Be Kind
The trail by the lake was idyllic with sweet smelling families out for a hike on the sand trails by the lake, which rose up through crushed rock and boulder in the mid day heat. No one with a big pack.
As I rose up the trail, away from the stretch red cedar and into the open of boulder, hemlock and juniper, I started to feel bug bites, and remembered with dread my last trip to Desolation Wilderness where the mosquitoes were relentless.
I pulled out my deet and sprayed in strategic locations on my body, putting the orange bottle back into my front pouch, and continued up the trail. A woman in her fifties was ahead in a gym suit and loop earrings. She was batting the mosquitoes.
"Would you like some mosquito repellent?" I asked.
"Oh, that would be great, thank you," she said.
I opened my front pouch, but the repellant was gone.
"Oh my god, I think I dropped it, hold on."
"No, Ill get it," she offered, awkwardly.
"Oh no, Ill get it, It can’t be far." I kicked myself, scurrying down the hill. Diane the methodical loomed in my conscience. I had only gone mile two of 140. I'd never make it. I scrambled back and saw the bright orange bottle in the middle of the trail, grabbed it, then returned to the woman now heading down.
"Wow, see, kindness pays, I was saying to myself," she said. I wouldn't have noticed it was gone had I not offered. This was true, and I took that as my first trail lesson.
Always Put Things you Will Need on Top of Your Pack
Like, if it calls for rain, put your rain jacket on the top rather then tucked away at the bottom. Which is where I had to dig when the heavy drops started to fall. I took all my gear out, grabbed the heavy duty rain jacket, put my plastic garbage sack over my things now returned to my pack, and hiked. The sky overhead was thick and angry, and soon was spitting thick balls of hail, soon pelting my mountain rain shell.
The few people I had seen were gathered under clusters of trees, but a group of four young men with back packs heading up into the deluge, of pelting rain and rolling thunder.
"Are you guys going in this?" I shouted over the sound of the rolling sky and driving hail.
"Yes, we're going," one shouted. Knowing I had 16 miles to cover on day one, to compelte the itinerary set by my illustrator of this journey, probably now in Oregon after his brush with Alittude sickness and blisters, I caught on to their tail end, rising amid rocks, twists in the mountains,
When it came down even heavier, I stopped to wait under a tree, but my gloves were sopping, as were my pants, shoes and socks, and I kept pushing on, passing by ill equipped hikers, taken in by the sunny skies of earlier in the day.
But the localized cloud moved as quickly as it had come, and was abating. Families with young children in t-shirts screaming with cold and misery endured down the trail, and I thanked god for my raincoat, which I vowed to pack towards the top of my pack if it called for rain.
You Can Camp Alone in the Mountains
I traveled through the Desolation lakes, first Aloha, the shallow lake at 8000 feet with its bed of rock stretching into the terrain like the moon.
Its mostly day hikers, but one man passes me as I cut down from the lake, into a steep wedge between mountains. The PCT and TRT share about forty miles along this terrain, and so I wasn’t sure which of these journeys this man was on, but he is long gone when I round the wedge, my eye on the black cloud around the next peak.
My pants are dried, and my socks are drying on my poles. I can't afford to get wet this time of day. I pray the cloud moves back to the west as I round this peak hike up to another string of sparsley treed lakes. I had spent several days with Diane and Rebecca and Korra who was not such a fan of the california summer heat. Diane had wanted to go to Dick's peak, which was five miles from the lakes. But because of the dog we had stayed languidly by the water in one spot. Now, on Daves itinerary, I had to get up to Dick’s peak, then go down a mile and a half to Dick's lake.
I've hiked for 9 miles now and its about four. I keep going, past the busy lakes, up further into forest of fir and pine. The trail bends, bringing the distant peak into view. It is 5:30 and I am tired, hiking for 6 hours at a steady clip. When I pause, looking at the towering 9,974 foot bohemouth in the disatnce, I know there is no way I can make it this evening.
My eyes scan the immediate terrain. I have stopped on a bluff overlooking the lakes. I'm going to do it, I decide with relief, throwing my pack down. I am carrying an ultra lightweight tent that Dave gave me, which uses my two trekking poles on either end rather than tent poles. It goes right up. I throw in my sleeping bag, my clothes, my map and first aid kit. As I boil water, I take all items with scent, and throw them in my bear can.
It is when I sit, my Pad Thai ready, my sleeping bag laid out on a shrub in the warm 6 p.m. sun, drying from a pool of water that seeped into the bottom of my bag, that I looked out over the lakes and the mountains and felt a profound stillness in the beauty, an immense quiet that reverberates like a song, one that washes over me. I would take on the looming Dick's peak with fresh legs.
I climb into my tent, too tired for trepedation, a solitary creature entering into thin walls, and soon was asleep in the wilderness. I was deeply alive, just me and the woodpecker, chopping at the tree outside my tent.
Find Your Trail Angels
I woke early, chilled depsite my hat and puffy, and began the work of organizing inside the tent. After coffee, my oatmeal and powdered peanut mix I had brought for each morning, then packing up, I began to hike, stopping a little further up at a stream to filter water. I pass the turn off to Gilmore Lake, a camping spot. I had seen there was water further up on the Far Out app, which provides a detailed description of the trail, and comments from other people about particular spots on the map and is considered essential for any TRT hiker, and I am sure, PCT hiker, or AT hiker: anyone going any distance and in need of live information on the trail.
I stopped after the lake, getting off the trail when first a young man in a black hoody and glasses, then an older woman with short hair in an orange shirt passed so that I could apply sun screen.
It didn't take long for me to reach the woman in orange who I fell behind. We started up a conversation. She left her camp early each day, she said, because she was slower than the rest of her party. She was from Arizona. I told her I was from Washington.
"Oh, your from God's country," she said. "I hiked Wonderland, such beautiful place."
I told her about my failed bid on Wonderland, when I headed out for seven days with a 50-pound pack. I had formed blisters on the first day. I had made the mistake on my second day, camping at a lake, of washing all my socks, assuming they would dry in the sun. Then it rained for three days non stop and it was too painful to continue.
I had a much lighter pack, now, and three pairs of dried socks, one which would remain clean for sleeping at night, another tip from the video I had watched of an experience through hiker in preparation for this journey.
"Where are you camping?" She asked.
"Richardonson lake," I told her, planning to stick to Dave's brutal itinerary, which I would need to keep to make it back to Kingsbury North, almost all the way around the lake at the base. 140 miles.
"We read on the Far Out app there were bears. One ripped a campers tent and pulled their back pack. We are going a couple of miles further."
Further than 17 miles? Bears?
"You go ahead," she told me, stoppjng, waving me past. "You're going faster. I'm going back to my happy place," she said, putting in an earbud.
I had no headphones and wasn't planning on wasting battery power to listen to anything. I had a garmin for communication with the SOS button I needed to stay charged thanks to Diane, and the phone with the Far Out app. I had two nights till Tahoe City, and so forded up that south facing slope forgetting about the bears. After three miles I was looking down at a stunning unfurling of high alpine lakes and the rugged crags and peaks of the sierras and stunted juniper clinging to the windswept top of the mountains as far as the eye could see, breathing in the spectucular awe of the view.
"You made it!" said a young man sitting on a rock, when I rounded up towards the path down to the lake. "You want me to take your picutre?"
"Sure," I said, standing in front of the valley of lake and metamorphic rock. I offered to take his photo, then we began the descent to Dick's lake together.
He was on his tenth day on his hike around the lake and had been listening to the Brothers Karamozov. School wasn’t for him, though. He wanted to be a pilot. He would be a junior, the age of the kids who I inflicted reading and writing upon. But he was my guide now on the ins and outs of the body and the mind of the trail.
"Its really the mental game that is the hardest," he said as we eased down the steep descent to Dick's lake where I stopped to wash a pair of socks. Bennet stopped too.
He was planning on camping at Richardson lake.
"I heard there was a bear at Richardson," I said, washing out the socks in a zip lock bag from yeterday, throwing in a little soap for my back country washing machine.
"Ehh, I'll fight it off."
I decided I would stick with the kid and brave the camp. I know we had gone five miles. Twelve more to go.
We went throught the bucloic mountain lake, with its bonzai out crop of juniper, field of yellow mountain lily next to a descending stream, a pristine, stunning world to walk through. The path then descened and we dropped into a forest, several miles before stopping for a snack. I was ready to hike alone again when the hiker from Arizonia and a woman with black close-cropped curls stopped. Bennet threw his arms around the woman with Ethiopian features wearing the same gray sunshirt as me.
They again brought up the bear and the kid, losing confidence, said he would also camp at the farther stream. Two additional miles. Which meant twleve more miles to go.
"You guys go ahead, I need to dig a hole," I said, relieved the kid would have someone else to chatter to.
They were filtering water up ahead. I would make sure to catch up, then keep my sights on them so I did not camp alone.
On my own now, I fell back into the solitude of the trail, one I was cherishing; I was on no one’s time table but my own and soon, came upon a collection of people filtering at the stream.
I listened to the conversation at the water. The woman from Arizona was with a group of four, the woman with the short hair, another woman in a colorful sun shirt, and a thin, gray haired man in a yellow shirt. The woman in the colorful shirt was chattering to a woman from New Zealand, a tall, hiking goddess look to her.
"How many miles to Richardson?"I asked the woman in the colorful shirt, wrapping up my filtering.
"Do you have the Far Out app?" She asked in a clipped tone.
I was taken aback by her lack of generosity, and vowed to figure out how to determine distance on the app so I never had to ask anyone the question again. I had struggled first to purchase it due to a glitch, and had not yet figured out the inner workings. I also decided that I did not like the woman.
Nonetheless, I would need to keep my on them to avoid being alone with a bear, and as they readied to leave, I threw my filled water in my, pack, swinging the load to my back, and setting on the path, vowing to hang back, but keep them in my sights. This was survival.
Use Fear-Fueled Adreniline to Your Advantage.
The woman in orange left first, then a few minutes later the colorful shirt and the man in yellow left at a fast clip. I would keep the woman in orange in my sights as the other two had already peeled away.
I picked up my pace until I saw the orange shirt, falling back, but keeping her in my vision. I was hiking my fastest, employing my trail running skills, and didn’t catch up until about five miles later when she stopped to use the bathroom.
I passed her, allowing my pace to settle, and hiked on until hitting another descent into Richardson lake. With this down, I now felt a pang of pain with each step, and finally, had no choice but to stop and assess my feet when I arrived at Richardson lake. I remoed my pack, took my shoes off and walked to the edge of the water just as the woman in orange came down the trail.
"I have blisters," I said, so disappointed.
"I have something for you. This is what they use on the el camino," she said, reaching into her pack. "So many people deal with blisters and they know how to handle them over there."
A large blister had bubbled on my right big toe. Smaller ones were forming on my smaller pinky toes as well, and on the insides of my arches. I disinfected my safety pin and slowly let the juice ooze out of the big one, then covered the blister with the bandaging.
"You just have to promise me that you won't peel it off. You have to leave it on or it will take off your skin."
I promised her I wouldn't, thanked her and she left.
I worked on putting mole skin on the rest, then covering them with leukotape, putting my socks back on and walking best I could to Miller Creek on my own.
Wow — you are such a badass!! I loved every bit of your adventure. I felt like I was right there with you (minus the blisters, mosquito bites, and bear anxiety ). Your grit, humor, and spirit of adventure shine through so clearly. So proud of you for doing something so bold and unforgettable — you inspire me!