Da Clips Hike
Aug. 28th, 2017 01:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteWhen you've got a big van, it's easy to overpack. In fact it's a good idea to overpack. You got the space so why not?
We took off from Sacramento early Saturday and headed up into Oregon. The sky was hazy all the way out of California due to several large forest fires. We realized that no one in the entire state was going to get a decent view of this thing. We stopped at the worst taco stand ever and ate a hilariously bad lunch. We also got ice cream because why not; it's vacation!
Oregon seemed like the place to go because even if the roads were crammed we could just stop along the way and get a good view of the eclipse right there. We planned for huge traffic jams because we'd seen online that all the flights to cities near the eclipse were booked up, and all the rental cars at all the airports were reserved. It sounded like a car-pocalypse in the making. Turned out to be totally wrong.
Nice gleaming empty Oregon roads all the way. We took our time driving, enjoying the scenery and grooving to Deee-Lite, old Laibach, some Yello, a bit of Buckethead, and the soundtrack to Castle of Cagliostro for the desert bits. I had fun telling stories about my bike tour through the region almost ten years earlier.
We reached Burns as night fell, and decided to hunker down and sleep. We bought Thai food and met the local cat:
He was wandering up the street in the middle of town. After saying hello he pursued us across the street and into the Thai restaurant, and nosed around the kitchen and tables like he owned the place. Eventually the cashier shoved him gently out the door and he lounged on the sidewalk, until a crowd of locals walked by and he trotted after them, just like he'd pursued us earlier.
Anyhoo, long story short, we ended up in Stanley, Idaho at the end of Sunday.
It was pandemonium up there. The trailhead we wanted to park next to was closed off because there were 150 vehicles parked along it already -- about ten times more than the rangers usually allow. They were trying to route campers to other sites but the sites were filling up too quickly for them to coordinate. All around the town of Stanley large areas of grass along the side of the road had been mowed and divided into rectangles for campers to set up. All the motels were sold out and the RV parks were full. Plus, just to add to the chaos, there were moose on the loose.
When a moose spots a human in the forest, it treats it like a human would treat a particularly large toadstool. It might be all curious at first. but will inevitably kick it over and flatten it just because it can. The best way to see a moose is from the opposite side of a high-power zoom lens sticking out of a bush, like so.
Anyway, it was crowded. We'd anticipated something like this, which is why I brought the van. We could sleep in it if we needed to. The closest we could get to the trailhead I wanted was a trailhead at Stanley Lake, several miles away, but all the campsites at the lake were full. So we parked at the trailhead and configured the van for sleep as discreetly as possible. The plan was to get up at 5:00am, before any ranger patrol, and take off with our full hiking gear, our full eclipse-viewing gear, and a pile of snacks.
We'd follow the Stanley Lake trailhead South along the foothills of the mountain until it linked up with the trail I wanted -- the Iron Creek trail. Then we'd follow that up to Sawtooth Lake, view the eclipse, and walk down the opposite side of the mountain to the Stanley Lake Creek trail, and proceed along that until we were back at Stanley Lake. No problem, right? The topographic map makes it look pretty easy. Alpine Way Trail seems to thread a nice low valley over to Iron Creek...
HA! Hah ha ha haa...
We bedded down as soon as we could, which was 10:30pm. At 4:45am a couple of cars passed by on the trailhead waking me up. At 5:00 I woke Andy and Zoe, and at 5:30 we set out. We'd forgotten a third backpack so Andy just filled a cloth sack with food and hauled it around over his shoulder like an outdoorsy Santa Claus.
The trail was barely discernible in the predawn light but it was in good shape, without rocks or roots to trip over, and we moved at a brisk pace, making dumb jokes and chatting. We passed many other crews of hikers, some of them quite large. Usually they were younger and better equipped than us.
Eventually we came to a wooden kiosk in a clearing. There was a ledger inside it with a pen inviting us to sign in to the trail like hotel guests. The more signatures the book got, the more funding the trail received, so I signed all three of us in under the name J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
As the sun came up, it became easier to read and "interpret" the signs along the trail:
The trail split, and we took the Alpine Creek fork. It was in rougher shape. We had only gone a few hundred yards down it when it ran straight into a shallow river about ten feet across. Some exploratory trails followed the shore in both directions, leading us to a fallen tree that spanned the river. We had no sooner crossed it than the river doubled back on itself, and this time there was no good place to cross, so we retraced our steps back across the tree and skirted riverbank for a while. Eventually we found another fallen tree and crossed with it -- but now we were well away from the trail, so we blundered due east through the woods (using the iPhone as a compass and GPS and referring to the topographic map on it at the same time) and just when we were getting a bit worried we found it again.
That cost us some time, so we walked faster. Then the trail started going up. We hit one switchback, then five, then ten. We were going way up into the hills. We had to stop for breaks, and remove layers of clothing. Eventually we ate breakfast, ripping our way through a large bag of chips, a pile of apples, and some other snacks.
The trail wound around the mountain but mostly what it did was gain hundreds of feet in altitude and then drop down again, four or five times. Hours passed and the timeline looked bleak. We had to slow down for the sake of our knees, bending up the slope and banging down it with loads of gear. We were breathing hard, wasting water. My hiking shoes felt heavy and hot. We plundered Andy's snack sack as we went.
When we met up with Iron Creek trail it was 10:45, about 45 minutes before the eclipse. We realized we'd never make it up to Sawtooth Lake in time, so we found an open space and settled down. The sky was clear, with no forest fire haze, and we had about a 180 degree view of the horizon with the sun in the middle. Even though we weren't on a mountain top we were still almost 8000 feet above sea level. So it was a pretty good show.
I sent the drone up about 1500 feet and it took a slow video of the entire valley going dark. I also took one of the lenses out of my goggles and used it as a camera filter:
I'd never thought of it before, but... How fortunate we are that our planet has one satellite just large enough to eclipse the sun without blotting out its corona.
After viewing the eclipse we tried to decide what to do. I was convinced that the route on the west side of the mountain would be much flatter than the route we had taken to get here. ... At least that's what the topographical map seemed to indicate. None of us was interested in repeating the experience of climbing those huge hills and switchbacks we had already covered, and we wanted to see the lake, so we opted to complete the loop described on the map. It couldn't possibly be any worse, right?
So we set out to complete the journey up to Sawtooth Lake on the iron Creek Trail. That decision did not give us a shorter route. In fact it was probably double the distance - and ascent - that we'd already covered. But the weather was great and we had water and snacks, and I was still a pie-eyed optimist about the accuracy of the topographic map (i.e. an idiot) so away we went.
The trail wound upward and became murderously steep. The switchbacks were endless. Eventually we hit an alpine meadow and took a break. I hauled out the 360-degree camera for a few minutes.
Eventually we reached Sawtooth Lake. It was gorgeous. We sat down on a chunk of alpine meadow to consume the last of our food. A few feet away the remains of a snowdrift turned flat and crunchy in the summer sun.
We paused at an outcropping overlooking the lake. I gestured dramatically at the ground and said "here is where I intended to view the eclipse. It would've been incredible!" Andy agreed. We caught our breath in silence for a minute or two, and trudged on.
At the top of the ridge separating the lake from the west side of the mountain - The highest point of the trail - A group of about six hikers was hunkered down. One was mechanically chewing food from a bag on his lap, and all the rest were silently fingering their cell phones. Apparently the ridge was the only place high enough to get a reliable signal.
My first thought was something judgmental about the younger generation and their addiction to cellphones, but then I reasoned that for all I knew, these hikers had spent the last seven days camping and this was the only time and place they could connect with the outside world, including their extended families. That's not much different from what I did as a child camping in Sierra City, going to the general store once every few days to call home at the payphone. On the other hand, there's still the matter of degree. I was on the phone for a dozen minutes at most and the rest of the time I forgot it existed.
On this hike, the representative of the current generation was Zoe. She brought two cell phones with her on the trail, and checked them obsessively throughout the day.
The terrain on the west side of the mountain turned out to be completely different from the terrain on the east side. A forest fire had swept across the western face and destroyed most of the trees, and charred all the branches off the ones remaining, leaving tall bony trunks behind. With the decrease in foliage came an increase in visibility and sunlight. The conflagration had happened a number of years ago and now small green plants and wildflowers coated the newly fertilized soil.
The variety and intensity of the colors was astonishing. Perhaps it was just fatigue or malnourishment but some of the hues were so intense they were hard to look at. They grew across and around each other in a tangle, creating an entire spectrum in a few feet of ground. Eye-watering violets competed with firework yellows, Cotton candy pinks, stovetop reds. All scattered across an infinite variety of greens.
As we shambled our way back and forth down the trail, we passed a chain of tiny lakes, ringed with greenery and crushed stones, and randomly connected by streams. The wind blew at an angle to the slope, passing easily between the dead trees, and stirred every patch of water larger than a few feet into a cascade of light.
We'd been tired for hours. My knees and feet hurt, and so did Andy's. We began to gripe about them like old men.
"So which one of us is Jack Lemmon and which one of us is Walter Matthau?" I asked.
Andy laughed and said "I get the reference but I haven't actually seen the movie."
"Neither have I," I said. "But I did see the TV show they were in before."
"Oh? What was that?"
"That was the odd couple,"
"Wow that was them? I didn't realize that!" Andy began singing the theme song to himself, and I joined in. We didn't forget about our knee pain, but it helped pass the time.
Eventually we descended to a narrow valley filled with tall, straight trees grown so close together that their trunks became stalagmites in a perpetual cave-like darkness. For some reason the fire had quit here, and the forest asserted itself instantly. It was the kind of forest featured in those fairytales starring small children that vanish in the middle of the story and have to be cut out of some eerie half-sentient beast before the end. Basically the lesson is "don't go into the forest" and you can only learn the lesson by going into the forest. Fairytales are bleak that way.
So, of course, we went right in.
During one of our many rest breaks I told Andy and Zoe that they should go ahead and I would catch up with them. They shuffled away and I leaned sideways onto a log, waiting for my feet to stop exploding. About 20 seconds later I felt a deep vibrating thump come up through the log, followed by another, and then a rapid series of them. I instantly shot upright and hobbled after my friends. I knew from experience that sound was the heavy footfall of a large forest animal somewhere nearby -- some animal more than twice my weight at least, and in my current condition, probably ten times faster.
Less than a minute later I rejoined my group, hoping that there was at least some safety in numbers, even though we were in a very sorry state and would only be able to stand our ground in any encounter. Running was out of the question and we couldn't even bend over well enough to snatch up a rock and throw it, so we'd have to rely on scary noises and arm-waving. And farts.
We weren't in huge trouble. Ever since entering the woods, we'd seen campers set up at regular intervals on both sides of the trail we were walking. Large animals would be reluctant to hang around here anyway. Perhaps I'd just been spooked by one of the many deer I'd seen prancing around. I didn't want to find out.
Eventually we crossed a river, and Zoe dunked her feet. Woops!
Our rest breaks got even more frequent. I had to stop and sit down just to ease the pain in my knees. Blisters had formed on both my feet, despite the thick hiking socks and hiking shoes. It was getting dark again. We'd been hiking for fourteen hours.
We became so tired that we began to hallucinate things in the layers of trunks and branches in the forest ahead. I mistook the twisted remains of a burned-out stump for an ATV the rangers would use to drive us back to the campsite. "Hooray, we're rescued!" I thought. Then a minute later I saw only a stump.
Andy pointed out the bleached limbs of a fallen tree in the distance, and for a while we both thought that it was several vans parked in a parking lot, and that we had arrived at the trailhead. We discussed it excitedly. Then we limped several dozen yards closer and the illusion was ruined. For a while after, I kept forcing myself to see the vans again, as if by reconstructing the vision I might will them into existence. "Oh hey, it was a parking lot after all!" No such luck.
"No wonder old men seem so distracted," I said. "Half their attention is taken up just listening to their joints complain."
"No kidding," said Andy. "I feel like one of the walking dead right now. It's really distracting. How do zombies ever catch anyone when they have all this going on?"
I felt the blisters on my feet split open and bleed for a while.
Zoe was in better physical shape than both of us, but her spirits were way lower. She carried her share of the gear and walked every step with us, but near the end, she had to stop every once in a while and sob quietly for a minute or so. Andy hugged her and we both complemented her perseverance.
Soon it was fully dark. My night vision sucked so I led the parade with a headlamp. Frogs came out and began hopping over the path. The tree trunks started looking like grave markers and wraiths. After almost two hours in darkness we finally reached the van, and we dropped all our gear in a heap on the floor and fell over on the cushions.
I sat in the passenger seat and slowly drank a half gallon of water. We'd been hiking for seventeen hours, and covered a ridiculous amount of ascent and descent. We'd never know exactly how much because my GPS recorder quit at the 13 hour mark and corrupted its data. Durrr. Thanks, Garmin.
I was exhausted but I was also incredibly filthy and I decided that I was not going to spend the night without taking a shower. As soon as I felt able I started the van and drove slowly into Stanley. Most of the hotels said "no vacancy" and the rest had their lights off. I called all of them on the phone anyway, and only got answering machines. So I expanded my search and called the Sourdough Inn, an hour down the road. They said they had one room available due to a cancellation and they would put the key inside the room and leave the door unlocked so we could just walk in when we arrived.
Time for an hour-long drive down dark windy roads after a 17-hour hike. Andy climbed into the front passenger seat and we had an engaging conversation about cooking and mail order produce during the long drive. I'm glad he was there to keep me alert.
When we arrived, Andy and I were both so stiff that we could barely get out of the van. If anyone else at the hotel had been awake they would have seen some pathetic slow-motion Benny Hill routine, with a couple of ordinary looking middle-age guys walking around inexplicably like the whole world was coated with thumbtacks, hauling gear to and fro.
The shower was glorious. Did I mention that both Andy and I had needed to crap in the middle of the woods and we wiped our butts with grass? Yeah. I washed my grassy-ass in the shower, and my grassy underwear, and my hiking socks. Sleep was uncomfortable because of all the aches and pains but still fantastic. If I had dreams, they were erased by the background noise of my body.
Over the course of the next day and during the drive home I would slowly regain flexibility in both legs. Also, I was forcibly reminded that when you are sore hungry and tired your ability to make sound decisions decreases dramatically. It was quite a while since I'd been all three of those at the same time, and the effect was disturbing -- but also a reminder of how difficult it is for people in that state all the time. "What were they thinking?" we chastise them. Well, perhaps half their attention was occupied just suppressing pain, or staying awake.
Anyway yeah, that's the adventure behind the eclipse. It was an absolutely grueling hike. I apologized a few times for roping Andy and Zoe into such a misadventure, but they both said it was worth it. I'm fortunate to have such adventurous and flexible friends.
We took off from Sacramento early Saturday and headed up into Oregon. The sky was hazy all the way out of California due to several large forest fires. We realized that no one in the entire state was going to get a decent view of this thing. We stopped at the worst taco stand ever and ate a hilariously bad lunch. We also got ice cream because why not; it's vacation!
Oregon seemed like the place to go because even if the roads were crammed we could just stop along the way and get a good view of the eclipse right there. We planned for huge traffic jams because we'd seen online that all the flights to cities near the eclipse were booked up, and all the rental cars at all the airports were reserved. It sounded like a car-pocalypse in the making. Turned out to be totally wrong.
Nice gleaming empty Oregon roads all the way. We took our time driving, enjoying the scenery and grooving to Deee-Lite, old Laibach, some Yello, a bit of Buckethead, and the soundtrack to Castle of Cagliostro for the desert bits. I had fun telling stories about my bike tour through the region almost ten years earlier.
We reached Burns as night fell, and decided to hunker down and sleep. We bought Thai food and met the local cat:
He was wandering up the street in the middle of town. After saying hello he pursued us across the street and into the Thai restaurant, and nosed around the kitchen and tables like he owned the place. Eventually the cashier shoved him gently out the door and he lounged on the sidewalk, until a crowd of locals walked by and he trotted after them, just like he'd pursued us earlier.
Anyhoo, long story short, we ended up in Stanley, Idaho at the end of Sunday.
It was pandemonium up there. The trailhead we wanted to park next to was closed off because there were 150 vehicles parked along it already -- about ten times more than the rangers usually allow. They were trying to route campers to other sites but the sites were filling up too quickly for them to coordinate. All around the town of Stanley large areas of grass along the side of the road had been mowed and divided into rectangles for campers to set up. All the motels were sold out and the RV parks were full. Plus, just to add to the chaos, there were moose on the loose.
When a moose spots a human in the forest, it treats it like a human would treat a particularly large toadstool. It might be all curious at first. but will inevitably kick it over and flatten it just because it can. The best way to see a moose is from the opposite side of a high-power zoom lens sticking out of a bush, like so.
Anyway, it was crowded. We'd anticipated something like this, which is why I brought the van. We could sleep in it if we needed to. The closest we could get to the trailhead I wanted was a trailhead at Stanley Lake, several miles away, but all the campsites at the lake were full. So we parked at the trailhead and configured the van for sleep as discreetly as possible. The plan was to get up at 5:00am, before any ranger patrol, and take off with our full hiking gear, our full eclipse-viewing gear, and a pile of snacks.
We'd follow the Stanley Lake trailhead South along the foothills of the mountain until it linked up with the trail I wanted -- the Iron Creek trail. Then we'd follow that up to Sawtooth Lake, view the eclipse, and walk down the opposite side of the mountain to the Stanley Lake Creek trail, and proceed along that until we were back at Stanley Lake. No problem, right? The topographic map makes it look pretty easy. Alpine Way Trail seems to thread a nice low valley over to Iron Creek...
HA! Hah ha ha haa...
We bedded down as soon as we could, which was 10:30pm. At 4:45am a couple of cars passed by on the trailhead waking me up. At 5:00 I woke Andy and Zoe, and at 5:30 we set out. We'd forgotten a third backpack so Andy just filled a cloth sack with food and hauled it around over his shoulder like an outdoorsy Santa Claus.
The trail was barely discernible in the predawn light but it was in good shape, without rocks or roots to trip over, and we moved at a brisk pace, making dumb jokes and chatting. We passed many other crews of hikers, some of them quite large. Usually they were younger and better equipped than us.
Eventually we came to a wooden kiosk in a clearing. There was a ledger inside it with a pen inviting us to sign in to the trail like hotel guests. The more signatures the book got, the more funding the trail received, so I signed all three of us in under the name J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
As the sun came up, it became easier to read and "interpret" the signs along the trail:
The trail split, and we took the Alpine Creek fork. It was in rougher shape. We had only gone a few hundred yards down it when it ran straight into a shallow river about ten feet across. Some exploratory trails followed the shore in both directions, leading us to a fallen tree that spanned the river. We had no sooner crossed it than the river doubled back on itself, and this time there was no good place to cross, so we retraced our steps back across the tree and skirted riverbank for a while. Eventually we found another fallen tree and crossed with it -- but now we were well away from the trail, so we blundered due east through the woods (using the iPhone as a compass and GPS and referring to the topographic map on it at the same time) and just when we were getting a bit worried we found it again.
That cost us some time, so we walked faster. Then the trail started going up. We hit one switchback, then five, then ten. We were going way up into the hills. We had to stop for breaks, and remove layers of clothing. Eventually we ate breakfast, ripping our way through a large bag of chips, a pile of apples, and some other snacks.
The trail wound around the mountain but mostly what it did was gain hundreds of feet in altitude and then drop down again, four or five times. Hours passed and the timeline looked bleak. We had to slow down for the sake of our knees, bending up the slope and banging down it with loads of gear. We were breathing hard, wasting water. My hiking shoes felt heavy and hot. We plundered Andy's snack sack as we went.
When we met up with Iron Creek trail it was 10:45, about 45 minutes before the eclipse. We realized we'd never make it up to Sawtooth Lake in time, so we found an open space and settled down. The sky was clear, with no forest fire haze, and we had about a 180 degree view of the horizon with the sun in the middle. Even though we weren't on a mountain top we were still almost 8000 feet above sea level. So it was a pretty good show.
I sent the drone up about 1500 feet and it took a slow video of the entire valley going dark. I also took one of the lenses out of my goggles and used it as a camera filter:
I'd never thought of it before, but... How fortunate we are that our planet has one satellite just large enough to eclipse the sun without blotting out its corona.
After viewing the eclipse we tried to decide what to do. I was convinced that the route on the west side of the mountain would be much flatter than the route we had taken to get here. ... At least that's what the topographical map seemed to indicate. None of us was interested in repeating the experience of climbing those huge hills and switchbacks we had already covered, and we wanted to see the lake, so we opted to complete the loop described on the map. It couldn't possibly be any worse, right?
So we set out to complete the journey up to Sawtooth Lake on the iron Creek Trail. That decision did not give us a shorter route. In fact it was probably double the distance - and ascent - that we'd already covered. But the weather was great and we had water and snacks, and I was still a pie-eyed optimist about the accuracy of the topographic map (i.e. an idiot) so away we went.
The trail wound upward and became murderously steep. The switchbacks were endless. Eventually we hit an alpine meadow and took a break. I hauled out the 360-degree camera for a few minutes.
Eventually we reached Sawtooth Lake. It was gorgeous. We sat down on a chunk of alpine meadow to consume the last of our food. A few feet away the remains of a snowdrift turned flat and crunchy in the summer sun.
We paused at an outcropping overlooking the lake. I gestured dramatically at the ground and said "here is where I intended to view the eclipse. It would've been incredible!" Andy agreed. We caught our breath in silence for a minute or two, and trudged on.
At the top of the ridge separating the lake from the west side of the mountain - The highest point of the trail - A group of about six hikers was hunkered down. One was mechanically chewing food from a bag on his lap, and all the rest were silently fingering their cell phones. Apparently the ridge was the only place high enough to get a reliable signal.
My first thought was something judgmental about the younger generation and their addiction to cellphones, but then I reasoned that for all I knew, these hikers had spent the last seven days camping and this was the only time and place they could connect with the outside world, including their extended families. That's not much different from what I did as a child camping in Sierra City, going to the general store once every few days to call home at the payphone. On the other hand, there's still the matter of degree. I was on the phone for a dozen minutes at most and the rest of the time I forgot it existed.
On this hike, the representative of the current generation was Zoe. She brought two cell phones with her on the trail, and checked them obsessively throughout the day.
The terrain on the west side of the mountain turned out to be completely different from the terrain on the east side. A forest fire had swept across the western face and destroyed most of the trees, and charred all the branches off the ones remaining, leaving tall bony trunks behind. With the decrease in foliage came an increase in visibility and sunlight. The conflagration had happened a number of years ago and now small green plants and wildflowers coated the newly fertilized soil.
The variety and intensity of the colors was astonishing. Perhaps it was just fatigue or malnourishment but some of the hues were so intense they were hard to look at. They grew across and around each other in a tangle, creating an entire spectrum in a few feet of ground. Eye-watering violets competed with firework yellows, Cotton candy pinks, stovetop reds. All scattered across an infinite variety of greens.
As we shambled our way back and forth down the trail, we passed a chain of tiny lakes, ringed with greenery and crushed stones, and randomly connected by streams. The wind blew at an angle to the slope, passing easily between the dead trees, and stirred every patch of water larger than a few feet into a cascade of light.
We'd been tired for hours. My knees and feet hurt, and so did Andy's. We began to gripe about them like old men.
"So which one of us is Jack Lemmon and which one of us is Walter Matthau?" I asked.
Andy laughed and said "I get the reference but I haven't actually seen the movie."
"Neither have I," I said. "But I did see the TV show they were in before."
"Oh? What was that?"
"That was the odd couple,"
"Wow that was them? I didn't realize that!" Andy began singing the theme song to himself, and I joined in. We didn't forget about our knee pain, but it helped pass the time.
Eventually we descended to a narrow valley filled with tall, straight trees grown so close together that their trunks became stalagmites in a perpetual cave-like darkness. For some reason the fire had quit here, and the forest asserted itself instantly. It was the kind of forest featured in those fairytales starring small children that vanish in the middle of the story and have to be cut out of some eerie half-sentient beast before the end. Basically the lesson is "don't go into the forest" and you can only learn the lesson by going into the forest. Fairytales are bleak that way.
So, of course, we went right in.
During one of our many rest breaks I told Andy and Zoe that they should go ahead and I would catch up with them. They shuffled away and I leaned sideways onto a log, waiting for my feet to stop exploding. About 20 seconds later I felt a deep vibrating thump come up through the log, followed by another, and then a rapid series of them. I instantly shot upright and hobbled after my friends. I knew from experience that sound was the heavy footfall of a large forest animal somewhere nearby -- some animal more than twice my weight at least, and in my current condition, probably ten times faster.
Less than a minute later I rejoined my group, hoping that there was at least some safety in numbers, even though we were in a very sorry state and would only be able to stand our ground in any encounter. Running was out of the question and we couldn't even bend over well enough to snatch up a rock and throw it, so we'd have to rely on scary noises and arm-waving. And farts.
We weren't in huge trouble. Ever since entering the woods, we'd seen campers set up at regular intervals on both sides of the trail we were walking. Large animals would be reluctant to hang around here anyway. Perhaps I'd just been spooked by one of the many deer I'd seen prancing around. I didn't want to find out.
Eventually we crossed a river, and Zoe dunked her feet. Woops!
Our rest breaks got even more frequent. I had to stop and sit down just to ease the pain in my knees. Blisters had formed on both my feet, despite the thick hiking socks and hiking shoes. It was getting dark again. We'd been hiking for fourteen hours.
We became so tired that we began to hallucinate things in the layers of trunks and branches in the forest ahead. I mistook the twisted remains of a burned-out stump for an ATV the rangers would use to drive us back to the campsite. "Hooray, we're rescued!" I thought. Then a minute later I saw only a stump.
Andy pointed out the bleached limbs of a fallen tree in the distance, and for a while we both thought that it was several vans parked in a parking lot, and that we had arrived at the trailhead. We discussed it excitedly. Then we limped several dozen yards closer and the illusion was ruined. For a while after, I kept forcing myself to see the vans again, as if by reconstructing the vision I might will them into existence. "Oh hey, it was a parking lot after all!" No such luck.
"No wonder old men seem so distracted," I said. "Half their attention is taken up just listening to their joints complain."
"No kidding," said Andy. "I feel like one of the walking dead right now. It's really distracting. How do zombies ever catch anyone when they have all this going on?"
I felt the blisters on my feet split open and bleed for a while.
Zoe was in better physical shape than both of us, but her spirits were way lower. She carried her share of the gear and walked every step with us, but near the end, she had to stop every once in a while and sob quietly for a minute or so. Andy hugged her and we both complemented her perseverance.
Soon it was fully dark. My night vision sucked so I led the parade with a headlamp. Frogs came out and began hopping over the path. The tree trunks started looking like grave markers and wraiths. After almost two hours in darkness we finally reached the van, and we dropped all our gear in a heap on the floor and fell over on the cushions.
I sat in the passenger seat and slowly drank a half gallon of water. We'd been hiking for seventeen hours, and covered a ridiculous amount of ascent and descent. We'd never know exactly how much because my GPS recorder quit at the 13 hour mark and corrupted its data. Durrr. Thanks, Garmin.
I was exhausted but I was also incredibly filthy and I decided that I was not going to spend the night without taking a shower. As soon as I felt able I started the van and drove slowly into Stanley. Most of the hotels said "no vacancy" and the rest had their lights off. I called all of them on the phone anyway, and only got answering machines. So I expanded my search and called the Sourdough Inn, an hour down the road. They said they had one room available due to a cancellation and they would put the key inside the room and leave the door unlocked so we could just walk in when we arrived.
Time for an hour-long drive down dark windy roads after a 17-hour hike. Andy climbed into the front passenger seat and we had an engaging conversation about cooking and mail order produce during the long drive. I'm glad he was there to keep me alert.
When we arrived, Andy and I were both so stiff that we could barely get out of the van. If anyone else at the hotel had been awake they would have seen some pathetic slow-motion Benny Hill routine, with a couple of ordinary looking middle-age guys walking around inexplicably like the whole world was coated with thumbtacks, hauling gear to and fro.
The shower was glorious. Did I mention that both Andy and I had needed to crap in the middle of the woods and we wiped our butts with grass? Yeah. I washed my grassy-ass in the shower, and my grassy underwear, and my hiking socks. Sleep was uncomfortable because of all the aches and pains but still fantastic. If I had dreams, they were erased by the background noise of my body.
Over the course of the next day and during the drive home I would slowly regain flexibility in both legs. Also, I was forcibly reminded that when you are sore hungry and tired your ability to make sound decisions decreases dramatically. It was quite a while since I'd been all three of those at the same time, and the effect was disturbing -- but also a reminder of how difficult it is for people in that state all the time. "What were they thinking?" we chastise them. Well, perhaps half their attention was occupied just suppressing pain, or staying awake.
Anyway yeah, that's the adventure behind the eclipse. It was an absolutely grueling hike. I apologized a few times for roping Andy and Zoe into such a misadventure, but they both said it was worth it. I'm fortunate to have such adventurous and flexible friends.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 02:56 pm (UTC)Good point about losing common sense when sugar is low.
Regarding blisters, plantain leaves help right away. I believe plantains are pretty much widespread at those elevations (rarely in the Bay Area).
no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 08:02 pm (UTC)On the other hand I was so bone-tired it would have been impossible to put my shoes and socks back on after removing them. I would have tried to take a nap or something and gotten into even more trouble...
no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 08:44 pm (UTC)