Happy Apocalypse

            It smells kinda like camping, kinda like death......

With the fires we've been dealing with some unhealthy air quality. 

When I say unhealthy, it isn't an uninformed opinion....

It reminds me of being sick as a kid and staying home from school.  You just kind of wander around inside and as the afternoon stretches into dinnertime, you just feel sluggish from the lack of activity and lung tightness. Everyone is restless and maybe even a bit cranky.   Covid has taken the excitement out of staying at home for everyone.  This is just the icing on the cake. 

              Outside it looks foggy, except the fog is yellow.  

Taking Kona for a short walk, the streets are deserted, adding to the Twilight Zone atmosphere.  

Make it end.  Please, make it end..... 

Angel’s Staircase Adventure

2020 has become a year of bucket list accomplishments.  A month ago my son Tim and I finished off our John Muir Trail odyssey.  This past Sunday KB and I set off on the Angel’s Staircase Loop. 

 

The adventure really started when I took my bike out to add some sealant to the tires a few days before (just to be safe) and I noticed the back wheel felt wonky.  It turns out I had a broken suspension pivot axle. I took it to the great folks at Methow Cycle & Sport and they told me that they would have to order a part and the bike would not be ready until after my planned ride.

 

I contemplated renting a bike, but opted instead to give it a try on my fat bike. I took it out for a short test ride and made a few minor adjustments (saddle height, brake lever angle) and deemed it ready to go.  I figured there was going to be a bit of hike a bike so the day would be an adventure anyway.

When KB suggested we set off from my place at 5:30 AM I flinched, but agreed.  Starting early would get us riding before it got too hot and running out of daylight was a problem neither of us dared say out loud, but it was a possibility we wanted to avoid.

We arrived at the trailhead in time to dress, drink up and get rolling before 7:00. The assortment of bikes on racks and campers told us we were in the right spot. Soon we were out of the parking lot and climbing a dusty trail in thick forest.

We were leapfrogging two other groups of three riders as we climbed and climbed.  At each trail junction they would stop and wait for their friends and we would confirm our direction and putter on.  The fat bike was doing very well soaking up the bumps and lumps of tree roots and rocks.

Although the fat bike is rigid, it does have a dropper post and more than one rider commented that given the choice of suspension, or a dropper, they would choose the dropper.

 

These trails are shared by hikers and bikers so we kept an eye open and at times the hikers envied us and at times they offered us pity.  “I’m glad I get to hike up this steep trail,” was something we heard more than once.

        Above Cooney Lake.  Look carefully and you can see some sad souls... 

When we passed Cooney lake the trail shot up a comical climb that made me wonder if we were off the trail. The grade necessitated us pushing and then carrying our bikes before returning to ridable trail.  Then after what seemed like a three-minute uphill ride the trail shot up becoming what a ride veteran referred to as “the wall.”

Nobody rides the “wall” section up or down, and we and others alternated between pushing, pulling, carrying, cajoling and cursing our bikes.  The trail was like trying to climb a mountain of loose marbles.  You would push your bike uphill, grab the brakes and pull yourself up even with the bike and repeat.  Some carried their bikes on their shoulders with their steps sliding backward like they were climbing up a down escalator. Everyone was glad to be here but nobody was smiling.  I told KB that as a hiker I found this part of the trail horrible and as a biker I thought it was more of a dare.

 

Although this section wasn’t that long, it took longer than it should have and knowing we had several more hours after this, we did not want to kill ourselves.  When we reached the top others were seated on rocks next to their bikes recovering.

We could see Rainier to the south

We snapped some picture and ate and drank.

After a brief traverse we had a bit more climbing and then we were at the high point of the ride at over 8,000 feet.

We dropped down the Angel’s Staircase and all I can say is that I guess not all angels are good angels. The trail was a series of switchbacks where we dismounting at each corner.  The loose, lumpy, steep drop corners just invited a crash and that was not on our agenda.  Showing more wisdom that expected we aligned our risk aversion to our age and talked about how smart we were.

Soon the trail was traversing alpine meadows that were golden under the late summer sun.  We stopped at a stream and filtered water to restock our supply.  The water was cold and felt like heaven on our parched throats.

                                      Looking SE

                                   Looking NW

After some moderate climbing we reached Boiling Lake and paused to enjoy the mountain scenery.  We began the hot, steep, exposed climb up to Horsehead Pass.  

                                  About to go down here

                         Just came up from here (see the trail?)

KB’s bike with water and gear strapped to it weighed a ton, and by a ton I mean pretty close to fifty pounds. Thirty-five pounds of bike plus seven pounds of water and a more than a few pounds of extra clothing, tools, tubes and first aid gear. 

 

The switchbacks just kept going and we paused a few times to drink and take in calories.  This was a full day and we were glad to have started as early as we did. People had been encouraging to us as we were both on rigid bikes and the novelty struck some as adventurous.

       Spring, summer and fall were all in the last month at this elevation

When we reached the top we had the place to ourselves.  It was a narrow ridge and we took our time refueling and taking in the view below us.  An observer might wonder if we were tired, or casual about not rushing to get going.  It was a pleasant combination of savoring the time and gathering ourselves mentally for a long technical descent that would require a Zen-like focus.

 

When we were ready, we dusted ourselves off and set off down the trail.  It was the now familiar “cliff on one side, mountain on the other” that we had been riding most of the day.

                     Yeah, and THIS was the shit we rode....

 

The trail started off rough, loose and exposed.  Each kilometer it got less so and our speed increased the closer we got to the trailhead.  We had over three thousand feet to descend and the trail got better and more flowy by the minute. 

 

We paused at one point on the way down and shared the observation that nine hours of riding and pushing/carrying a bike can make you tired.   KB had blood on the back of his calf from multiple pedal encounters and a dirt moustache. I was likewise dirty and had some blood on me.  I was glad our appearance matched the day’s effort.

                             The dirty smile

When we arrived at the parking lot we felt like we had experienced the full meal deal that is the Angel’s Staircase Loop.   KB commented that if we did this ride every day for a couple weeks we would get in really good shape.  I just let that hang in the air as I opened the cooler and fished out a bottle of cold water.

           Don't think for a moment that we don't know how lucky we are....

The John Muir Trail – Still crazy after all these years

My son and I completed our quest to complete the JMT.  At one point on our trip I informed Tim he had hiked every inch of the trail.  At about nine in the morning of our last day we had completed the entire trail together. It had taken eighteen years to do so, but that just make it that much sweeter.

 

I never found the bridge I was searching for.  I was alert and would have known if we had crossed it.  My current guess is that is on the climb to Dusy basin.  I may never validate that, but I am content that I indeed did find what I was really searching for. 

 

The drive from Los Angeles was like dusting off an old photo album. There were a lot of memories, a few surprises and more than one blank stare. This was a drive I had made dozens and dozens of times in my youth yet it was mostly unfamiliar. My nostalgic memories greatly exceeded the reality.  It was dryer and more desolate than I recalled.  It was the kind of place where if your car broke down you would consider curling up in a ball and just waiting to die.

 

We passed a few trailers and deserted buildings. Climate change has made some of these places a living hell.

 

I wanted to bridge my past recollections with my current life.  The silver granite and deep blue sky above the tree line still take my breath away.  There are more people, but there is still plenty of trail and plenty of wilderness such that it would be wrong to call it crowded. Compared to thirty or forty years ago it is crowded.   If you compared how it was forty years ago to how it was forty years before that, you would come to the same conclusion. 

 

It appears the age demographic is also changed.  Back in the day, everyone was under thirty and today there were plenty of AARP candidates.  It would seem that starting with my generation, everyone who wanted to continue has done so.  We saw hikers in their thirties, forties, fifties and dare I say, sixties on the trail.  I’m not saying they were all moving fast, but they were moving.  If there is one thing I have learned as an aging athlete, it is that slow and steady wins in the long run.  One other things I’ve learned is that “The long run” is all that matters.

It took us a few days to adapt to the elevation, but adapt we did.  It just got easier and we got faster. This coincided with our packs getting lighter as we ate our food and burned our fuel so our day to day improvement was noticeable.

 

After Tim declared Mather his favorite pass, I thought about it for a while and decided it was also my favorite.  Mather pass is at least three days from anywhere, so if you are there, you’re on a serious adventure.

 

Birthday cake at 10,650'

Our route started at North Lake and went over Piute Pass into Humphrey’s Basin and then down a long and winding trail to Kings Canyon National Park.  Up to Evolution Valley which was less crowded than I recalled.  From there we went up and over Muir Pass and down to LeConte Canyon.  Then we climbed to Palisades Basin and Palisades Lakes via The Golden Staircase.

 

From there we climbed Mather and then Pinchot pass in one long day before descending Woods Creek.  Finally we climbed up to Rae Lakes and spent a relaxing, albeit crowded Friday afternoon.  

Then we climbed Glen Pass and finally turned off the JMT and exited over Kearsarge Pass to Onion Valley.  Over seven days of hiking we had a total of about ninety-eight miles and were quite ready for cheeseburgers.

Call me Ishmael?

 

When I was younger I dreamed of one day hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  As I have aged my appreciation for clean sheets and need for a good mattress have made me reconsider that dream.  I do still enjoy reading the blogs of PCT hikers.  I have done more hiking than in years past and plan to continue that going forward. I expect that my age will and the level physical impact from these adventures will ensure that my aspirations remain appropriately meager.

 

I always enjoyed the rhythm that one grew into after a few days on the trail.  The simplicity of the routine and the Zen-like peace that comes from becoming more and more efficient have always intrigued me.  This applies both to my personal routines and equipment as well as my interaction with my hiking companion(s).  The constant experiment and refinement results in a quiet satisfaction.

 

One of the many oddities of long distance hikers is they assume a trail name.  Trail names allow a certain anonymity as well as being more memorable than saying, “My name is Justin or Laurel.”  Who can forget names like Twinkletoes, Four Eyes, Pancake or Pied Piper?  

 

We aren’t going far enough to justify real trail names, but in the spirit of calling this my OBDT* for 2020 we’re going for it.  (*OBDT = One big dumb thing = A nickname for an event that middle aged men sign up for and then use fear and panic to motivate them to train for it.  No more than one per year, typically in the summer.)

 

My son has had the nickname Tarzan for a long time and that works for this application. For myself, I wanted to acknowledge not just my age but my experience, which hearkens back to a skills almost unknown in 2020. I learned with paper maps and compasses. They don’t require batteries. I’m not going so far back that we are talking sealskin and oiled canvas, but the skillset I have is rare among hikers today.  So after some consideration for calling myself O.G., I declare, “Call me Analog.”

How backpacking caught me

Hiking with Hottie

Perhaps it started when I was five and my father took me camping in Sequoia.  It was a chance to feel like a man when I was a young a boy.  My dad and I slept in the tent like men do and we ate the same food and I rode in the front seat on the drive there and back.  As a teen my passion for the outdoors was further fueled when I started rock climbing and backpacking with my friends.  Again, it was a chance to be with my friends without parents yet we were doing adult things.

 

The satisfaction of learning and having the skills that enabled me to be independent in the wilderness and was empowering to me as a teenager and young adult.  Making decisions and exercising judgment was a lesson in being a grownup.  Being able to say, “It looks too sketchy right now. Let’s turn around,” while disappointing, was also rewarding because it allowed us to demonstrate, if only to ourselves, that we could make an adult decision.  

 

I gained skills using a map and compass. The stoves we had back there were a cross between a deep fat fryer and a bomb in terms of danger and flame size. Our packs were big, heavy and left us raw and bruised.  We wore boots that weighed so much that unless you had a pair of the behemoths you would not believe me.

 

I loved it. We all did.

 

The idea of being in a place that had not been overrun by man was awesome in the years after Robert Redford made Jeremiah Johnson as real as life itself. The high Sierra was federally protected long before the timber in the western foothills ran out.  With the trails in the Sierra having been built by the CCC during the depression, the joke was that they had used Egyptians for the design and construction of the trails. 

 

Our little group went hiking, climbing and backcountry skiing during the late seventies and well into the eighties. With no internet, we had to earn our knowledge via hard work, experience and mistakes.  

Eighteen years on the John Muir Trail

Tim in 2017

In the seventies and eighties I hiked in the Sierra to experience wilderness, independence and freedom.  I returned in the nineties with my children so they could share some of the same experiences. 

 

In 2002, still reeling from an unexpected divorce, my son and I set out to cover the entire John Muir Trail.  We didn’t take it as seriously as we should have, and a simple blister on the bottom of his foot derailed our plan. Fifty miles in we had to pull out for a couple days while that healed.  Then we jumped back on the trail further south at Kearsarge Pass and finished our trip with a memorable night atop Mt. Whitney.  We ended up completing the first fifty and the last forty-five miles that year.  In 2017 we returned and went in where we had pulled out in 2002.  Another physical setback shortened our trip.  This time we are both determined to be prepared in every way to finish off the remaining eighty or so miles of the trail. We are not seeking to conquer it, we just want to enjoy it.

 

Any inner peace or enlightenment that I was seeking eighteen years ago has either come from elsewhere, or will never find me. I have completed all of the gauntlets chosen by fate or by my own designs and the lessons I have gleaned did not stray far from my previous beliefs.

 

When we started eighteen years ago my son was a teenager and I was a full-grown man.  Now he is the full-grown man and I am an old fart that won’t be doing much of anything eighteen years from now.  For me, time has transitioning from my “someday” to “before it is too late”.  All of the realities that go with the passage of nearly two decades of time apply to both of us.  We are different than we were all those years ago and frankly I am looking forward to expanding our experiences and viewing the trip from changed perspectives.

A bridge in time?

Watching my children grow up and witnessing my parents break down has forced me to consider the arc of my own life. I’ve connected with a couple old friends and felt regret over all that I missed. I’ve looked back at my choices and wondered if, in my rush to get ahead, I missed the opportunity to enjoy where I was.

I’ve had old songs sneak out from my digital library that I first heard when I was young and looking forward to life. Now I hear them from the other side of the hill. I feel like I raced through my twenties and thirties without coming up for air. My children have told me about memories of meaningful events we shared and sadly, some of them I either barely remember, or simply don’t recall. I feel like I was in a car going seventy miles an hour though a scene I could only have appreciated at twenty miles an hour. I was there, but so busy the memories didn’t sink in.

My understanding of physics and my optimism means that I am wise to focus on what is ahead and not dwell on the past. Yet, there are some things I just want to see again so my mind can separate reality from some blurry dream.

For many reasons, not all of which I understand, I want to return to the high Sierra and stand on a particular, non-descript footbridge on the John Muir Trail. While there are some impressive steel bridges, this one is just a wooden footbridge. Going up canyon the bridge is to the right of the stream. I think it is on the climb up to Palisade Lakes, but it might be somewhere in Evolution Basin. Yep, I’m not even sure where it is. Maybe it only exists in my dreams. My recollection of the bridge was that at a point in time, over thirty years ago, I saw it and thought, “That looks cool.” No epiphany, no superlatives, nothing noteworthy, it wasn’t much different than the footbridges ahead of it or behind it. It was just at a point where the switchbacks of the trail afforded me a unique view. It was just a pleasant memory. It is reasonable to assume that I could walk over it this summer and not recognize it.

Perhaps I want to find it to connect the past and present. Maybe I want to validate my memory. My life will go on if I find it or not. It has become my white whale of 2020. I am not sure what reaching it will do for me. I don’t have any ceremonies planned. I just would like to see it once again.

I am thrilled that my son is joining me on this pilgrimage. I will share more about that next time.