decided what was behind the solid grey wall of fog. Trenchstar, Dusty, and Bearclaw led the way, with Bearclaw stopping to kick bigger steps into the slick ice and snow for me as he went. Stopping behind him at one particularly treacherous spot, the clouds parted for a brief moment, and I could see all the way down to the bottom of the glacier and over the cliff below it. Oh. My. God. Even my vivid imagination hadn’t been able to conjure up something that scary. My heart stopped beating for a good thirty seconds. My head began to spin. My knees began to shake. Maybe Old Snowy didn’t hate me after all; maybe it was saving me from being scared to death.

“Ahh! Cover it back up! I don’t want to see anymore!” I closed my eyes and pleaded. Opening my eyes, the thick grey clouds had answered me, and I was back to thirty feet of visibility. Ignorance truly is bliss.

No one had really mentioned the glacier would be scary. They always skipped that and went right on to describe the Knife’s Edge, the razor-sharp ridge-walk that followed immediately after you made it over Old Snowy alive. I wasn’t sure I could handle anything scarier than the glacier. Since we’d gotten off the trail, I’d sort of continued eating a hikertrash diet. My arteries were too constricted for scarier. I would almost certainly have a heart attack. Damn it! I’d always assumed if one of my fears were going to kill me, it would be death by moths.

Going over the glacier I had all the time in the world to turn the Knife’s Edge into the most foreboding and terrifying trail in the Universe. When we finally arrived, I was pleasantly surprised. The trail itself was wide and smooth in comparison to where we had just come from, and the views were cleverly hidden behind a curtain of mist. They parted only once— to reveal a mountain goat happily devouring grass alongside a scree field.

A few miles up the trail, the clouds began to break, and by the time we reached Elk Pass, there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Behind us, Old Snowy stood tall and defiant. Ahead, Mount Rainer sparkled under a flawless blue sky. The trail hadn’t lost any of its magic.

We’d been aiming for Shoe Lake, but the hike up Snowgrass and across Old Snowy had kicked our asses. By late afternoon, we decided on taking the first campsite available. Lutz Lake was full with a camp of exhausted thru-hikers lying on the ground outside of their tents. Tieton Pass was too small. Wearily, we continued on until we found a site big enough for two tents near the junction to Hidden Spring.

“Hot sauce is good with you guys, right?” Bearclaw asked as he unscrewed the lid from a fresh bottle of Frank’s. Getting the go-ahead from Dusty and Trench, he doused the pot of Smoky Mountain Paella in a healthy amount of hot sauce. Trenchstar laughed.

“I’d almost forgotten how much hot sauce you guys dump on everything! Whenever you guys borrowed our hot sauce on the trail, you’d use like half the bottle. It was kind of a point of contention.”

“Really?!” Bearclaw asked shocked, “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Trenchstar shrugged. “I guess we just liked hiking with you guys more than we liked the hot sauce.”
 

 

Smokey Mountain Paella

2 ½ cups water
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 package of dried Spanish rice mix (5.6 oz.)
½ cup sundried tomatoes, diced
1 can smoked oysters, with juice (3.75 oz.)
1 foil pouch shrimp, with juice
1 foil pouch diced chicken
1/8 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. dried garlic
1 tsp. oregano

Instructions: I like to mix the diced sun-dried tomatoes, red pepper flakes, black pepper, dried garlic, and oregano together with the rice in a Ziploc bag before we head out on the trail, to help reduce weight and trail prep time.

At camp: Add rice, spices and olive oil to water and boil until rice is tender. (You can reduce cooking time by pre-soaking the rice for an hour or two.) When rice reaches desired doneness, add oysters (including juice), shrimp (including juice) and chicken. Douse in a healthy amount of a friend’s hot sauce and eat while hot.

Reunited with the Trail
Reunited with the Trail
The Knife's Edge
The Knife’s Edge
In the Misty Shadow of Old Snowy
In the Misty Shadow of Old Snowy
Trufala Trees Near the Snowgrass Trail
Trufala Trees Near the Snowgrass Trail
Back In Packwood!

Back In Packwood!

by | Aug 14, 2014 | Hikertrash Cont... Part 1, Pacific Crest Trail

There is nothing worse than sitting at a desk just watching the digital numbers in the right-hand corner of the computer screen ever so slowly creep towards quitting time. Wednesday was pure torture. In fact, I’m almost positive the earth decided to rotate a fraction slower than normal, just to make the day drag out.

We left the house thirty-five seconds after 5 p.m. and didn’t stop until nearly dark, when we found a small campsite wedged between the East Fork of the Hood River and Highway 35, deep in the shadow of Mount Hood.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep— we were finally headed home; home to the PCT.

Thursday, August 14, 2014
Day 0: Getting There
Miles: 0
Miles to Go: 134.8

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to sleep but not because I was too excited. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I was jolted awake by a nightmare. Two aliens with long, knobby fingers covered with a paper thin layer of skin so thin I could practically see the blood coursing through their veins, had been pulling me out of the tent. Terrified, I’d grabbed both sides of the open door, trying desperately not to let them drag me into the cold, night. We were so close to being back on the trail, and I had no intention of letting anything stop us from getting there, least of all an alien abduction.

Eyes wide open and in full on panic mode, I took stock of my situation and was relieved to discover that I was still in my sleeping bag and not dangling out the tent door. It had seemed so real— the tent, the surroundings, everything had been exactly the same in my dream as it was in reality. The only thing missing when I looked around was the aliens. This suited me just fine. Had I opened my eyes and the aliens still been there I probably would’ve wet myself.

Speaking of wetting myself, I desperately needed to pee, but there was no way I was getting out of the tent and waltzing into an alien-infested forest to do so. Instead, I lie awake until dawn, thinking about how badly my bladder ached and wondering whether or not I remembered how to be a hiker. Could we hike fifteen mile days without dying? What if I forgot how to use our alcohol-fuel stove? Had I packed enough food and fuel? Or worse, what if it wasn’t the same? What if I’d spent all winter romanticizing the trail, turning it into something more than it was, only to set myself up for a week of complete disappointment? What if the trail life I dreamed of no longer existed? What if the magic was permanently gone? These thoughts scared me more than aliens ever could.

Back on the road, we ate a quick breakfast and made our way across the Columbia. Washington’s grey sky hungrily gobbled up the few patches of blue we’d seen from Oregon. I angrily shook my fist and silently threatened the moisture-laden wall of grey hanging overhead, “Don’t even think about raining on my parade.” One day, I will be the crazy old lady that yells at clouds and has full on conversations with trees.

“Are you ready to go?” My mom had asked me a few weeks earlier as I excitedly babbled on about getting back on the trail. “Where are you resupplying?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it. It’s only a hundred and thirty-five miles.” I’d answered. I wasn’t trying to be cocky; the PCT had totally ruined my sense of distance. Before the trail, if someone had told me they were hiking a hundred miles, I’d have been like, “Holy shit! Are you daft?” Now, it was only a hundred miles. Two months after we’d gotten off of the trail in Packwood, I’d walked twelve miles round trip to the post office just to pick up the keys for our box. The postmaster thought I was insane. It hadn’t even crossed my mind I should drive.

“So, what? You’re going to carry nine days of food with you? I thought six was about the max you could squeeze into your food bags.” She questioned.

“Huh, I hadn’t really thought about that…”

She made a valid point. Thru-hiking, we would have done this stretch in five days. We would have had a four-day resupply in White’s Pass, where we would have made jokes about how awesome it was to have such a light resupply. Now, however, we weren’t in thru-hiker shape. Knowing this, we’d scheduled nearly nine full days to hike this hundred and thirty-four mile stretch of trail. This presented a bit of a challenge because there really wasn’t anywhere to mail a resupply.

The solution I’d worked out was for us to hide a resupply for ourselves at the rest stop near Chinook Pass on Highway 410. It was only a third of the way into our hike, but that was the best I could do.

We reached Chinook Pass early in the afternoon and waited for the few cars that were stopped near the restrooms to leave before we meandered nonchalantly up the foggy trail carrying two bear canisters crammed full of six days’ worth of food and fuel. Finding a downed log fifty feet up a nearby embankment, we wedged the canisters underneath and camouflaged them with bark and twigs.

“What if they aren’t here when we come back?” I worried, watching Bearclaw build a small rock cairn on the side of the trail so we would know where to turn.

“Well, that would suck.” He responded.

The whole detour to resupply ourselves took a lot longer than we’d thought it would and by the time we arrived at Dusty and Trenchstar’s place in Olympia, it was early evening. Tossing a few odds and ends in their packs the four of us were out the door and speeding towards Packwood.

We had planned to hike the five miles up the Snowgrass trail and spend the night at the PCT Junction where we’d made the fateful call to abandon ship during the storm but by the time we arrived in town it was nearly dark, and a light drizzle had begun to fall. Besides being a few degrees warmer, Packwood was pretty much exactly as we’d left it. Only this time, we weren’t racing winter to the border. There was no rigid schedule. No deadline.

With no need to hike off into the dreary darkness, we secured the last room at a hiker-friendly inn.
“I remember you.” The owner smiled. “You were with the guy from South Africa. What was his name?”

“Bearcat?”

“That’s right.” She smiled. “Bearcat.”

Flinging open the door of our tiny room, the four of us looked at each other.

“Who gets the bed?”

“We got the bed last time,” Bearclaw responded without skipping a beat. “It’s yours.”

It was hard to believe it had been over a year since we’d shared a room with Dusty and Trenchstar, it felt like yesterday.

Blowing up my air mattress I made a nest in closet, my feet jutting out under the bed. Bearclaw crammed himself into the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Dusty and Trenchstar huddled up on the bed, trying to figure out how to get comfortable without one of them falling off. I smiled. It was just like old times. As I closed my eyes, it really felt as if no time had passed, like we’d never left the trail. Maybe the snowstorm had all just been a bad dream…

And, if we hadn’t all smelled so Downey fresh and clean, I probably could have believed it.

Yosemite: Day Four

Yosemite: Day Four

by | Oct 10, 2012 | Yosemite & the Ansel Adams Wilderness

Day Four

During his morning stroll to our bear can, Carl discovered a ripped open bag of half-eaten tea satchels, something that was sweet and pink but was so gnawed up it was impossible to tell what it had once been, and ten packs of Starbucks Via coffee less than a hundred feet from our tent.

We set off to find the owners. Mostly because I was mad and I wanted to know which idiot hadn’t stored their food properly. I know that sounds mean, but by not following the rules they put everyone in camp, and the poor bear, in danger. Yosemite has a stringent bear policy. If this bear became accustomed to people food, he wasn’t going to be relocated; he was going to be killed.

We don’t find anyone missing food. Instead, we meet a couple who’s foodstuffs had been in a Kevlar Bear Sack tied to a little Charlie Brown Christmas Special tree about fifty feet from their tent. The bag was more or less intact if you overlook the giant teeth holes, but everything inside was a crushed mess. They hadn’t even heard him.

This, they believed, was partly due to the sleeping drugs they had taken the night before, and partly due to the hairs between a bears foot pads that make them stealthy little buggers.

I suddenly had a new chapter for my book.

“Chapter 3: If a Bear Rips into Your Food Stuffs, Does it Make a Sound?”

I am neither a scientist nor a genius, but looking at the teeth marks in their food bag, I questioned the “bear-proof-ness” of the Kevlar Bear Sack. It appeared to be the equivalent of sticking a sandwich in a Ziploc baggy and tying it to a twig and then insisting it was raccoon proof. I mean technically, I guess, the food was still in the bag, mostly, but it was most definitely no longer edible, which in my mind kind of defeated the purpose. Meh, what did I know? Maybe they had been using it wrong; they seemed groggy and a little drunk.

We asked if they needed food, but oddly enough, they insisted they had all they needed. They also told us the food we had found, had likely belonged to an Asian man they had met the night before. He was out of water, lying “overturned turtle” on his backpack, calling for help. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who this was. They filtered him water as he told them the story of how he had gotten separated from his friends. Unfortunately, the way they had divided the gear, one was carrying all of the water filtration equipment, one had the tent, one had most of the food, etc. The man had told them he had been “leaving” things on the trail to help lighten the load. They had already found his cologne. Carl and I laughed and told them we had his food and sandals. As funny as it was, all of us hoped the four of them made it out alive.

Back at our tent, we rummaged through the garbage we had collected from around the tent. Most of it ended up in our trash, but the Starbucks Via coffees were completely unharmed! I guess bears don’t like Starbucks coffee, which worked out brilliantly for us because we did but we were too cheap to buy any! After rinsing the slobber off of them, they were as good as new!

We ate breakfast next to the sparkling blue waters of the lake. Near the edge of the lake, a “Pacific Crest Trail” sign was just visible.

“One day, I want to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.” Carl mused as we ate our oats and happily sipped our Starbucks.

Sounded like a pretty good adventure to me, though I highly doubted it would ever happen.

We hadn’t been on the trail for more than an hour when the couple with the Kevlar Bear Sack came passed.

Carl was happy to see they were packing out because earlier the man had not been very coherent and Carl was afraid he was suffering from altitude sickness. I had thought it was the sleeping pills.

“Weren’t you going to stay two nights?” Carl asked. “Or did you decide to head back a day early because the bear mauled your food?”

The man thought about this.

“No. We were going to spend two nights, but the bear ate our food. So we’re going to head back today.”

‘Wait, isn’t that what I just said?’ Carl looked at me quizzically.

“Book Chapter 4: Are You Drunk or Just Too High: Knowing the Symptoms of Altitude Sickness.”

Gem Lake was perfectly tranquil, and we had the entire thing to ourselves. And at Gem Lake, I found two of my absolute favorite things – silence and stillness. Finding ourselves a premium campsite on a large piece of exposed rock that hung out a hundred feet above the lake, we sat down and drank it all in.

It’s amazing how well you can sleep when there’s no one yelling at bears…

Thousand Islands Beauty
Thousand Islands Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness, California
Thousand Islands Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness, California
Gem Lake, Yosemite National Park
Gem Lake, Yosemite National Park
Yosemite: Day Three

Yosemite: Day Three

by | Oct 9, 2012 | Yosemite & the Ansel Adams Wilderness

Day Three

The morning was chilly, and once we’d shaken the frost off of the tent, we were eager to get back on the trail just to stay warm.

On the hike up to the top of the pass we passed three men on their way down, but other than that the trail was all ours. And what a beautiful trail it was – wide, with flat rock stairs, and perfect grades. I cannot get over how spectacular America’s National Parks are.

We were approaching the top of the pass when we encountered a fourth man. Standing majestically on a rock outcropping, one hand on his hip, the other holding a GPS, he reminded me of a bald eagle preparing for flight.

“You haven’t seen three other Asian guys, have you? I lost them last night when I was lost for three hours trying to find Thousand Islands Lake,” he asked, grinning from ear to ear.

We responded that we had passed three men earlier. He was happy to hear they were only an hour or so ahead of him. It turned out this was their first backpack ever. They were hiking sixty-nine miles in five days. This was day three.

“I am learning a lot!” he said enthusiastically. “Weight is important. My pack is too heavy, so I have just been leaving stuff on the trail. Hopefully, someone else will pick it up!”

Carl and I were curious as to what exactly he had been “leaving” on the trail.

“Oh, you know, like my colognes and stuff.”

I am by no means an expert backpacker. In fact, (assuming we survived and didn’t have to throw any pinecones or rocks at hungry bears) this forty miles would be the longest backpack I had ever taken. I was a weekend warrior. Ten miles to a lake, overnight, ten miles back. I stood there, looking at this entirely too enthusiastic man, completely bewildered by him.

I don’t know what was more perplexing to me, the fact that for their first backpack ever, they were eagerly attempting sixty-nine miles in five days. The fact that he was hiking with cologne (hot date? bear attractant?) Or the fact that he was lightening his load by leaving his shit stuff in piles on the forest floor. Or maybe it was just a combination of all of those things, combined with the fact that he had been lost overnight, seemed less than worried about it, and that his buddies had just left him up there.

As we left, I got the idea to one day write a cheeky book called “Backpacking 101.” As we hiked up the trail, I formulate the first two sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek chapter titles:

“Chapter 1: Ambition vs. Stupidity, How to Choose a Trail that’s Right for You” and, “Chapter 2: You are Not a Donkey, Notes on Packing Light.”

Four miles further up the trail, we stumbled across a pair of sandals, and a gallon Ziploc bag full of half-eaten foodstuffs stacked neatly together on a rock. Carl picked up the shoes; I grabbed the food bag and, thanks to our overzealous friend, our packs instantly became that much heavier.

Thousand Islands Lake was stunning. We rolled into camp just in time to get the tent up before it rained. Much to our dismay, the campground was surprisingly full. We snagged the last available campsite, which provided a jaw-dropping view of the sepia sunset that ripped through the clouds, casting the mountains and the perfect alpine lake dotted haphazardly with hundreds of tiny little rock islands, in a haunting orange hue.

“Honey, wake up! Someone is yelling at a bear!” Carl whispered in my ear.

Groggily, I opened my eyes. It was pitch black. Listening intently, I heard voices in the distance.

“Get out! Go On! Get out of here!”

“Either that or he and his girlfriend got in a fight,” I replied, but Carl didn’t find my joke to be that funny.

I unzipped the tent door and watched entertained as two headlamps bobbed after a black shadow in the night. He wasn’t a big bear, but he was hungry, and they obviously had something he desperately wanted because he just kept on going back for more.

My survival instincts are strong, and they distinctly told me not to get out of the tent and throw rocks at the hungry bear. Instead, we did what any sane person would do, zipped up the tent door, and went back to sleep.

The Stairs To Donahue Pass
The Stairs To Donahue Pass
View from the Top of the Pass
View from the Top of the Pass
Alpine Meadows
Alpine Meadows
Thousand Islands Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness, California
Thousand Islands Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness, California