The Long Walk

The great journey to the Sierras was a limited success. It was terrific while it lasted. It just lasted too short a time.

Legolas and I made great time up to Mammoth Lakes, flying through the scrubby desert dotted with scrapyards and Joshua trees and spent a pleasant afternoon replacing items we'd forgotten, packing bear-proof canisters with food, and getting Legolas' pack down to approximately 1.7 pounds. Somehow, despite thinning out my gear to near attenuation, it still weighed in at 486 pounds. I credit it to the fact that Legolas' pack was fuscia.

Eventually, Gimli joined us and ate some lunch at perhaps the worst-run Quiznos in the western hemisphere (I'd never been into a sub shop in which the bread was too frozen to be eaten). Upon our return, we found Pippin there and ready to go.

We all made it out to the trailhead as the thunderheads above started to unleash their torrents. The hike began in mixed rain and hail with a cool breeze, still warm enough to travel with just a pack cover and poncho. Lots of folks were fleeing the high country, leaving us as the only travelers uphill. It was like hiking through a Tolkien epic, actually. Great towering monoliths of granite, capped with snow, loomed above us, their heads thrust into the lowering clouds. All around us, huge pines sang in the wind, the ground carpeted with mossy boulders and rushing streams. We made it up to Arrowhead Lake (which Pippin conjectured was connected to all Arrowhead Lakes in the world by secret tunnels, and if we could find the hidden cavern at its depth, we could swim through it to our own Arrowhead Lake. What a delightful scamp he is), then curved up to Skelton Lake, making a few small stream crossings along the way.

By this time the precipitation had trailed off, so we stowed the ponchos and continued in the fresh post-rain breezes scented with pine and damp earth. Barney Lake was idyllic and surrounded by lush green, but we had our eyes on the top of Duck Pass looming to our north up a thousand feet of scree-covered hillside.

There's no better way to mount endless stony switchbacks than while debating religion, so that's what we did. Slowly the lake dropped below us in a basin of primeval talus, and before long we were tromping past icy patches of snow. We made the pass at about 11,500 feet, just before sunset. Duck Lake lay below, four times larger than any of the lakes before—and we were the only people there, which was exactly what we wanted.

However, we were also winded, getting cold, and in need of a spot to set up camp. As Pippin indicated on his blog, we found a spot on a tiny spit of land halfway down a clifflike slope on the south side of the lake. Legolas and I attempted to set up our tarp and tent while Pippin and Gimli headed out for water (a forty-five minute adventure that resulted in four gallons of water and the near destruction of those who went to fetch it). By the time we got the gear stowed and the stoves running, it was full dark. The waxing half-moon shone behind the breaking clouds and the landscape was breathtaking, but we were cold, tired, and worn thin, and the freeze-dried camp food I was so proud of turned out to be of pretty low quality. We finally got everything bear-proofed for the night and retired—Legolas and Pippin in the nearly level tarp and Gimli and I in the severely angled tent (no, really; we spent the first few hours repeatedly sliding down into the foot of the tent and clawing our way back up).

None of us slept much—the others due to their own private demons, and me due to fear of their demons coming to get me. It was clear Gimli wasn't doing well, though: he was breathing heavily and restless. By 2:30am, he was up, out of the tent, and wandering sick. It was kind of creepy to try to follow him around in the dark, unsure of whether he was fully conscious. He was nauseated and muddled headed, even more than usual. We guessed (and later pretty much confirmed) that he had altitude sickness, a malady I should have forseen. But hey—I live at altitude, so it didn't bother me. That's the important thing, right?

Unsure of whether Gimli would make it out okay, we packed up our gear in the darkness. Since the application of medication, warmer clothes, and water seemed to be lifting our comrade's spirits, and since we were deathly afraid of trying to get down the switchbacks in the dark (not to mention trying to get back to the trail from our cliff dwelling), we all sat in the blackness, watiting for sunrise. It turned out to be a great little time—we watched the ten thousand stars that are invisible from civilization wheel overhead, shivered against the cold, and talked about movies, life, and the universe. I sang showtunes, which were appreciated by no one. Philistines.

By 5am, we were up and hiking. Gimli was nearly his old self, but the general mood suggested that getting out of the wilderness was the order of the day. Besides, Pippin was obsessed with getting some Moons over My Hammy into his belly. By 8:30am we made it back to the trailhead. Overall, we hiked about 11 miles in a day, the second half on a couple of hours' sleep. We were manly.

We spent a few hours in town (a third of which was spent trying to get everyone to the same place at the same time), and there was some discussion of staying the night, but the prevailing sentiment was leading most of the Fellowship away, and since Legolas was my ride, I couldn't well stay on my own. We had some coffee, discussed a few more issues, and bade one another farewell. I was home by 6:30pm, thanks to the dedicated automotivemanship of Legolas.

So it was a mixed bag, but mostly good. The scenery and the journey were incredible, the companionship was great, and the spinach and bacon omelet in town was delicious. It was just too short, dang it.

Journeys

Well, I got a chance to explore some of that Pacific Crest Trail I had been longing for. After a couple of preliminary hikes to test out my new gear, I headed off last week for a two-day, 24-mile trek across the Big Bear valley.

My endlessly kind and lovely wife was incredibly generous in giving me the time, what with the Sierra trip with Gimli, Legolas, and Pippin coming up (I'm trying out the LotR names this time out, and you should be able to figure out who's who if you know the players at all. I'd like to think of myself as Aragorn, but I think I'm probably closer to Samwise, or maybe Merry). I was hoping to really give the gear a workout. So on Friday my family dropped me off at Baldwin Lake at around 8:30am, and I didn't see them again until 4pm on Saturday afternoon on the other end of the valley. The road from one end to the other can be seen here, though the trail itself wraps around the back of the ridge to the north of the lake.

I'd never been camping alone before, and certainly never covered so many miles on one hike before (we used to take a Sierra trip with the Boy Scouts every summer--we might have done that distance over the course of a couple of days, but I've blocked it from my mind). It was pretty incredible. The weather was hot but bearable, and I had the trail to myself nearly the entire time. I was passed by one pair of older ladies on horseback as I switchbacked up Gold Mountain (they turned back an hour later when they realized how long the trail was) and passed a pair of older folks resting under a tree before descending into Van Duesen Canyon. I didn't see anyone until I started climbing out of the valley to Fawnskin on the forest road when the jeeps and motocross bikers started buzzing me.

It was a pretty amazing journey. The path passes through a whole series of micro-climates, from the arid, catcti-dotted rocky soil near Baldwin Lake up over Gold Mountain and into conifers and oaks, then down into the valleys thick with pines and ferns. I camped the first night just below Bertha Peak with views both over the lake and the Holcomb Valley.

I was definitely worn thin by the time I limped out into Fawnskin, but it was pretty satisfying. The solitude and being away from civilization (though, sadly, in the valley it's difficult to escape traffic noises and such) was a blessing.

It was really neat, is what I'm saying. I'll go now.