Ever been accused of not having "sense enough to quit"? This last weekend, I suppose, could have been a classic case for me.
It was time for our somewhat-annual backpacking trip. By "our", I mean "not including Tom", who prides himself, and deservedly so, on having quite a lot of sense about most things. Especially backpacking, as in not doing it. So, for many years now, I have found others with whom to share my certain lack of logic about having fun while in quite a bit of pain and discomfort. Those others this year, as in most years, are, by name, Clay, Noel and John, good friends from San Diego. For Noel, backpacking is a newer experience--the last couple of years--but he's been a part of other infamously painful expeditions, specifically our successful assault of Mt Whitney in '06 and our spectacularly UNsuccessful attempt a few years earlier to get from the top of Mt Whitney to Badwater in Death Valley on foot/bicycle in, um, one day, sunrise to sunset ("The Diabolical Descent"). Yeah. We know. Can't be done. We figured that out, eventually, finally finding that aforementioned sense.
Our intrepid leader and planner-in-chief of all our adventures through the years has been Clay. We follow Clay-the-State-Parks-Big Kahuna-and-Experienced-Adventure-Planner into any wilderness, any plan, without question. I can't deny, however, that there have been specific moments when we've wondered why he commands our blind allegiance. Friday, for instance.
The schedule was different, this time. On Wednesday of last week, we met (I from the up here, they from San Diego) in a condo at Huntington Lake, a gorgeous place a couple of hours east of Fresno (past Shaver Lake) in the Sierras. At 7300 feet or so, Clay figured it would help us acclimate (to avoid another "Deer Lake scenario"--where, as you might guess, we nearly killed ourselves (again) getting to, well, Deer Lake) if we spent a couple of nights before of the climb at altitude.
It was cool! We watched movies (on a DVD player that had its own opinions about which ones we should watch), took a great car trip to some hot springs and an Edison Lakeside resort (where I scored the only ringer in a 5-minute game of horseshoes), enjoyed Clay's homemade pizza, went to a nice restaurant for dinner, and, generally, had a fabulous time.
Friday morning we drove the hour-and-some over rough, single track road (go Subies!) to the trail head near Florence Lake. The first clue that this might be a challenging journey should have been that we couldn't find the the actual trail. We knew it was somewhere nearby (there was an official marker), but it certainly wasn't obvious. Fully loaded (my pack was 45#+), we clambered through a stream, over rocks and boulders and pushed through thick manzanita, finally to find something sort of trail-ish. At least three of us in the group are pretty experienced trail-followers. It's a bad sign to keep losing the trail, which we did repeatedly.
So, our route turned out to be 6 hours of mostly straight Up (approx. 3000 ft), over loose rock and through thick brush, on-the-bad-trail and off, and generally torture. Guess who was the caboose of the group. Yup. The boys are, not surprisingly, all stronger and in better shape, for one thing. I have more chub on one thigh than they have on their whole bodies combined. They run or walk many miles every day. My training consists mostly of walking to get the paper every morning. I may need to step it up a bit. But, we all struggled. When Iron-Mountain-Goat John starts to look a bit strained (and even utter a few words of fatigue!), we all know we have permission to feel like we're about to die. While we didn't actually mention the word "mutiny", there were other sentiments expressed that implied that we wondered what Clay had been thinking when he'd planned this thing.
Turns out, it was all about the fish. John is an Avid Fisherman (that should be in all caps, actually). John has a hard time staying in the car when we pass the smallest body of water. He'll leap out, fishing pole and tackle flying, if we stop for even a photo or two. We've thought about strapping him in. Our last trip, the lakes were all sterile and only yielded one fish for John and one for Dave. They handled it bravely, but were visibly disappointed. So, Clay had heard that the Hooper Lakes were full of fish. And that hardly anyone ever went there. Little wonder.
We arrived, at last, skinned-up, mosquito-bitten and completely exhausted, at Gordon Lake, the first of the group of four. We WOULD trudge no further to check out other sites at the other lakes. Gordon was our friend. But, it was a wonderful campsite, and after an hour or so (even John had to rest a bit before throwing his first line into the lake!), a miracle began to take place. As with childbirth, the joy of the result, in this case, the beauty of the high country, overcomes the pain of the process.
It's the kind of euphoria you might feel when someone stops beating your head with a baseball bat. (The picture at right is uncharacteristically-pooped John. That mountain in the background is our ultimate destination.)Next, more pics and the answer to the question: what should we do the day after we almost killed ourselves hiking?
