Looking Back on Backpacking Trips CJ and I have Done: Tahoe Rim Trail Day 3
It was chilly when we awoke. 5am let us know we were at 7000' elevation. We stayed in our sleeping bags for awhile. We were still beginners.
We passed through the public campground at Big Meadow about 8am. Not a creature was stirring. There is one thing I appreciate about passing through a public campground when I'm backpacking: trash cans! We happily jettisoned the trash we had accumulated. We also took the opportunity to ditch some of the food CJ was never going to eat. I had shopped too much like a dad. I realized it after we got on trail and CJ turned his nose up at some of the things I bought. Our packs got a little bit lighter right there.
We kept the important food though.
I couldn't eat it... too sweet... but CJ loved it.
After dumping our trash, we crossed Highway 89 and climbed a few miles of marshy mosquito infested trail to the intersection where the Tahoe Rim Trail meets the Pacific Crest Trail at Meiss Meadows, an old cow camp where cattle grazed on forest service land not that long ago.
We crossed the Upper Truckee River, booked on up to Showers Lake where we swam and ate lunch, and then moved out across a beautiful mountain meadow in complete bliss. We couldn't have been happier.
On a journey such as this, however, its not a matter of "if" something goes wrong. Something will go wrong. Having the mindset that whatever goes wrong will be dealt with is a prerequisite for success. Dealing with what goes wrong is part of the adventure. We can look back now and say we understand this. We didn't have a full grip on it as we swam and ate lunch at Shower Lake.
On a journey such as this, however, its not a matter of "if" something goes wrong. Something will go wrong. Having the mindset that whatever goes wrong will be dealt with is a prerequisite for success. Dealing with what goes wrong is part of the adventure. We can look back now and say we understand this. We didn't have a full grip on it as we swam and ate lunch at Shower Lake.
<Begin darkly foreboding music>
By about 4 in the afternoon, we had stopped hiking for the day and started setting up our campsite on a rock outcropping with a view that overlooked Lake Tahoe. With such a view it was certain I would have cell service, so I turned my phone on to check in with Erin and let her know we were making great progress. Immediately the phone showed me a text message that had been sent by Erin while my phone was off. It said she'd come home and found CJ's young cat dead on our living room floor. Her forensic examination led her to believe the cat had been sitting on the window sill, like cats will do, when it experienced a sudden death and fell to the floor. This was no small matter. It was a huge matter. CJ had rescued that cat from the pound as a new born kitten. It slept with him every night. We'd had farm animals die. This was different. It was a house animal.
I must have had a visible physical reaction when I read the text because CJ saw something was up and wanted to know what I had just read. I tried to blow him off saying it was nothing while I wrestled with how to handle it. Should I tell him nothing and wait until the end of the trip? Or should we handle it right now and deal with it? If he hadn't been scheduled to take his back belt exam 48 hours after we walked off the trail, I would have chosen to hold it and wait. But he had been preparing for that test for a year and I didn't want to jeopardize his success. I had to tell him and hope we had enough hours to work through it before he tested.
I just blurted it out. That's how I do stuff like that. 25+ years as a cop and I still suck beyond all possible belief at breaking bad news. I just want to get it over with as quick as possible. Like popping a balloon. It's over. Done. There it is. Deal with it. Move on. There are no more pictures from that day. Only the ones I already posted. Neither of us wants to remember that day at all.
But then something kinda good happened. A hiker came wandering into our campsite. He was older, probably approaching 60. One knee was wrapped in a supporting bandage and he was limping. He looked like he had been on trail for a long time. I saw him looking around and I recognized a potential opportunity to change the negative mojo. I invited him to share our campsite for the night. He looked like he had stories to tell, the experience of hiking many miles that would be good for CJ to hear, and for me too, since he was an older hiker and I hope to keep hiking way into retirement.
It turned out my intuition was right. He had started at the border of Mexico several months before. He was a Canadian citizen, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. After one thousand miles of hiking, he had gone into the town of Mammoth Lakes to get food and caught a cold while there. He was about two weeks "behind" the pace he probably needed to be on in order to make it to Canada before really bad weather set in to the pacific northwest. I bothered him with a million questions that were set up to let CJ hear the answer and hopefully distract from the horrible recent events.
He was good to have around. The first thing we learned about him was his trail name: Journal. The other hikers who were hiking from Mexico to Canada that year had dubbed him "Journal" because he was extremely disciplined about going to his tent early to write in his journal before falling asleep. Before he turned to journaling on that evening, Journal showed us a few backpacking tricks he had picked up. He could set his tent up in about 90 seconds. He said he'd perfected that in bad weather. The main trick we carried away from our evening with him was how to hang your food in a tree so bears cannot get it. And your rope doesn't get stuck.
By about 4 in the afternoon, we had stopped hiking for the day and started setting up our campsite on a rock outcropping with a view that overlooked Lake Tahoe. With such a view it was certain I would have cell service, so I turned my phone on to check in with Erin and let her know we were making great progress. Immediately the phone showed me a text message that had been sent by Erin while my phone was off. It said she'd come home and found CJ's young cat dead on our living room floor. Her forensic examination led her to believe the cat had been sitting on the window sill, like cats will do, when it experienced a sudden death and fell to the floor. This was no small matter. It was a huge matter. CJ had rescued that cat from the pound as a new born kitten. It slept with him every night. We'd had farm animals die. This was different. It was a house animal.
I must have had a visible physical reaction when I read the text because CJ saw something was up and wanted to know what I had just read. I tried to blow him off saying it was nothing while I wrestled with how to handle it. Should I tell him nothing and wait until the end of the trip? Or should we handle it right now and deal with it? If he hadn't been scheduled to take his back belt exam 48 hours after we walked off the trail, I would have chosen to hold it and wait. But he had been preparing for that test for a year and I didn't want to jeopardize his success. I had to tell him and hope we had enough hours to work through it before he tested.
I just blurted it out. That's how I do stuff like that. 25+ years as a cop and I still suck beyond all possible belief at breaking bad news. I just want to get it over with as quick as possible. Like popping a balloon. It's over. Done. There it is. Deal with it. Move on. There are no more pictures from that day. Only the ones I already posted. Neither of us wants to remember that day at all.
But then something kinda good happened. A hiker came wandering into our campsite. He was older, probably approaching 60. One knee was wrapped in a supporting bandage and he was limping. He looked like he had been on trail for a long time. I saw him looking around and I recognized a potential opportunity to change the negative mojo. I invited him to share our campsite for the night. He looked like he had stories to tell, the experience of hiking many miles that would be good for CJ to hear, and for me too, since he was an older hiker and I hope to keep hiking way into retirement.
It turned out my intuition was right. He had started at the border of Mexico several months before. He was a Canadian citizen, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. After one thousand miles of hiking, he had gone into the town of Mammoth Lakes to get food and caught a cold while there. He was about two weeks "behind" the pace he probably needed to be on in order to make it to Canada before really bad weather set in to the pacific northwest. I bothered him with a million questions that were set up to let CJ hear the answer and hopefully distract from the horrible recent events.
He was good to have around. The first thing we learned about him was his trail name: Journal. The other hikers who were hiking from Mexico to Canada that year had dubbed him "Journal" because he was extremely disciplined about going to his tent early to write in his journal before falling asleep. Before he turned to journaling on that evening, Journal showed us a few backpacking tricks he had picked up. He could set his tent up in about 90 seconds. He said he'd perfected that in bad weather. The main trick we carried away from our evening with him was how to hang your food in a tree so bears cannot get it. And your rope doesn't get stuck.
I told him about getting my rope stuck in the tree the evening before. Up to this point in life, my method for getting the rope over the tree branch had been to try to wrap a rock in so much rope that a net was created around the rock. Then tie that net with a knot so the rock couldn't escape. My theory was that once the rock got over the branch, its weight would pull additional rope farther over the branch. Once over the branch, the rock could be lowered to the ground, the food bag could be tied to one end and hoisted into the tree. It's a good thing it wasn't up to me to invent the wheel.
Journal's method was far less complex. He simply found a decent size rock and wrapped about half his rope around it without tying the rock to the rope in any way. Then he threw the rock over the branch. The rock and the rope never remained connected after that point but there was enough rope over the branch, because so much of it had been wrapped around the rock, that it simply uncoiled itself and fell to the ground regardless of where the rock went. If it didn't work correctly, your rope wasn't stuck. It was just dangling. You could easily pull the rope back to yourself with nothing impeding it. I haven't lost a rope since.
That evening, we all fell asleep feeling terrible. I think it's safe to include Journal in this statement because he was coughing pretty seriously from the cold he had hiked a couple hundred miles with. He didn't make it all the way to Canada before being overwhelmed by weather and physical issues. Here is a link to his blog from that journey. If you are a first-responder, you may benefit from reading his last few journal entries, especially #160.
Journal's method was far less complex. He simply found a decent size rock and wrapped about half his rope around it without tying the rock to the rope in any way. Then he threw the rock over the branch. The rock and the rope never remained connected after that point but there was enough rope over the branch, because so much of it had been wrapped around the rock, that it simply uncoiled itself and fell to the ground regardless of where the rock went. If it didn't work correctly, your rope wasn't stuck. It was just dangling. You could easily pull the rope back to yourself with nothing impeding it. I haven't lost a rope since.
That evening, we all fell asleep feeling terrible. I think it's safe to include Journal in this statement because he was coughing pretty seriously from the cold he had hiked a couple hundred miles with. He didn't make it all the way to Canada before being overwhelmed by weather and physical issues. Here is a link to his blog from that journey. If you are a first-responder, you may benefit from reading his last few journal entries, especially #160.
Comments
Post a Comment