I was getting out of town, getting away from my computer and the onslaught of destructive news. I decided I needed to do something that hurt, because hurt is something that will be a part of our lives and it was good to get familiar with pain. It was good to practice gritting teeth.
Hurricane Ridge is over 5,000 feet above sea level in Port Angeles where I started — about an 18-mile ride.
I’d chalked Love Trumps Hate onto a sidewalk down below, and the small defiance felt shamefully unfamiliar to me. I have to practice that too.
Within two miles of climbing, I felt the sweat trickling out of my armpits. There was my faint nausea and the weakening in my legs. So soon?
Rain was falling, and soupy fog cut visibility down to a 100 feet.
The message that the red and blue maps had fed me was powerlessness. They spoke of circumstances, beyond control, someone pushing me down, of being tied up while a murderer goes out to commit atrocities. Like so many Americans, I craved feeling strength again.
Pushing past the weakness, I felt a second wave of energy. I knew I would. I wanted to somehow make the effort stand for something, to push against the gears or even turn back time. But I was just cycling up the hill.
Many seek the outdoors as a form of escapism, but I looked around and I saw responsibility instead. Never mind whether my legs would endure for the long climb ahead — how would everything else endure? Our country? The planet? My faith that good will triumph over evil?
The trees, ferns and wildlife around me weren’t disconnected from the unfolding crisis. Their realm is also threatened as global warming marches on, as strange weather patterns take hold and fire, flood and plague ravage the ancient ecosystems here. There is no escape for anyone on a planet connected by climate. A president who denies climate change is dire news for the sickening earth.
The lies of this election have been bad for this wild place. The politics of fear were no good for the stands of sitka spruce, because they put a man in office who couldn’t give a damn about trees. Inequality in America threatens the glaciers on Mount Olympus, because it enables corporate pillagers to cut the biggest piece of the pie and tell the workers they’ll get their slice after they drill more oil and dig more coal.
The legacy of racism was here too as I considered the logging, mining and damming that happened throughout this country after white settlers wrenched it out of the hands of native tribes. The protests at Standing Rock are one in a series of confrontations in which the people with the strongest ties to the land have defied the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to despoil it. Now their fight will be that much harder.
Those who have least in this country feel the most pain when the storm smashes through the levies, when the heat wave ravages the city, when the drought kills the crops, when mountaintop removal fills a valley or when companies are looking for cheap real-estate to bury waste.
When I think of the fight to stem the destruction of the planet, I think not only of the need to install more solar panels and windmills, but also to improve upon how we participate in democracy.
States like Maine, which have installed ranked choice voting on candidates, spell hope that voters can empower third parties without throwing their votes away. An end to Citizens United, would mean less corporate money going into the elections, so that the politicians aren’t financed by fat cats. It is also fair to take a hard look at the Electoral College and decide whether a resident in a rural state should have more voting power than someone in a city. We need a stronger press with more articles that push back against climate denial and other fictions— not simply regurgitates a candidate’s talking points.
Journalists should candidates more than just token questions about climate change (after they’ve spent the bulk of a debate talking about the economy.) They should ask about the fact that we are in the midst of the largest mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs.
Voters need to realize that they are not separate from the fate of the biosphere that feeds us and gives us air to breath. They do have power to influence the future.
Yes, the crisis demands that we slap down new pipelines, deny coal ports on the west coast, terminate leases on federal land, but the battle is more than a battle against fossil-fuel corporations. We must look at ourselves too. We need to insert environmental responsibility into our personal code of ethics, and expect those who are close to us do the same.
Faced with a new government that is unlikely to take responsibility with the task at hand, individual responsibility is all the more important. Perhaps it is the greatest power we have left.
Taking such responsibility means people first acknowledge how our consumer-driven lifestyle has been trashing the planet. We should feel guilty when we turn the ignition in our cars to go somewhere that we could have reached by bus or bike. We should carefully consider vacation plans that involve flying around half the country or half the world, and probably reconsider for something closer. The planet would benefit if more people went vegetarian or vegan to reduce the amount of land it takes to support their existence. More local food. More gardens. Such proposals may sound draconian compared to the options that wealth and consumer goods have brought us, but if we are serious, these and more should absolutely be a part of the equation.
Nor are such decisions antithetical to the Pursuit of Happiness. Fulfilling this American dream absolutely means that the jobless and the disadvantaged should have access to healthcare, education and dignity. I do not, however, believe in reckless pursuit of bigger houses, larger cars and rooms full of consumer goods. In fact, this pursuit has led to more unhappiness, because of the debt, clutter and waste that comes with these things.
It’s better to focus on cultivating meaningful relationships, with friends and in the community. This idea recurs in several of the environmental books that I’ve been reading lately, from writers like Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and in The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard.
Studies have shown that people have fewer close friends on average now than they did in earlier decades. Perhaps this is why we crave more things to fill our lives, and why we demand more comforts that come on the back of the environment. Such isolation can also explain why we feel less safe in our cities and have a hard time understanding those around us.
We know now that social media can provide some sustenance to our disconnected lives. It also promotes isolation and echo chambers where it’s easier to talk to someone from across the country than it is to talk with someone across the street. Trump has risen out of such divisions and from the distrust that we have for one another.
Too many of us live lives that value competition over cooperation, where the best throat cutter rises to the top. It is not the best model. Consider that Trump has cut plenty of throats to get to where he is. What else should his supporters expect he’ll do for them?
We must deal with this poisonous thinking.
We will connect, not just on Facebook, but in person, ready to offer emotional support now and ready to stand together later. “Join or Die” was one of the memorable mottoes of the American Revolution, and it is once again imperative that we follow this example, look past differences and unite ourselves. We should reestablish ties to those we are close with and dare to reach out to those that we don’t know so well. Such networks will help us support ourselves, provide a place for us to act with purpose and power and create strength to resist his policies.
On my climb to Hurricane Ridge, I pedaled alone, fighting my way up through the mists. If I pushed myself, it wouldn’t even matter if there were no views or that it was going to be a cold, wet, ride down. I knew that I did have strength I could use. I was not powerless.
I had made the climb alone and it was alone that I started down the winding road, squinting against the wind as I fell out of the mountains toward the town. There I would find others like me, still trying to understand their place and to decide what to do next. That was where there was the real work to do.
It was still dark outside when my friend Jarrett and I lifted two heavily-loaded kayaks onto the kayak rack had just built onto the roof of his weathered white pickup.
We had cinched the boats down tight with cam-straps and shaken them vigorously in their place to make sure they were immobile. We drove past the streets of Port Angeles under heavy rain. It was the kind of weather that doesn’t exactly make one eager for three days of exposed paddling, followed by nights cramped nights in a tent, where a few cups of moisture could mean the difference between comfort and misery.
Over those three days, we would paddle north for almost 60 miles of the Hood Canal, a salt water arm of Puget Sound.
November paddling. In a rainy part of the country.
We had packed for the wet, but knew that damp and cold were talented at evading the defenses we put up for them. We had gathered drysuits, windbreakers, miscellaneous and sundry camping items. We stuffed the gear into the narrow dry bags we would need to fit them in our kayaks. There were pounds of food that we’d use to keep our caloric furnaces in order.
Now they were very heavy kayaks that threatened to crush us when we lifted them.
We moved slow that morning stockpiling heat from cups of coffee. Killing time comes very naturally when you have reservations about starting a trip.
I drove behind the truck in my Civic, street lamps and neon flashing back at me from the rain-slick pavement. Gradually, the gray illumination spilled out of the east. It was a soggy cardboard sky. A scraggly remainder of ochre leaves rattled on skeletal roadside trees.
As the wind picked up, Jarrett stopped so that we could get reinforce the kayak straps. The wind whipped at the trees as we went about lashing down the boats. It felt like gale force conditions.
“Are you sure we should be paddling out in this kind of weather?” Jarrett asked.
I considered. The conditions did look perilous, but we were still close to a hundred miles away from the boat launch where it might be a different story. Having spent a whole day planning and packing, the idea of turning back left a bad taste in my mouth.
We pressed on, and in another forty minutes or so, we came to the takeout point at Quilcene Bay where there was the same strong, southerly wind that we’d encountered when we’d stopped to fix the boats. Mean whitecaps were curling over the agitated water. The good news was that they were going in the direction we would be traveling. I parked my car and got in the truck with Jarrett. Hopefully, we would be back in this place in three days at the end of a successful journey.
Ice age glaciers up to 3,500 feet deep, carved out the complicated network of channels and islands west of Seattl, including the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound and Hood Canal, which makes up Puget Sound’s westernmost arm with the Olympic Mountains rising up on the other side. If the glacier had carved a couple more miles to the east, it would have joined the Sound and turned the Kitsap Penninsula into an island we could boat around.
The Canal channels both wind and tides. Jarrett and I expected to make our best time paddling in the mornings when the tides were going out and the current was with us. The Canal also has a strong tendency for southerly winds however, and this was also in our favor.
Setting off at the end of the canal near Belfair State Park
When we got to the Belfair State Park at the end of the canal, the high tide spared us the effort of carrying our boats out onto mudflats.
Next to us was Big Mission Creek, which came in running swift from the heavy rains. October had been a record month for much of Western Washington. In nearby Olympia, there had been 12.4 inches of rain, compared to the average of 4.6 inches for that month.*
I watched a dark form thrash in the current, dorsal fin skittering above the water. It was trying to go upstream, but the current was too much. I saw the salmon fight its way higher where the water moved fast over loose gravel, then it gave up and let the current take it back down toward the salt water. Perhaps it would find another route. As I gazed around the pool, I saw other salmon sitting in the water, fighting the current now and then. None of them seemed to have much luck. A few scattered carcasses lay beached on the rocks. Hopefully, they had spawned already, but I wondered if the unusually high current had prevented them from getting where they needed to.
Our kayak journey looked like it would be less perilous then what the salmon had to deal with. The winds had miraculously stilled and the start of the Hood Canal looked glassy. The rains had diminished, although heavy clouds to the west promised more to come. The main challenge was hauling the heavily-loaded boats to the water. Then we had about 15 miles ahead of us to Potlatch Campground where we would stop for the night.
This section of the canal was just over a mile wide. We would be heading west all day, until we reached our campground at The Great Bend, where the Skokomish River comes in. There, the canal goes north and whither would go the kayakers.
The loaded boats handled differently in the water from what we were used to; they were slower and more reluctant to turn. Jarrett found his boat had a tendency to drift to the left for some reason and had to paddle harder on that side.
I was grateful for the skeg, basically a fin that drops down, which made the boat easier to stay on course. If I wanted to grab a water bottle off my deck or mess with some equipment, I could paddle hard for a second and then let myself drift, so that I was still making progress, even when I wasn’t paddling.
The outgoing tide, gave more oomph to out paddle strokes.
When we paddled hard, we got warm. The fleeces we wore under our drysuits were definitely overkill. If we broke a sweat, it would mean dealing with moist, clammy clothes, likely for the rest of the trip.
The water was a tannic brown like well-steeped tea, very different from the clear, cold water I was used to guiding on the Strait not far away. Neither were there the large clumps of bull kelp of Pacific giant kelp that flourish in that rougher, rockier water. In shallow spots, I could look down at the sand, and see the white blobs of oysters growing there, another critter that I don’t see when I paddle on the Strait.
Various diving birds populated the water surface, including merganser ducks, murres and grebes the size of geese
“Hey check it out, in that tree!” Jarrett shouted. There were two bald eagles watching us.
When we took a break at a state park, all the heat we had been saving up seemed to disappear. I threw on my balaclava for extra warmth, and we paced around eating sandwiches in the drizzle.
It was good to get moving again and get the warmth back. Soon I was dipping my hat in the water to cool off and was grateful when it started pouring.
Now and then, a small black head would pop out of the water and a harbor seal would regard us with curious eyes.
We made one more stop at the town of Union, before we crossed the large bay at the mouth of the Skokomish River, which is none for a massive salmon run. Though, we didn’t explore the river mouth itself, we likely would have encountered droves of salmon, and the nets that the Skokomish Tribe sets up to catch them.
The veil of clouds began to break in the west, revealing the jagged faces of the Olympic Mountains. Mighty snowfields looked down at us from the high ridges.
As if to herald this vision, the mournful cry of loons called out from in front of us, seemed to embody the essence of that powerful place.
Croaking Salmon
Jarrett in hardcore rain gear
The Potlatch Campground was in the midst of a construction project, which meant that it took a moment to find the proper place to set up shelter.
It is worth mentioning that the we camped both nights of our trip on places made possible by the Washington Water Trails Association, which laid out the Cascadia Marine Trail from southern Puget Sound up to Canada and with a connector into Hood Canal. If there had been more time, the paddler-specific campsites along this trail would have given us many options for camping and adventuring in the region.
A small stream flowed through a human-dug drainage nearby. Dozens of flopping, struggling salmon thrashed there way over the shallow water. Several of the fish were stopped at one of the many logs lying in the ditch. Others were almost completely out of the water. lying seemingly dead, and then bursting into a frenzy of flapping effort that gained them an inch or two of progress, if any. I watched their beaked mouths, monstrous, opening and closing as if trying to take in the air they couldn’t breathe. Their sides looked bruised, even actively bleeding from the effort of going upstream.
I walked further and further up the ditch, only to find more and more salmon that had somehow flopped their way up. Were they spawning successfully? Or was the drainage ditch only a cruel trick that led them to their doom? Of course all of the salmon would die, whether they reproduced or not. Same is true of humans, I suppose.
Bearing witness to the Amazing Cycle of Life was not getting our camp set up any faster. I helped Jarrett rig up the rainfly that we would sleep under and got to work cooking dinner beneath the handy pavilion nearby. It was nice having a dry place to eat when the rain started falling again.
There was no break in the precipitation that night. The staccato drops made a constant din on the outside of the rainfly. Thankfully, the soil where we had set up was loose and drained easily. We didn’t have to worry about it puddling up on us.
I had a couple of damp clothes items in my sleeping bag with me to dry them out for the morning, though this made sleeping far less pleasant.
“I hate sleeping in damp bags,” I muttered.
“Really? I’m completely dry in here,” Jarrett said, thwarting my attempt to give my misery some company.
Every now and then I heard splashing from the salmon in the ditch. There was also a low croaking sound from the same direction. I pictured those beaked mouths that I had seen in the stream earlier, opening and closing, opening and closing.
“The salmon are coming out of the water to eat us,” I announced.
When morning came, there was a dim glow on the horizon, and the sky appeared cloudless.
“Man! How about those salmon croaking last night?” Jarrett said.
“Oh yeah. That’s so weird. I had no idea they did that.”
I tried to make the sound.
“Eyeaghhhhh!”
“Aaaaggghhh!” Jarrett said.
“That’s going to be the rallying call for this trip,” I said. “You know, when the going gets tough. We’ve got to think like these salmon. Eyaaaggghhhh!”
We ate a bunch of oatmeal mixed with coconut butter as a pick me up.
As the sun rose, we set up gear to dry.
A couple of state employees came over to the stream to monitor the salmon. We found out that the state had dug the ditch for the salmon, who hadn’t been able to use the stream before.
Though the fish didn’t seem like they were having much luck to my untrained eye, apparently they had been getting far upstream, and even when they didn’t, many still had still found room to spawn successfully. After the spawn had grown up in the ocean, they too would return to this place.
“We could hear them flopping around last night, even croaking,” Jarrett said.
The workers seemed surprised to hear salmon that salmon croaked, but we told them all about it.
So far, the stream mitigation work had been successful enough that members of the Skokomish Tribe had set up nets near the mouth of the stream. It was also a popular spot for seals, which had a taste for the fish. A group of seals were on a raft nearby, lounging in the sun. It was only after the workers left that we heard the seals start talking to each other.
“Eyaghhh!”
“Uhnnn!”
It looked like we had mistaken the sounds of the seals on the raft for salmon in the stream. Rookie mistake.
The Close Encounter
Beach time
Drying clothes and talking gave us a late start onto the water. We aimed far out into the canal to take the best advantage of the tidal current and a light southerly wind. Under the full sun, we’d traded out the warm fleeces we’d worn the day before for thinner synthetic layers. Now we could see several of the Olympic Mountains in sunny relief, including The Brothers and Ellinor.
We were about a mile offshore when we decided to raft up and take a break. I was eating some peanuts when I heard a sharp exhale from the water next to us.
I almost choked.
A massive sea lion head was poking up looking at me. Maybe it was 20 feet away. The head popped back down. At a glance, the sea lion was easily over 500 pounds, though maybe a lot more than that. Male Stellar sea lions can push 2,500. They can get much heavier than that, to basically the size of grizzly bears. While they are not necessarily as ornery as grizzlies, I’ve heard these sea lions can be pushy, including accounts of them grabbing hold of divers’ fins. * I’ve had one of them swim alongside me for a couple minutes, snorting and merging closer to the point that I slapped the water with my paddle to ward it off.
We floated for a while longer, and the head came up next to us again.
“Pffffft!”
The sea lion breathed out. It gazed at us with large dark eyes.
Was it pissed with us or was I just projecting? Did I want to know for sure?
The head went down again.
A few moments later, it popped up again.
“Pfffffft!”
“OK, I’m about ready to take off now,” I said.
Jarrett at anchor, waiting up for the author
We made good progress on the way to our camp at Triton Cove, in large part because of the current moving with us. I avoided taking an onshore bathroom break by way of a challenging maneuver, leaning my boat with Jarrett grabbing onto back deck. If the waves had been tall, it probably would have been a no go, but it turned out to be more convenient than using a bottle or adding a mile and a half to the trip distance. Learning new skills is part of the reason for adventure if you ask me.
In the miles before camp, we enjoyed views of Glacier Peak and Mount Baker in the Cascades to the north of us.
We ended at a boat ramp where we unloaded our kayaks and then hauled them up to a grassy campsite. It was just after 3 p.m., but the sun was already low in the sky. We took advantage of the light that was left to set up a clothes line to dry some of the clothes and gear.
While the sun set, we heard the sound of seals croaking from the water nearby. It was still cool, even if we had mistaken the same sound for salmon earlier. Eventually, the western light faded and the stars began to glimmer. Illumination from the distant cities of Seattle and Tacoma blobbed over the east like a false sunrise. The night brought dew as well. I felt some clothes on the line, and realized that they were already getting damp. Should have caught that earlier.
I through everything inside our shelter, packed my drysuit away in a kayak hatch. At least, knowing that there was only one day to go, I didn’t have to be so worried about damp layers, provided I had a spare in reserve.
The Last Day
Ready for the morning
The night saw plenty of moisture accumulate beneath the rainfly, despite our best efforts to ventilate. The clear skies had made the morning that much colder, and the motivation to get out of our sleeping bags that much harder to summon.
We were out of the tent by 6:45 and I walked by headlamp to a nearby stream where I filled up water to start breakfast. The sun rose with a fiery corridor reflected over the Hood Canal. Warmth began to find us. Still, we didn’t take the time to hang stuff up the way that we had the previous morning. We were hot to get moving.
By the time we’d eaten, taken down the shelter, organized gears loaded everything into the hatches, put on drysuits and hauled the boats to the water, it was nine o’clock. We had the favorable current and some tailwind. Once again, we took far out into the canal, where we could see snowy peaks towering above us to the west, and the even larger Mount Baker and Glacier Peak rising up in front of us.
Briefly, for a few minutes only, I caught sight of the Great Grand Daddy of the Cascades: Mount Ranier. It always appears dreamlike to me and I struggle to tell myself that the thousands of feet of snow and ice there are real things, part of the same reality below where there were trees, parking lots, wet sand.
Sunrise kayak portrait
Things were getting more interesting on the water, as the clouds began to fill the sky and a tailwind began kicking up two-foot waves. I caught some great surf rides, using the skeg to keep on track.
We pulled onto a marshy spit where we replenished with food. Jarrett unpeeled the top of his drysuit to put a fleece on. I decided that even though it had gotten a little cooler, a balaclava would be sufficient to keep me toasty. Sure enough, after we started paddling, the sun came back out. Soon Jarrett was roasting with his warm layer on but with no quick way to change clothes. I flipped my balaclava down and commented on how wonderful I felt.
We went by the Dosewallips river drainage, where we saw two bald eagles and at least a dozen harbor seals. They were, no doubt, gorging on the migrating salmon. I felt a greater understanding for why so many Northwesterners, including native tribes, express such reverence for the fish, seeing firsthand how much depends upon their bounty.
We took a break in a nearby marsh so Jarrett could utilize the bounty of a convenience store in nearby Brinnon. I entertained myself by exploring a nearby culvert, too low to paddle through unless I sunk deep inside my cockpit. I handed my way up along the ceiling to the other side of 101, where the marsh came up against some farmland. Going back out was more fun since I had the tidal current going with me and sped through the dark passage like a torpedo — banging up against walls occasionally.
Jarrett and I snacked in the full sun, watching the marsh birds flit to and fro. He decided to ditch the fleece he’d put on earlier for our last push to Quilcene. It was clear that we were making great time. The fact that the wind was picking up from the south was just another bonus.
We sped away from the marsh and then across the water to a large point. The waves gifted me with many a surf ride. The Hood Canal forked in front of us. To the east went out toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the San Juan Islands; West lay Dabob Bay and, off of that, Quilcene Bay where my car was parked.
Fourteen knot winds pushed us along at a fast clip, with more assistance from the waves. It wasn’t long before we pulled into the Quilcene Marina: the end of our ride. We paddled in so that our boats hit the ramp at the same time, bumped fists.
Compared to what the salmon were doing, we had had an easy time of it, moving with the elements instead of against. It was also easier than carrying the stuff that we’d brought out on our backs as we would have on a hiking trip, The hardest part was managing the gear rodeo so we kept our stuff dry. There had been no massive waves, nor punishing gales, but their had been time to chill, tp contemplate the beauty of the mountains, the beauty of the water and the uniqueness of some of the creatures that made this place their home,
Huckleberries in the high alpine zone of the Olympic Mountains. Good bear food.
Sol Duc
Deciding where to hike in the Olympic Mountains was no easy task for my friend Sean and I, partly because the area has so many faces.
When we researched the ideal two-night trip, we had our pick of wild beaches along the Pacific Coast, the lush rainforests of the western valleys or amidst the drier, but still massive forests in the rain shadow. Higher trails access alpine tundra, even glacier.
We knew that black bears are a very real presence, to the point that the Park Service require overnight hikers to carry their food in canisters or else use specialized cable hangs available at certain sites. That limits freedom a bit. The park is host to a heavy mountain lion population, which also grabs attention, even if there is only a slightly higher risk of an attack then, say, a Bigfoot sighting.
The more credible threat that I anticipated, was cold September rains, which would throw down the challenge of staying dry — at least warm — while we were hiking and camping.
I wanted us to avoid cold and misery, and enjoy the natural beauty of the Olympics. It would be time for both of us to unplug and recharge.
The trip was also a great chance to catch up with Sean. We go back to college, where we ran cross-country together. He lives in Brooklyn now, but has a passion for getting out, whether to the Catskills or the Adirondacks further north. We’ve done a couple of hikes together through the years, including a couple mountains in the Adirondacks and an icy visit to New Hampshire’s White Mountains this spring.
We chose a path that would show us many of the different zones within the park, including the semi-rain forest of the Sol Duc valley, up to the 5,400-foot Bogachiel Peak, around Seven Lakes Basin, thence down to camp at Hoh Lake and into the Hoh Rain Forest and back the way we came. The plan would get us out of having to carry in a bulky bear canister, because the Hoh Lake campsite had cables where we could hang our food stuff. Even though Seven Lakes is a popular park spot, we had a good shot at enjoying solitude because we would be leaving midweek in September.
I put the tent in my backpack, and gave Sean the pleasure of carrying my cook stove, bulky pots and most of the food.
The sky above the trees was gray as we started along a smooth-packed trail beneath cedar, spruce and fir, their branches draped with the hair-like tendrils of goat’s beard lichen. The Sol Duc River ran through a black walled canyon to our south. Soon, we reached a bridge crossing above Sol Duc Falls, where the river course suddenly turned and dropped into a dark crevice.
Abundant moss grew in the falls mist, further up, spiky stands of devil’s club.
The trail began to climb from here along a series of switchbacks toward Deer Lake.
The cloudy skies had begun to drizzle, then to loose fat drops onto the trees above. Sean and I were protected for the moment, but if the rain continued, the drops would begin rolling off the branches, soaking us.
Neither of us were wearing our rain gear, and we were loath to put it on and start marinating in sweat. Given the mercurial nature of the weather in the northwest, it seemed likely that the rain would pass soon anyway. One day hiker that we passed simply held a trash bag over his head. Not a bad stopgap.
Alas, the rain continued falling, and we started getting wet as we went through clearings. Eventually, we caved and threw on our rain gear and pack covers. That, of course, brought the rain to a prompt halt.
Sol Duc Falls
The Bears of Bogachiel
As we climbed above the Sol Duc river, Sean and I hashed out a plan for any encounter with Sasquatch Americanus,.
Say we were going around the bend and Bigfoot walked across the trail, should we tell anyone?
Sean was inclined not to on the basis that anyone we told our story to would think we were lying or nuts. Later we agreed that we would only come forward with a Sasquatch sighting if there we could get solid photographic evidence.
Photographing Bigfoot might have been a tall order, but there were plenty of other opportunities to click the shutter as we climbed past Deer Lake onto an exposed ridge.
The trees became shorter and gnarled. A grand vista opened up to the north where we could see above the foothills across the hard blue water of the Strait of Juan de Fuca out to the mountains on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
The rocks along the trail were angular, blasted by winter ice. Glacier-carved bowls opened up on either side. Wisps of cloud gathered below.
Further on, we could gaze down into the Seven Lakes Basin, a bare landscape of arctic scrub, sprinkled with water-filled depressions.
“That looks like more than seven lakes,” I remarked.
Sean observed that all of the lakes had fallen from their high-water marks. As the water levels fell, there were places where one lake had diminished into two smaller ones. It had been a dry summer on the Olympic Peninsula. At least we didn’t have to deal with the wildfires and smoke that plagued the park earlier this year.
Seven Lakes Basin view with sumac in foreground, Sol Duc Valley in Background.
The ridge climbed a saddle where we could look south to the big mountains, including the jagged slopes of Mount Tom and Mount Olympus. Both were hidden in cloud, but occasionally a gap opened where we could peek at a snowfield or glacier.
We had less than a mile to hike down into our camp at Hoh Lake, but the nearby summit of Bogachiel Peak beckoned.
We took a side trail in that direction. The valley below us was filled with low-growing huckleberries with bright red leaves. One dark shape in that field caught my eye. I squinted at it for a moment, sure that it was some shadow cast by a dead tree or boulder. But the shape was moving.
“Hey! That’s a bear down there!”
Most of the bears I’ve seen in the wild have been pretty small, but I’m sure that this one was at least 250 pounds. It grazed slowly among the huckleberries like some bovine in the pasture. If it had noticed us, it didn’t care much.
We watched it for several minutes. Hardly a lumbering brute, the bear moved nimbly among the broken rock, keeping its head down in order to graze microscopic huckleberries out of the twigs and leaves. The black coat had a healthy shine. Elegance isn’t usually the word that pops into mind when I think of bears, but even this large specimen carried itself with refinement and dignity.
Seeing that the bear likely hadn’t noticed us, neither Sean or I bothered to make loud noises or tried to scare it off. We went on along the trail to the top of the mountain.
The lakes and mountains surrounding us delineated a domain of harsh weather and limited resources— a place that played by the old, hard rules that undergird the upholstery of our day-to-day existence.
Soil on these mountain tops stretches thin as erosion constantly feeds it to the valleys below and nothing washes down to replenish it— yet this film of organic matter was enough to support acres of huckleberries and to provide a bounty to the bears.
When Sean and I walked back down the trail, there were two bears grazing. We stared again, and this time, one of them did look up, seeming to acknowledge us. The look wasn’t menacing, but it seemed wise to move on. If nothing else, I didn’t want to disrupt them.
A small blue nugget of bear scat lay in the trail further on. They must have been getting all or most of their calories from the huckleberries, which is impressive considering that the berries growing here were half the size of a pea at largest.
Two bears going berry pickingSean going berry picking
Sean and I picked a few of them as we went. They were tasty, but the picking was incredibly slow. I guessed that the bears would have to pretty much graze continuously at the berries to feed themselves. That was what they appeared to be doing.
The blue splats of bird droppings decorating the rocks along the trail indicated that bears were not the only ones who profited from the berries.
Further down the trail, Sean spotted another bear, also grazing below us. The camp area at Hoh Lake was not too much further. We felt very motivated to be careful with our food, considering that there were bears nearby who were hungry enough to forage for hours in the huckleberries, They could get the calories they needed in minutes from one ambush into our supplies.
Sure enough, Sean saw one bear grazing on the hillside above Hoh lake, only about a quarter mile from where we’d pitched tent.
We turned in early while we still had the warmth of dinner in our bellies. I hoped we would wake up warm and ready to take on whatever the next day had in store.
Camp
Descent to the Hoh
Cold and mist were in store.
Soon after we awoke, Sean went out to pick some huckleberries to make morning oatmeal more interesting,
We finished our meal by slugging down morning coffee for Sean and some black tea for myself, then we were on the trail to the Hoh rainforest. We left the tent, gear and extra food at at camp (the latter hung up on the bear cable) so that we could move along with lighter loads.
The path dropped past mossy waterfalls, into groves of cedar. Unlike the wide trails we had hiked the day before, this route seemed infrequently traveled, with soaking vegetation closing in on either side of us. Sodden branches bounced harmlessly off of our rain jackets, but my lower half was drenched in short order. One hiker coming up from the other direction wore a makeshift plastic skirt. Excellent idea.
Further down the trail, we found a pile of bones beneath a cedar tree. The massive femurs could have only belonged to an elk. But what had killed it?
Sean speculated that it was a mountain lion. If one of those big cats was about, I definitely wanted my camera at the ready — only now, I discovered that despite my best efforts to protect it, moisture had gotten in and fogged the lens housing.
By the time we met the Hoh River Trail at the bottom of the switchbacks, some six miles below camp, it was already getting later in the day, and it was clear that we would only have a couple of hours to explore.
Stream crossingThe bone pile
But the wonder of the Hoh Rainforest was worth even a brief visit. In contrast to the tundra we had seen earlier, life ran rampant here. Massive conifers towered over with their lower branches draped in goat’s beard. Thick moss ran up and down the trunks of maple trees. Gigantic fallen logs supported ecosystems of sword fern moss and smaller plants growing out of them.
The environment had that fairy tale feeling to it, so much so that I almost expected to run across some Keebler elves out gathering mushrooms.
Elves we did not find, but sometimes we would stop and gawk at one of the enormous banana slugs or the black slugs that crawled onto the path.
The moist air was warm, almost sultry, compared to the exposed heights where we had hiked earlier. A whopping 141 to 165 inches of rain fall in this rainforest.*
We took breaks to explore an incongruous meadow, then did lunch at an overlook above the Hoh River, which was low and milky-white with sediment.
Much of the river originates from glacial melt off Mount Olympus. If we were going to see any of this mountainous splendor, it wouldn’t be from here. A low cloud base above the forest prevented us from seeing much above the tree tops.
The climb back up was a long one, but fortunately, passing hikers had knocked most of the moisture off the branches along the trail and we didn’t get so wet as when we started.
We stopped back at Hoh Lake to skip some rocks. There were no bears that we could see, but there was an occasional fish jump.
When I went up to the bear cable to bring the food down, the clouds broke and afforded me a view of the glaciers of Mount Tom and Mount Olympus. Miles of ice sat in the depressions between jagged crags.
I called Sean up and we watched the mountains. Even though Olympus is not quite 8,000 feet tall, the sharp profile of the mountains could have passed them off as giants of the American Rockies. The fact that there were huge glaciers helped too. In fact, we were looking at the third largest glacial system in the continental U.S. ** Altitude isn’t everything, especially when considering the 50 to 70 feet of snow that Olympus receives every year. Constant cloud cover protects the snowfields from the heat of the sun. Unfortunately, like most other glaciers in the world, the glaciers around Olympus have been in retreat. ***
As the sun sank toward the western horizon, the glaciers glowed in the pinkish light. Many hikers never get to see Olympus because it is so often in the clouds. I was glad that we had this chance.
Slug specimenSean at the Hoh RiverSkipping rocks at Hoh LakeView of Olympus from our campsite
More Bears and Mountain Views.
Early the next morning we hiked out of camp with after a light oatmeal breakfast. We had cut things a little fine with our food planning, so most of our lunch calories were going to come from bars and gel.
The morning chill left us as we climbed back up toward Bogachiel and the sun began to emerge.
Going past the plains of blueberries, we saw two black bears. One was on the trail, the other below. They were about the same size as the bears we had seemed earlier, and it seemed likely that they were the same ones.
We decided to wait a few minutes to see if the bear on the trail would move. When it didn’t, we started shouting, and the bear moved, slowly, up the hill.
We decided to add some miles to our total going back by following the High Divide trail the rest of the way around the Seven Lakes Basin, before descending back to the Sol Duc river. This route turned out to be an excellent choice because we were lucky enough to have more clear weather. We had superb views of Mount Olympus and some of the other nearby Olympic peaks.
As we walked further east, we got a better look at the Blue Glacier. Deep cracks within the ice revealed where it got the name, displaying that sublime turquoise tint you might recognize from photographs of arctic icebergs. Further down, the glacier formed a long tongue through the mountain valley.
Tragically, my lens was fogged for much of the morning, and I didn’t get any good shots of the mountains from this angle.
The warm sun and clear skies lent itself to more huckleberry picking, so Sean and I stopped frequently to load up.
We saw two more bears on distant hillsides, enjoying the same snack. That brought the number of unique bear sightings up to at least six for our trip — doubling the number of bear sightings that either of us had seen in our lifetimes. But who’s counting?
The trail took us down along the Sol Duc, offering plenty of opportunities to enjoy the sight of waterfalls in the mossy canyon.
We were no longer contemplating the natural beauty in solitude however. Several groups of hikers coming up the trail the other way to get to the campsites they had reserved for the weekend. It would be a lot busier on the ridges on the days to come. I was glad that we had seen everything when we did.
As for an encounter with Sasquatch? He stumbled out of the woods to give me a high-five — right after my camera battery died.
Getting food, medical supplies and other gear ready for my first 100K trail race (unsupported)
Preparation
The Plain 100 is an Ultra Marathon in the Cascade Mountains near Stevens Pass Washington. Runners can choose to compete in a 100-mile event or a 100-kilometer (62.1-mile) race. I signed up for the latter.
True to the name, Plain is plain. There are check in stations, but no volunteer or race staff will feed, water or otherwise aid you along the course (to accept aid is to drop out.) They won’t even tell you which way to go. You will have a map and directions and you should figure it out. The food you eat is what you carry in on your back, the water you drink is what you find along the trails.
The trails are almost entirely rugged single track, made for dirt bikes., The 100K has about 12,000 feet of elevation gain (about 24,000 feet of gain for the 100-miler.)
I knew that to do this race, I stood a high chance of becoming lost, miserable, exhausted, shattered — and there was a good chance I would drop out.
So why?
Good question. I wanted to push something and I wanted to see if I had the mettle to do a long distance mountain run. Having run a 50-mile race the last summer, I felt the need to go up a rung.
I have spent weekends this summer running trails in Olympic National Park, and have enjoyed figuring out how to run and power-hike the long switchbacks and how to turn my legs over quickly on the downhills. Some of my best runs were between 30 and 40 miles and included up to 8,000 feet of elevation change.
I planned on doing a 100K that had aid stations. A major mountain climb would be OK by me, though I’d hoped not to do over 10,000 feet of it. Unfortunately, several of the 100Ks in the Pacific Northwest were already booked up by the time that I decided to move. The Plain 100 was the only race left.
I sent an email to race director Tim Denhoff, asking if he thought a newbie ultra-runner like me had the chops to take on Plain — even the truncated 100K version of it. After he sent me an extensive description of the challenges of carrying food and water on a tugged course he wrote, “Tom, I want you to consider what I’m telling you, not discourage you from coming and giving it your best shot. Hope to see you at Plain!”
When I got to race headquarters at the Lake Wenatchee Rec Club for the mandatory meeting the day before, there were just over 30 participants who showed. Only eight of these were running the 100K. I felt Junior Varsity next to the 100-milers.
I spotted one or two longhaired distance gurus in the crowd, but they were the exception. Most of the runners had a sleek, efficient haircuts and the bearing of attendees at, say, a business management convention. The runners I talked to did seem to have well-paying professional jobs, such as mineralogist and lawyer. It is tempting to wonder whether the same competitive instinct that helped them succeed in business also motivates them to thrash their bodies in the primal competition of ultra running. But I’m just a kayak guide. What would I know?
The runners were at ease swapping war stories from previous races, commenting on notorious runners they’ve encountered through the years. Many pulled out their phones during their conversations to check out each others stats on the Ultra Sign Up website.
At my table, there was a man from British Columbia, from the UK, and Japan — who was based in Seattle now.
They pulled my name up and apparently the computers had already projected that I would win the 100K. The computers get it wrong a lot, I heard
Race directors Tim Stroh and Tim Dehnhoff gave us a war room-style briefing, complete with oversized maps on the table for us to pore over elevation differences and watering holes. There would be a few check in stations along the course to make sure the runners were coming along and not getting eaten by Bigfoot, but these would offer no assistance. We would give the stations our race numbers and tell them “I’m a warrior!” when they asked “What are you?”
I hadn’t studied the maps much beforehand and now I was playing catch up, marking my own map with a pen as the presentation went along.
There were two long waterless sections for eight miles and a 14 mile section that would include a 5,000 foot climb. I run further than this without water all the time on the roads. On the trails, I knew it would be another matter. Tim Stroh, said he personally carried a gallon up the mountain and drank all of it.
The water was just one piece of the gear, clothes food puzzle that I was putting together. The main question was how I would have everything I needed without an elephant on my back.
Here’s what I threw in my pack:
Food
It was bette to have too much than too little. I had bonked on a couple of previous runs when I tried to cut the pack weight down and came up short of fuel in the last miles. I was determined not to repeat the same mistake for the big race, but in retrospect, I went way overboard.
Six peanut butter flatbread burritos (two with raisins)
Twenty Oreos
Two Gerber baby food packets (bananna oatmeal)
One Clif Bar
Three chocolate bars
Six packs of sports gel
Eight sports drink tabs to add to water
Three Kind bars, hickory smoked with almonds (Thanks Mom and Dad!)
Two other energy bars from the pre-race goody bag.
Multiple empty Gatorade bottles and one half-full bottle of juice.
I ended up eating two of the burritos, one full chocolate bar, the cliff bar, 16 oreos, three or four gel packs, the granola bars, 1 gerber pack and two of the Kind bars.
Clothing
This was to be another crucial part of the game, especially because the forecast called for rain, and there were bound to be extreme changes in how warm or cold based on elevation or effort
I carried:
A synthetic T-shirt
Ball cap
A North Face shell
A fleece
My Fargo-style synthetic fur hat with ear flaps.
Compression shorts
Synthetic socks
Zero-drop Altra running shoes.
Other Stuff
A backpack to put everything in (borrowed from a friend as my normal pack tore a strap at the last minute)
A headlamp.
A Luci solar light (backup)
Extra batteries.
An SOL micro bivvy sack with heat reflective sides (for an unplanned night in the woods.)
A nylon pack cover.
A med kit that included gauze, band-aides, athletic tape and a small tub of petroleum jelly.
I ended up carrying map and directions in a see-through plastic portfolio that I carried in one hand for quick consultation along the trail. The system I had rigged seemed comprehensive, but I soon realized that it was amateur-hour compared to what other runners had.
When it came to mental preparation, I had some, from the 50-mile race I’d run last year, to numerous trail runs throughout the summer. But the fact remained that this was the longest, hilliest run I’d ever attempted. Also, I should have invested more time going over the maps, not just for the race course, but getting there.
Disaster
It was 5:00 a.m.: the race start time, but I was not at the starting line. I was driving way too fast over dark country roads, wondering where the hell the starting line was.
I loosed a steady stream of invective as I tried frantically to look at the map and drive at the same time, and then call a friend to get me better directions off the internet. The feeling of failure felt like a weight crushing down on my chest.
This is what you get for being sloppy and stupid and cocky and now you’ve wasted your whole summer running and you’ll have to tell all your friends that you didn’t run the race because you’re such an idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Just as I had begun to resign myself to the idea that I had really screwed the pooch, I saw a truck coming up from the other direction.
I flashed my lights and stuck my hand out the window.
The truck stopped and I saw a guy with a headlamp stick his head out the window.
“You know where the starting line is?” I asked.
“I was wondering the same thing.”
I decided to follow him. Somehow, within 15 minutes, we found the turn, which was on the other side of the road then the directions (because I’d gotten turned around somehow.) The runners were already on the course with headlamps shining in the dark. We were the assholes spraying them with dust as we drove by.
When we got to the start line, were 37 minutes late. The director allowed us to proceed ahead. It wasn’t the first time someone had started the race early. It was not a promising start, but it was a start.
Recovery
The two of us started running together in the dark. His name was Phil. As luck would have it, he was one of the six runners who were only doing 100 miles.
As our headlamps swung together through the dark, we talked about ourselves. He was 48 and administered psychological screenings. I talked about my travels and work as a guide. Talking about anything was far preferable then fixating on our late start. We also were able to coordinate navigation together with him looking at the written race directions and me looking at the race map. Eventually, we let ourselves talk about how freaked out we’d been that we were going to miss the race.
If I’d been running alone, I might have told myself that the race was hopeless and that it was stupid to go out and get lost in the woods for a race I wasn’t ready for. I might have been tempted to run hard up hills, trying to catch the competition. Though this would have felt satisfying at first it would have been bad for my energy long-term.
Instead, I ended up walking the steep hills along a switch-backed road into the mountains. I was going a little slower than I planned, but I didn’t know what was ahead and it seemed wise to go conservative at the start of the race. Phil guessed that we would be out there until around midnight. This seemed insanely late to me, even though it was close to the time that it had taken other ultra-runners to go that distance.
Yeah, but I was going to run down the hills faster than the other guys, I thought. I held onto this illusion that I was going to finish early for long into the race.
Dull illumination crept up behind the clouds as the morning spread over the land.
Soon we were at the top of Maverick Saddle, which was the first check-in station, and the beginning of the trail running.
“What’s your race number?”
“Three!”
“And what are you?”
“I’m a warrior!”
We left the roads for the Mad River Trail and the rocks and roots that would fill up the hours to come.
Striking out
We took our first water break out of the Mad River. I drank right from the source, raising my torso so that the water could run down my throat without choking me.
We turned onto the Hi Yu trail and climbed onto a ridge line. I was starting to feel energy from the trails, which was the thrill of moving myself over the rough terrain, maintaining momentum. I pointed out a few thimbleberries growing along the side of the trail and we grabbed them.
I sensed that Phil wanted to be more conservative and take more walks on the uphills than I did. He had more race experience than I did and maybe he was right to go slower. But it wasn’t right for me to push him to start his race faster than the race he wanted to run. I told him it had been awesome running together this far and then started running down the trail.
In a little while, I started catching runners.
The boost of confidence I got from passing people balanced out my nervousness that I would be on my own after I left Phil.
The other runners ran beneath ponchos to keep out of the rain. I waited to put on any rain protection because I worried about getting soaked from sweat. Still, I knew that it if it kept raining, I would eventually have to stop and put new layers on. The process would sacrifice time and sacrifice heat.
I drank from streams and lakes directly, not bothering to treat the water — most of the runners weren’t willing to sacrifice the time. These hydration stops were vital, especially leading up to the long mountain ridge section, which would go for miles without water sources. Nonetheless, I was keenly aware of the minutes going by as I stopped to fill bottles in my pack. I played leapfrog with other runners as I made these stops, and they made stops of there own. Every stop also put my body temperature into a tailspin; I would try to pull out by gunning my engines harder on the trail.
The veteran ultra runners were far more efficient with their re-watering and refueling than I was. They seemed able to drop their bottles or Camelbaks into streams and pluck them out without breaking stride. The fact that I had a rain cover on my pack added another layer of slowness that cut efficiency.
Cold
Cold finally caught up to me on the way to 6,820-foot Klone Peak. With the light rain falling, I knew it was only a matter of time before my core temperature took a dive. I shed my soaking shirt and put a windbreaker over my naked chest. The jacket kept the whipping winds at bay while the armpit zippers offered some ventilation to prevent things from getting overly clammy.
Some of the runners in front of me were already doubling back down from Klone. “The climb sucks, but the view is worth it,” one of them told me. Of course, when I got to the summit, all I saw was a cloud blanket.
Going back down the mountain, the trail went through burned out forest where there had been a wildfire the previous year. There had been no Plain 100 in 2015 due to the flames. Now acres of charred branches whistled ominously in the wind, a post-apocalyptic landscape worthy of The Road. The trail lead to a series of switchbacks on a long descent toward the Entiat River. Every turn was banked with concrete blocks for the dirt bikes who used the trails.
I’d read accounts of runners struggling not to slip on these blocks, and indeed I did feel as though I needed to pay more attention to my steps as I went through these sections. I was relieved to find they were far more manageable then I’d anticipated.
The narrow trail rut did cause some trouble, because my left foot always came down at a funky angle.
I focused on my running form, twisting my body so that my legs followed into the curves. The repetition of switchbacks distracted me from fatigue. I could see the Entiat River valley emerge through the fog, but it was still a long way down.
I passed two runners on the descent, then popped out at a paved road where there was another check in station. There were a couple of turns coming up that seemed ambiguous to me, and the other runners who had done the race before gave me guidance.
“How’s your race going?” I asked one man with a handlebar mustache. “I’m cold and wet and not having much fun,” he replied. He was doing the 100 miles. We were maybe 33 miles from the start.
Eventually, I got back on the single track and started going downhill.
I knew I could refill water at Tommy Creek, just a bit further ahead, and planned on stopping there, but wasn’t sure how far ahead it would be. I’d planned to delay eating until this refill point. But a sudden feeling of fatigue helped me decide to stop. This meant taking off my pack and messing with a bunch of stuff while other runners caught up to me. Of course, when I ran for a quarter mile further, I came right up to the Creek and had to stop again to fill my water stores before the long climb up Signal Peak.
“Noob move,” I muttered.
The Lonely Climb
Several other runners had picked there way down over mossy rocks to the river bank, and I got race news from them.
At least two of the top runners had gotten lost and wasted a bunch of time going down the wrong trail. The race directors had let several of the hundred-mile people know that they had a shot at finishing before the 36-hour cutoff, but there could be no lollygagging.
“I haven’t been lollygagging,” one women answered tersely. Indeed she hadn’t. I recognized her from much earlier on the race course moving at a much slower pace than me. She must not have broken her stride much at all in order to catch up.
“We’re probably going to finish the 100K around midnight,” another runner predicted.
Most of the runners seemed encouraged by this, though I felt the opposite way. The 100-mile runners were happy to take a break to refuel or nap in their cars, then slog out the remaining forty-odd miles. I was intimidated at the prospect of all those hours running in the dark.
The next 14 miles included a 5,000 foot climb to the top of Signal Peak and no water on the trail until Billy Creek. I remembered Tim Stroh saying he carried at least a gallon of water up the mountain. In the cold conditions, I decided to carry a little bit less.
I started up a long steep grade at a brisk hike. It was too steep to run it worth anything.
Switchback after switchback, I climbed alone. Despair began to show its ugly face.
What if I’m on the wrong trail?
The thought was unlikely, but carried deadly menace. A 5,000 foot climb in the wrong direction would almost certainly mean I would drop out of the race. I would have to carry my demoralized body to the last checkpoint and hope someone would still be there. My thoughts went to the tiny reflective mylar bag I’d stashed in the bottom of my backpack. That might be my home for the night, curled under a log somewhere, clenching myself for warmth.
I could see the jagged sides of the mountain ridge in front of me — there was plenty of hill left to climb. The sinking sun shimmered off of wet leaves in the valley below and cast a rainbow above the hills.
“That’s beautiful,” I said, waiting for the inspiration to carry me uphill. But the worries were stronger.
I’m through with this crap. What’s the point?This is physically damaging, mentally isolating and it doesn’t do a damn for anybody. There are a million other worthy things I could be doing right now.
Each time I thought I had reached the crest of the ridge, I found out that there was another switchback to climb. The wind became colder, making me put my jacket on.
The trail didn’t climb forever. It started going down where it merged with the Tyee Ridge Trail, the trail on the map. I was on course.
“Thank God!”
I immediately saw another racer in a blue jacket emerge from the trees. I recognized him from earlier in the course when he’d helped me with directions. He had gone to a spring a quarter-mile off the trail to refill his water stores. My relief grew. If there were someone else I could navigate the darkness with, I felt far more comfortable.
“I’m glad to see someone else out here,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.” he replied.
“One thing I know is that I want to be off this damn ridge before nightfall,” I said.
We stuck together for about two miles until I felt a fresh surge of confidence and started running downhill faster. I used the written directions to take me onto Billy Creek Trail just as the orange light left the mountaintops and troubled grays began their creep across the landscape.
Slow Misery
I made my way past the next check in station station with a new burst of confidence. There were a number of switchbacks going down soft needles, that I was able to run aggressively. Soon I passed two other runners with their headlamps on, right as I went past two turns that I’d worried about missing earlier.
“Hey you might want that,” a runner warned me. The headlamp I’d been carrying in my map case had fallen out somehow.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot.
When I announced that I was doing the 100K, the runners told me it must feel like I was the horse smelling the barn. Only about 14 miles left, one told me. That didn’t sound bad at all. I pictured the last segment of one of my training runs from the top of Hurricane Ridge to my apartment in Port Angeles, Washington. It had been about that far.
“There’s about a thousand-foot climb in four miles.” one of the runners remarked.
Details. I thought. Surely that was nothing compared to the 5,000 feet I had ascended earlier. I was about to find out.
The temperatures began to get warmer as we got deeper into the valley, boosting my confidence more.
The feeling of confidence first began to falter as I began pushing through thicker vegetation, that forced me to slow down and watch my step. I stopped for a quick drink and eat, allowing the two runners from earlier to pass me again.
The drop off into Jimmy Creek brought some of the steepest trail I had run yet that day. Under the narrow illumination of my headlamp, I ran down loose, jagged rocks, mindful of the drop-off on the other side. Switchbacks slowed me to an almost walk. I re-passed the two other runners shortly before we got to the creek below
It was no use though. I had to fumble in my pack to refill water for the first time in 14 miles; my two followers simply popped their bottles off their chest holsters and started running again.
At this point chafing in my shorts had worsened to the point that I had resorted to carrying my petroleum jelly in my jacket pocket. I reapplied, fumbled some more with clothes, and also with a headlamp strap that wouldn’t tighten properly. Eventually, I tied a knot in the thing, which seemed to work.
The trail left Jimmy Creek and started following the slow ascent through the Mad River Valley. The section where I had expected moderate difficulty was proving massively hard. The narrow confines of the headlamp beam only gave me so much time to anticipate and react to trail obstacles. Moreover, my muscles that had felt strong only half an hour ago, now seemed jelly-like and reluctant. I tried to run, but could only manage a fast walk.
Just four miles! I thought And then it’s literally all downhill. It was maddening to find my body, which had seemed to do so well on the downhill section earlier, suddenly rendered slow and stupid.
I heard the Mad River rushing below and desperately wanted to refill my bottles, but I found nowhere to get down its steep banks easily.
Eventually, the path crossed a small stream. I took off my headlamp and leaned over on my belly so that I could drink directly from the water. This required me to lift my head up periodically to get the water down. As I raised myself to swallow another mouthful, I found myself looking at a large toad sitting on a stone nearby.
I thought, I had drank enough, but at the next stream, I found myself drinking all over again. I was peeing plenty, but I couldn’t shake thirst.
I wouldn’t say I was hallucinating at this point, only that my mind was extremely motivated to see mundane things as things that were helpful to me. A circular cut through a log looked a lot like a trail sign announcing the end of the climb — until I got closer and saw it for what it was. Leafy branches looked like trail signs also. This happened several times.
I crossed the Mad River, drank again, peed again. I looked around a campsite for the road leading up to the last check in station at the top of Maverick Saddle.
The chafing was bad, causing me to tighten up my stride in fear of a bad rub causing fresh pain. I soon saw a jeep parked nearby and recognized the trailhead where I had started earlier in the morning. The check in was a couple hundred feet down the road, a Search and Rescue guy standing outside a truck. There were maybe four miles left in the race.
“Are you OK, Man?” he asked. That wasn’t exactly reassuring to mine ears. I must have looked worse than I thought. The last thing I wanted was to get pulled at the course this close to the finish line.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just hit a wall in the woods back there. I’ve come back from worse.”
Of course, I nearly wandered off in the wrong direction, before I stopped myself and forced myself to look at the map more carefully. I checked my compass to make sure I was going south (and I was!) and then started jogging awkwardly along the cobbled road, downhill toward the finish.
Soon I heard footsteps coming up from behind. The cool light of another headlamp beam splashed across the road in front of me, and I knew I had company.
Finisher
At first I started to run harder, but this felt pointless.
A glance over my shoulder into the bright light revealed about my pursuer.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to be the guy in the blue jacket from earlier?” I called.
“That’s me,” the man said. “The name’s Ray by the way.”
He ran up alongside me and I matched his pace. Since he was doing the 100-miler, not the 100K, he felt less like my competition. Soon I felt the funk that had slowed me down earlier start to lift. There was no way I wasn’t going to finish this race.
I told him about the crash I’d felt earlier when I was going up toward the Saddle.
“You probably went too long without eating,” Ray told me.
Indeed, I had lowered my food consumption for the long waterless stretch so that I wouldn’t have to drink so much. Another difference, was that running with someone else made me feel stronger, much in the same way that it had helped when I ran with Phil at the beginning of the race. Coincidentally or not, my lowest portions of the race had come when I’d been running alone.
Now, the two of our headlamps swept together across the gravel road, and the added light made me feel more confident about what was in the path. Ray also had a small flash light in one hand to reduce the distracting contrast between light and shadow.
We made the final turn that indicated we had about three miles left.
I felt more than able to run the rest of the way in, but I did make a few stops to walk with Ray, who had helped me with directions several times along the course. His headlamp had started flickering, and I would have felt crappy about leaving him to run the course behind me if I went ahead. The spare flashlight probably would have covered him, but still. Whatever minutes I could have shaved in the last few miles didn’t seem to matter after 18 hours on the trail.
At the top of a small rise, we started running again.
“I’m going to finish this race as a runner,” I said.
A lighted tent appeared. around the curve. We continued up toward the light where a couple of people were preparing soup and burgers.
“Is this the finish for the 100K?” I asked.
“This is it.”
I eased myself into a chair.
It was 12:12 am, a full 18 hours and 35 minutes from when I had started — 19 hours 12 minutes from official race start time. I was fourth place out of eight racers, two of whom had dropped out. Winner Kyle McCoy finished the 100K in only 14:45. Steve Slaby won the 100-mile race in 29:22.
I let the volunteers serve me some minestrone soup, while Ray had a burger.
Many of the 100-mile runners were sitting inside their cars parked nearby with the engines running, trying to warm themselves. Here and there a door would open, a headlight would flick on, another runner would start off down the gravel. They had miles to go before they slept.
Afterthoughts
From the comfort of the chair at the end of the race, it was easy enough to speculate as to whether I could have gone on to run those remaining miles with the rest of the 100-mile crowd. It is even easier to speculate from the comfort of my room as I type these words. Ultimately, however, that is a test that only the miles can prove — just as only the miles could prove whether I was capable of running 100 kilometers to begin with. The Plain does offer the option to 100K runners who want to upgrade to the 100-mile mid-race, but I was in no mood to find out that night. For one, my chafing was pretty bad. Not having studied the map for the last section of the race also left me vulnerable to getting really lost.
Going as far as I had did give me the luxury of learning from mistakes and trying to be better prepared and more efficient for the next competition.
Some lessons for me included the idea of managing water and food more efficiently with a rig that has front pouches available (or even stashing more stuff in jacket pockets)
I would be tempted to get a Camelbak or similar hydration system for my next race, though chest-mounted bottles would work nicely too. A laminated map with a chest lanyard would be another efficient thing to have in order to help navigation. Also, next time, I will remember that directions to the start can be just as important as directions on the race course.
Another lesson I took away is that it can be immensely helpful and enjoyable to share the miles with someone else instead of trying to push through alone.
I ended the race with an abundance of food, almost half the amount that I had started out with, including four smashed up Oreos, most of the gel packs, two chocolate bars, a baby food pack and four of the six burritos. I never used any of the drink mix tabs except for the ones that I had put at the bottom of my empty water bottles before the start. The amount I had would most likely have made it for a 100-mile race, and if I did another unsupported competition, I might use the about the same amount of everything.
I didn’t end up using either my spare fleece, the mico-bivvy sack, or any of the first aid stuff aside from the petroleum jelly, but I don’t regret bringing any one of those. In a race when anything could have happened, including a twisted ankle on a cold dark trail, it was nice to have a measure of security.
The break in the road was far less dramatic than what I had envisioned. The only thing that kept motorized traffic off the eight miles of asphalt leading to Olympic Hot Springs was a minor washout, hardly more than a dozen feet across, carved by an errant channel of the Elwha River. A small wooden bridge over the gap, made it easy enough to cross and, apparently, Park Service vehicles were already using it to conduct their business. Nonetheless, that gap in the road, cut off civilian traffic to the springs — unless, of course, they were motivated to get there without a car.
I left my car back at the Madison Falls parking lot, where the Park Service had barred the road, and started down the pavement, backcountry camping permit attached to my pack. After going a few paces at a walk, I fell into a light jog, then thrust my chin forward and started running.
This was the first time I’d tried camping with a backpack light enough for me to run with. Items like a sleeping bag, tarp, food and first aid supplies added weight on my shoulders, but the burden was a manageable one. I was pleased to see myself moving much faster than conventional hiking speed.
Crowds of people of people strolling out from the parking lot diminished rapidly as I put miles down. Here and there, and odd biker cruised along the pavement.
The murmurings of the Elwha drifted through the trees, sounds that would no doubt have been drowned out by the din of auto traffic a year earlier. There was no exhaust in the air, but a stimulating tang of sun-warmed pine needles refreshed my spirit. For all my scattershot planning, second guesses and doubts, it was good to actually be out there doing the thing.
I would run 10 miles and climb 2,000 feet, then camp near the springs with the small provisions in my pack. The next day, I would log about 22 miles over a five-thousand foot mountain ridge.
I stopped on my fourth mile to walk out on the remains of the Glines Canyon Dam. The abandoned road had already lent a post-apocalyptic theme for my trip, but this was something else.
A walkway led out onto the 210-foot span, then ended abruptly for a view into a chasm where the rest of the dam used to be. The milky-blue Elwha river ran unencumbered beneath the gaze of its former captor. Rapids thrashed out against the stone walls and churned in a confusion of rapids downstream.
What disaster had destroyed this mighty dam? No disaster (depending on who you ask) but a public project to restore the river and bring back salmon. The Park Service signs around the site explained the work, the largest of its kind in US History.
Since the Elwha Dam construction began in 2010, the Elwha has been a dammed river. The Glines Canyon Dam followed in the 20s, providing the electricity that helped run the mills in nearby Port Angeles, Washington. The dams also blocked salmon access to 70 miles worth of prime salmon spawning ground. Thomas Aldwell, the Canadian-born dam financier, did not bother putting fish ladders in either of his dams. Even if there had been ladders, the fact that the dams held back sediment and drastically changed the river temperature was still enough to spell disaster for salmon and steelhead populations that would have used the river before. How much sediment? The volume is equal to the area of a football field multiplied by 2.25 miles according to the Park Service. A beach has reformed at the river mouth as the sediment comes down the current, and it is even replenishing Ediz Hook, the narrow of land spit that forms Port Angeles’s natural harbor. The Hook has become a popular fishing spot in the wake of dam removal.
When the dams went up, they dealt a hard blow to the salmon fishing livelihood of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, which lives near the mouth of the river. Not surprisingly, the Klallam were a major proponent of dam removal. Congress approved the process with the 1992 Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, signed by George H.W. Bush.
It took until 2011 for the last of the Elwha Dam to come out and longer for a floating barge to chip out the Glines Canyon Dam. In 2014, the last 30 feet of the structure went down in a blast of dynamite.
Life is finding its way back to the river. The salmon are beginning to re-find their old spawning grounds now, thanks in part to help from humans, who have released the tiny spawn upstream of the dam sites so that they would imprint and later return to these habitats. On a recent kayak trip down the Elwha rapids, I got to see the artificial log-jams along the river that slow and cool the currents, making life better for returning salmon.
More human effort to realign the human-scarred landscape included the willow, salal, black cottonwood and numerous other native species workers had planted along the edges of the gray siltscape that marked the former Mills Reservoir to my south.
After a century of imprisonment, however, it should be unsurprising that the river should lash out a bit upon release. Hence the washed-out section of road, which made the traffic on the Hot Springs road a no-go.
The landscape around me seemed more wild just knowing that there wouldn’t be seeing any families leaving the engine idling as they got out for a quick picture of it. I looked up to the snow on the peaks in the Olympic Mountains and knew it was time to start running again.
My calves got a nice workout as I knocked out 2,000 feet of elevation in a couple miles. I stopped to enjoy a lookout over the Straight of Juan De Fuca and distant Vancouver Island.
The road ended at a National Park trailhead. No mountain bikes allowed beyond this point. Everyone was now foot traffic like me. Other notices remarked that a suspension bridge along the trail was considered unsafe, also that fecal coliform had been found in the hot springs (I thought all coliform was fecal, but yeah, nice way to emphasize that point.) The National Park Service still says no to weed, no matter what the laws were in Washington State. Uncle Sam set the house rules here.
The trail was easy running, with wide margins and the occasional ditch to hop. I spied a woman walking over the questionable suspension bridge, and decided to take my chances with it, even though I was a bit heavier.
The trail continued along an Elwha tributary and led to another bridge where I smelled the faint aroma of rotten eggs. Lines of rocks marked the springs, helping to shore up the water. The manmade walls were a far cry from the concrete, entrance fee and bath towel affairs that I’ve seen at commercial hot springs elsewhere. They were a small human improvement, and the damming seemed far less egregious than the toppled behemoths that had sequestered the Elwha.
I explored tiny trails leading to secret springs, finally found a murky pool that was a way above the main trail. A bright blue line of mineral substrate issued from the crack in the rocks where the water fed this natural spa. Steam wisped upward from the dark mirror surface. I took my clothes off.
I put a foot in the spring. The water was scalding. Then, I dangled a leg in and waited until it seemed OK. I let the rest of myself settle beneath the murky surface.
Aahhhhhh. Not bad! Not bad at all!
Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as I gazed at moss-covered branches overhead and the blue sky beyond.
If I had no one else to share the spring with me I could thank/blame the Elwha again for taking out the section of road and limiting access. I’d heard from others that the springs were usually crowded during the summer months. Such crowds had likely brought the coliform contamination as bathers answered nature’s call near springs.
I made a mental note to use plenty of hand sanitizer before dinner that night.
Fires were not allowed at the springs campsite, but I hadn’t found out until I got there and I’d saved weight by not bringing a fuel stove in my backpack. There had yet to be a general burn ban in the forest. Nor did the prospect of cold pea soup crunch for dinner did not appeal.
I was determined to make the tiniest of fires, reasoning that done right, this would be more ecological than fossil fuel. I used mineral soil at the base of a felled tree as the fire sight, and built a fire pit of about six inches across using three large stones. Using a vaseline-soaked cotton ball as starter, I started a minute twig fire, that was nonetheless enough to boil water in a pot for soup.
Plenty of us use camping as a way to reward the fire bug in ourselves, delighting in how large we can build the flames from the available wood. It is a perverse application of American “more is better” mentality, where people think that the ability to squander resources makes it their right. Knowing that most people are going to strip large amounts of wood from the surrounding forest, it is no wonder that the Park Service would want to ban campfires at the site.
Some may call me an elitist scofflaw for excepting myself from the rules. I nonetheless took pleasure from trying to make the smallest, most efficient blaze and utilizing it to full capacity. I got plenty of warmth by getting close up to the flames. By the time the fire had burned itself out, I had scarcely gone through a few handfuls of twigs. I heated some more water on the embers and drank the scrapings from the pot.
Like the fire before it, my shelter was a small affair` . I strung rope between two trees and lay a short tarp over it. I carved out some stakes from twigs with my pocket knife. Sleeping bag and tent pad went beneath the tarp. Though the end of the bag stuck out from the end of the tarp, I’d planned for this by bringing an ultralight bivy sack to put the bag in. If it rained that night, I should be dry. I found a scrap of plywood nearby and used it as a wind block.
What the bivy sack did was it made me way too warm in the bag and that is why I woke up early that morning with plenty of sweat soaked through my sleeping bag.
Mountain peaks that had shone in the alpenglow the night before were now obscured in cloud. I considered that the trail ahead of me could be cold and damp. All the more reason for a morning fire.
I set up a pot of water for oatmeal. As the flames leaped, I held the wet sleeping bag as close as I dared to the fire, and was pleased to see much of the moisture evaporate.
I started running down the trail at around 7:45 am. The trail beyond the campsite narrowed and began taking me up a series of switchbacks on my way to Happy Lake Ridge. My water bottles were empty, I planned to fill up when I got to Boulder Lake which was still about 2,000 feet above my head.
I split my time between running and power hiking as I continued to gain elevation. After a while, I saw the “No Fires” sign, that meant that I had reached 3,500 feet. The trees were less dense then when I had started the other day, with large Douglas firs and Sitka spruce predominating.
I paused at Boulder Lake to filter water and eat second breakfast. The cold mist soon had me chilled and made me put on other layers. I realized that I didn’t have any gloves, but I had accidentally packed one extra sock, which I put over one hand. I wondered if I were really equipped to take on a mountain ridge, bound to be more exposed and colder than what I was dealing with. The trail beyond the lake looked not so well maintained, which worried me because I wanted to cover ground quickly to get back to the car by the end of the day. It would have felt defeating to turn around at this point, though, and I vowed to press on.
I started a brisk hike up a series of switchbacks before starting a brisk hike up to the top of the ridge. The trail was narrower here and the wet shrubbery slapped at my legs. I had to pause repeatedly to climb over and under fallen tree trunks. Spears of broken wood waited for my soles to slip on the slick bark.
More meadow-like areas waited at the crest of the ridge. The trees became scrubby dwarfs. Beyond the shifting clouds were hints of grand valleys and towering peaks just outside my vision. I ran along a rollercoaster of ups and downs, leaning forward to tackle the steep descents on gravel. I breathed easily, pushing, not straining, letting my feet turn over under the pull of gravity and for the rhythm of tiny footfalls to carry me down. The energy flowed over into the next rise, and then, I sank tiny steps into the hill, letting them bring me up to the top. Then down again. The trail cut along steep pitches, where a missed step could translate into a messy tumble through rock and briar.
I may not have been smiling, but my heart beat with the quiet joy of the moment. Trail running affirms the present tense, or at least it diminishes my awareness of past and future. I work on a micro-future of what will happen in the fraction of a second before the next footfall, how the torso should turn before the feet do, how to anticipate a landing with one’s entire body. Focus on these minute calculations helps me hold off worry, whether it is troubles in the past or anxieties for the future. I take simple happiness in flowing through the motions with my mind and body. Like the river below, I had (however briefly) unshackled myself.
A patch of snow on the trail, emphasized that I was in mountain country now. A couple miles later, I took a half-mile detour to run down the trail to Happy Lake, where contours of snow clung to the north face of the valley, bleeding into a small stream. The water was so cold that the first mouthful gave me brain freeze.
The clouds broke to the blue sky. A glaciated mountain ridge revealed itself in the distance.
The trail started going down. It would be about 3,000 feet of descent to get back to the paved road and then another 2,000 feet to the Glines Canyon Dam. I let myself begin turning the feet over.
I knew my quadriceps were going to hate me for going down the switchbacks at full tilt. Still, it was good training for them if I wanted to do more mountain running in the months to come. I ran with tiny steps to minimize the individual impacts on my knees.
The sheer pitch of the hill made it impossible for me to run with total abandon, and soon I felt the burning in the quads, which would render me a hobbling oldster for days later every time I walked down stairs.
The trees got bigger again. The scrub grew low and even in a verdant layer that looked like it had to have been manicured. It made me think of some twee victorian park. But I was the only one on the trail.
The twisted, orange trunks of madrona trees flashed by as I skidded down through the curves. Soon, I saw the asphalt line of the road. I got back on and pounded the remaining 2,000 feet to the Glines Canyon Dam.
Walkers and bikers strolled at their leisure along the closed road. I smiled and waved. Everyone seemed in high spirits. If they had been in vehicles they would have blown by me with waves of noise and exhaust.
They should keep the road closed, I thought.
Edward Abbey, famous road hater, would have approved, just as the dam removal would have been much to his liking.
In his book Desert Solitaire, Abbey proposes closing all national parks to personal automobiles, and that people go in on “…horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs..” instead. He reasons that parks will seem far vaster and grander to people if it takes them more effort to get in than, say, pulling up to a drive-thru.
Abbey writes: “We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they too, are holy places.”
I’m inclined to agree. Just to the east of the Elwha River, the popular Hurricane Ridge Road allows tourists to go mountain climbing in their cars. The shimmering snarl of traffic with the grumble of engines reverberating through the valley is a desecration.
Perhaps simply getting people into these places is worth the road building, the smog and the chaos of crowds. When I see the vast majority of these smartphone-equipped people hardly straying a mile from the machines that brought them in, I wonder how much they are appreciating there surroundings, and how much they are just sucking down the experience like so many Big Gulps from the drive-thru window. Is it a meaningful experience for them, or just a momentary sugar rush, an audiovisual novelty? I see little difference between looking at something from the RV window and seeing it on a screen.
Alas, construction on the broken road is going through as I write. Now completely closed off to civilian access, it will remain off limits for an eight-week period. Then, the asphalt river will reopen, and visitors will be able to migrate back up into their territory.
With the dam broken and the road back under construction, the end result seems half right.
As I ran along, a mountain biker called out to me.
“Hey, didn’t I see you here yesterday?”
He had biked to the trailhead yesterday and hiked the remaining two miles to the springs. He’d liked it so much, he was doing it again today. Bombing back down the 2,000 feet of twisting turns on the empty road was one of his favorite parts of the trip — he clocked himself around 40 miles-per-hour.
When he got to the top of the hill, he would hike the remaining two miles into the springs.
“It’s nice having them without the crowds isn’t it?” I ventured.
“Are you kidding?” He said. “That road washout was the best thing that’s ever happened out here!”
It is a quiet joy to see the flash of dress billow with her movements as she picks her way along the desert wash.
This is Utah.
The scale and severity of the landscape always halt me. Here are the ramparts of scorched red-rock, cutting me off from the table land. Here is the muddy Colorado, writhing between the canyon walls like some vast serpent. There lie the snow-topped mountains, half hidden in clouds. At my feet, a delicate flower emerges out of cactus thorns.
And then I must consider this extra splash of color, moving along the debris behind me.
I hadn’t seen LeAnn since November, and though we hadn’t officially been together for a while, I was thrilled when she agreed to join me on a trip to canyon country. Neither of us was seeing anyone at the time, and it is more fun to have a fellow traveller that you are in tune with.
By in tune, I don’t necessarily mean that we resonate at the same frequency — not exactly. LeAnn will wear dresses on the trail, talk about home health remedies, stop to coo over a toad that I’d practically stomped on because I was looking at the horizon, frequently calls me “The Old Man.”
I got the name because I tend to go on curmudgeonly rants about everything. It doesn’t take much to get me rolling about the insipidness of pop music, the shittyness of movies, the selfishness I see society encourage in people. The only thing missing is some heavy oaken cane for me to shake at the world in general disproval. The Old Man goes on rants, worries about safety, loses things, and dodders along the terrain, lost in thought.
Put me in a North Face advertisement
No, there are plenty of differences between us two, but often these different frequencies find odd harmonies. Each of us sees and thinks differently than if we went out by ourselves. We do share the common goal of trying to find some measure of freedom and joy in nature.
The sense of freedom is what I enjoy about seeing LeAnn take to the trails in colorful dresses. Not much is sacrificed in terms of practicality here, excepting the occasional snag from a sagebrush or juniper branch, an added difficulty for boulder scrambles. But then, sometimes the way we do a thing is as important as the thing in itself. The rhythm of the swishing skirt makes a fine contrapunto to the desert music and somehow seems as vital as the gallon jugs of water that I’d filled earlier.
“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution?” writes naturalist philosopher Edward Abbey, in his book Desert Solitaire. “I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy, there can be no courage and without courage all other virtues are useless.”
Abbey was talking about desert toads that reveal themselves to predators with their loud songs. The trait is seemingly maladaptive, but has value in attracting mates. Whether or not the toads appreciate their songs and find that they give meaning to their lives — I leave that question to toad scholars. What I don’t doubt is that we humans enrich ourselves when we can express what we are.
Expressing what we are sounds simple enough on paper. But when you are an Old Man, you see plenty of complications. Truth is one. It is no good to shout from the rooftop if you are shouting lies. But some people are so quick to respond or react to events that I can’t believe that they really know whether they are shouting truth, gibberish or something worse. There is also the need to make your mode of expression your own, not carrying someone else’s banner, retweeting some cliche, ignorant of what it actuallystands for.
At least toads don’t have to worry about their sweet songs being co-opted into advertisements by a multinational corporation. Oh wait. Look at the beer shilling frogs in the ‘90s TV commercials. “Bud!” “Weis!” “Er!”
Expression is easy enough, but in order to make it into “self expression,” there needs to be some self involved, not just a collection of reactive impulses masquerading as a self.
I’ll leave open the possibility that self can be enormously complicated, likely inextricable from the world around. One of the beautiful things about being human, is that we can take others’ ideas, (art, literature, conversation or whatever) process those ideas and make them our own. We can eat a banana without becoming a banana, but still benefit from the nutrients within. The same goes for how we process nature. We can commune with it, and process it on our own terms.
What I see with modern communication is that it throws so much information at us, much of it manipulative, that our internal processor is hard-pressed to keep up. Internet access, social media, smart phones and corporate advertising beat at the doors to the self, pinging at us, pinging at us, dumping so much content that there is no time to it all absorb into self-ness. I picture a virus inserting a foreign strand of genetic code into our own identity. Suddenly, when we try to express our own ideas, we only have the tools to spew out more of the virus. And then the virus infects others. And revenue increases.
The hellish, confining nature of this system makes us long for something different, maybe a nice descent into addiction, or if that seems too extreme, a pleasant walk in nature, where we believe that we won’t hear the racket from the money-driven noise machine. Perhaps, in that place of contemplation, a clearer vision of the self will emerge.
But the advertisers and other purveyors of bullshit know how dangerous that is. When you run for the hills, they will be hot on your heels eager to subvert your desire for communion with nature into a desire to make purchases.
The purveyors tell you to snap your picture, tag yourself, and move on, making our interactions with the real world as superficial as they are in the virtual one. Perpetual distraction and dissatisfaction are good because they feed consumption and make dollars flow.
The purveyors take your warm feelings for natural beauty and redirect them into brand loyalty. They pervert the profile of Half Dome into the North Face logo; they repurpose the grandeur of El Capitan into Apple’s El Capitan operating system.
This year, Subaru clinched the title of “Sole automotive partner of the National Park Service’s Centennial”* Going to Yellowstone? Pollute it in a Subaru!
“Our national parks embody an undeniable sense of freedom,” reads the opening to Budweiser’s partnership statement/branding opportunity with the Parks Service.*
New advertising policy put out by Parks director Jonathan Jarvis will soon allow even more opportunities for major park donors like Coca Cola, Humana, and REI to fly high their banners from from Acadia to Joshua Tree. **
If the idea of festooning a National Park with corporate logos leaves a bad taste in your mouth, consider the hordes of tourists who already walk those trails decked out in their shiny Arc’teryx shells, or paramilitary Under Armour tops to take selfies, cybernetic music blasting out of earbuds. There is expression here alright, but not self expression. It is hard to see any concept of selfhood in those who drape themselves in symbols that belong to others.
Because they have not bothered to craft their own identities, they grab all the more desperately for some T -shirt with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or list of Tweety Bird witticisms. There’s are plenty of prefab identities available for you to buy. You can pick one one up for $15 at your local Wal Mart.
And I’m not just picking on poor slobs who couldn’t afford the latest and greatest performance-wear.
Naturally, many of us begin to believe (but would never admit) that the more expensive the clothes we wrap ourselves in, the more value we accrue. Such walking retail advertisements have bought into a finer-crafted identity, with higher thread count and built in iPhone sleeve.
What seems especially crass to me about the omnipresence of corporate symbols in national parks, is that they remind me about the forces of money, still out there pillaging the environment I am now trying to enjoy. Even if they never get around to, say, fracking the Grand Canyon, human want, driven by relentless advertising, will ensure that there will be plenty of smog to go around, more bright lights, more pressure for billboards, helicopters and luxury lodging crowding out the natural world.
I shouldn’t let it get to me. I should just look at the canyons now. Watch the graceful eagle in flight — not the bro posturing in the camo Under Armour hoodie. Relax.
The problem is that this march of advertising, of posturing, self-important bullshit does not want me to not pay attention. It screams at me to seeit,to read its words, to acknowledge its existence, when I came out here to acknowledge the existence of something far more subtle and profound. It is hard to hear truths whispering like leaves of grass when a car salesman screams into your other ear.
And I do believe that many of us get so caught up in broadcasting ourselves (or rebroadcasting others) that we don’t spend enough time listening. We demand others see us and become addicted to their validation (some run for president.) If validation is the best thing that comes from self-expression, then the matter of whether such expression is a true expression of the self becomes secondary.
Above all, I think that people who want to escape the grind should quiet down for a minute out there instead of bringing the grind and all its tedium into nature. See what it feels like to walk a mere hour without saying a word or without looking at a screen. Note what thoughts arise.
I’m not the first person to complain about what people wear, whether on the golf course or in the wilderness.
In Backwood’s Ethics by east coast naturalists Guy and Laura Waterman, the authors suggest that people who seek out nature should tone down their wardrobes. A neutral-colored tent is better than a flashy orange one, they argue. A bright-colored tent stands out over long distances, and draws attention to itself, clashing, instead of harmonizing with the outside environment. The argument resonated with me, even though I’d recently bought a pair of day-glo ski pants partly because, hey, they looked cool.
Even as one part of me nodded along with the Waterman’s curmudgeonly wisdom, I also thought about how many animals are as vain, or far vainer than the Eddie Bauer acolytes or North Facers who walk the trails.
If a male cardinal (the bird, not the clergymen) struts out on a branch in his finest red feathers, shouldn’t we call him out on his vanity? If he insists on chirping his song from the highest branches, why should he be less annoying than that dude with the pocket speaker system playing Top 40 singles near the waterfall? If the birds sing because of some reel imprinted in genetic memory, it’s all the more reason to disdain their unoriginality. The same goes for those loud toads Abbey mentions. They are just another pack of attention mongers.
I’ll check myself before my argument becomes any more absurd. It is easier to acknowledge that there are times, when it is appropriate to call attention to ourselves in nature, just as there are times when it surely isn’t. Artists like Cristo and Jeanne-Claude who once erected thousands of orange gates to in Central Park, used a bold sense of style to complement the winter landscape, not diminish it.
We humans still rely on expression to project ourselves, sing ourselves, and build bonds between others of our kind. There is a time to shut up and let nature do the talking, and many people still need to learn how. Nonetheless, we humans are also entitled to do some talking of our own, especially if we are trying to express some understanding that we developed in the time that we shut up and listened.
LeAnn, who has taught me the names of many plants and animals, shown me wild edibles and explained the different life processes happening around me, has done plenty of listening to nature. She also understands, intuitively, the need for joy. Joy is the expression that I see in the dress moving through the desert. I see it, and believe it is her own. I permit myself to enjoy it also.
Joy need not deny that terrible things happen in the world or that difficult times can test the very core of what we believe in ourselves. It is not the unobtainable idea of a flawless world as dreamed by an advertising exec.
The desert won’t tolerate such fantasies for much time. Just keep walking into the canyons and away from your car. See how long you can believe the comforting platitudes.
You’ll learn to step carefully, if you’re going to make it through alive. You’ll need to learn how many ways the desert can kill you and how indifferent it is to your fate.
But if you are going to live, you might also learn to take joy at finding an oasis to drink from or finding a succulent prickly pear to ea., You would do well to create some kind of narrative that gives a purpose to your survival efforts.
Sometimes life needs to shine forth, unafraid and unapologetic amidst the landscape, and even bright colors can complement the world around, not detract from it.
While the sight of corporate logos on the trail speaks to me of commodification, the sight of the bright dress on the trail speaks to me of freedom. It reinforces the fact that a landscape, which offers hardship, danger and privation, can also be a place of joy — if we rise to meet it.
The author takes a break from the wind before skiing to the top of an 11,000-foot ridge.
South Fork
Somewhere at the entrance of the canyon, an unseen coyote was howling, barking, howling, barking.
I skied toward it slowly, picking my way between stands of willow and alder shrub that grew in the gray flatland of the South Fork drainage. It was just after noontime. Fast moving clouds flew across the sky, allowing the sun to warm the land one instant — before they snatched the light away again. The sharp peaks in the Zirkel range to my east alternately gleamed glorious bright in full illumination or brooded in shadow like a vision out of Transylvania.
I tried not to let the weather psych me out, but it struck a harmony with my own brooding malaise.
Bear Canyon, where the coyote continued howling outrage, lay to the south in a somewhat rounder stand of mountains. It was a U-shaped gap between two ridge lines, maybe a quarter-mile across at the mouth. I couldn’t see too far up the way, but I knew that I would camp somewhere inside those walls — without a tent.
I’d sleep in a snow-shelter and rise the next morning to climb onto the ridge below The Dome. This 11,900-foot mountain, with its sheer walls, was probably out of my league, but there was an un-named sister peak, just above 11,000 feet, that had mellower topo lines on the map. I could climb it on skis, maybe.
Skis and coyote tracks above the South Fork
If the absent tent left an uneasy weight in my mind, I hoped the lessened weight on my back would make up for it. The pack was heavy enough with its winter sleeping bag, extra clothes, food, fuel, tarp and other miscellaneous and sundry camping items.
The abandoned tent gave me room to move a bit quicker and with less back strain (though plenty of that would come later.) There was also more responsibility when it came to setting up camp. I’m always relieved when I know I can snap a shelter together out of poles and nylon fabric in minutes. Building from nature required me to channel whatever MacGyver skills I might have. I knew that the shelter would take time, and I might make mistakes along the way. I’d have to pay attention to the elements, to work with and not in spite of them.
Not that the elements had any trouble finding challenges for me.
There was the river, for one.
I had been able to cross a couple of streams earlier in the trip by skiing over snow bridges. The South Fork offered no such convenience, just a channel of open water between me and Bear Canyon that I would have to get across somehow.
The only solution, I could see (other than taking off skis and boots and wading through barefoot) was a tree that had fallen across the current and had a layer of snow on top.
Fresh canine tracks had crossed here. The coyote was still howling outrage from somewhere in the trees, but I never saw it.
If I went too far off center, my skis would likely break the snow and drop me in the water. I set the skis at a slight angle against the log and slowly began to cross where the coyote had gone, obliterating its tracks with my own.
I reached the other side unscathed and continued toward the base of the canyon. This was north-facing territory, and thus, dominated by pines, spruce and fir. The canyon walls were scarcely visible through the thick boughs.
I stopped to eat some vegan pizza, then put the skins back on and started climbing through the forest.
Snow tsunami
The winding climb
The clouds hid the sun again, and I found myself looking at the sameness of the trees, feeling less than inspired.
I knew that this trip had me checking off a box before the end of the season. My head wasn’t entirely in the game; it was worrying about things like career path, the descent into adulthood, my need to put down roots and build more long-term relationships with places and people. There would be laundry to do when I got back, and I would be that much further behind in filling out paperwork, making plans.
Now, I incriminated myself. How unworthy it was to be in a wild place and stand there, uninspired. Hell, real suffering hadn’t even started yet.
I’d managed to ditch five pounds of tent, but still carried several tons worth of worldly bullshit into the mountains with me. But what was I supposed to do, just cut it all loose? Pretend that the real responsibilities and questions of the world had no right to exist because, “Oooh, the mountains are so beautiful!”?
I admit that escapism is one reason why I choose to go on adventures — it’s nice to stop worrying about things because the mountains are beautiful. But nature isn’t there just to be eye candy or to plaster us with child-like wonder. It is not separate from the world we live in every day, but permeates every inch of it, from the air we breathe to the bacteria in our guts and the primal hardware that governs our wants and needs. Human nature.
The real challenge is to see sameness between that moose browsing the willows and you, online shopping; between the chittering birds and the guys shouting at each other outside a bar on Friday night.
Natural instinct is one of the reasons why many of us find hiking and camping unappealing. We are designed not to enjoy cold, exposure, vulnerability. This is in conflict with the fact that we are also designed to crave the feeling of accomplishment that comes with summiting a mountain or traveling miles of backcountry.
Walls limit the scope of our experience, whether we put them between ourselves and nature or between ourselves and other people. Taking them down also means greater risks.
Lacking a tent gave me the opportunity to have a beautiful walls-free communion with the natural world outside that night, though this came with the slight downside that the wind was picking up and it was probably going to snow. Too much exposure would get me a nice case of hypothermia.
I’d limit the exposure with a sleeping bag, tarp, and whatever I could build out of the resources I’d have in the canyon.
The more I climbed, the more dead trees I saw, a legacy of the Rocky Mountains’ pine beetle scourge. Worse, many of the trees had toppled in a recent windstorm. I found myself weaving around, doubling or tripping any straight-line distance between two points. The trees made hill climbing a special pain in the ass, because they got in the way of diagonal traverses.
Fuel for fireAnd for the skier
My priorities were to get shelter, water and a cook fire set up before darkness fell. Experience has taught me that it usually takes longer to do these things than I think. At around 3:15, I started the real-estate hunt.
I stopped at a couple of pines to strip away some dead red boughs (which seem to be more difficult to find at higher elevations) as fire starter. I strapped the lot of them to my pack as a home-warming present to myself.
But were there any places I wanted to settle down in this neighborhood?
Certainly, much of the west side was a no-go. I saw two places where small avalanches had left swaths of snow rubble on the bare slope. Falling snow was easy enough to avoid, but falling trees were another matter.
Almost all the trees in this part of the canyon were dead. I saw the burn marks around the trunks. I recalled that the mountains to the west of me were part of “Burn Ridge.” Yeah, there had been a burn here all right. Black skeletons of immolated pines creaked in the breeze.
The forecast called for high winds that night, leaving me none too comfortable with the idea of what thousands of pounds of falling tree trunk could do to a potential campsite. The thing was, I couldn’t find a single place outside the radius of one nasty widowmaker or another.
The sun was only a couple of degrees above the western wall. When it dropped, so would the temperature in the canyon, making camp construction that much more uncomfortable.
A time to build
The place where I threw my pack down was far from perfect as far as campsites go. There were still a couple of worrisome trees closer than what I liked. I positioned myself behind a massive burned trunk for protection.
The creek where I planned to get water was well buried in snow, requiring me to dig a five-foot hole before I could fill my cook pan with murky liquid.
Completed snow trench shelter with snow piled on the roof
O.K., there was one life-need taken care of. Now I needed a structure to protect me from the elements.
The several feet of snow beneath my feet made for a cheap and readily available construction material. Using a snow shovel, I was able to work my way though snow crust into the compact snow, piling the rubble up onto walls on either side of the pit. I ended up with a trench that was long enough to lie down in, and about four-feet deep. Looking up was like peering out of a fresh-dug grave.
Ideally, I’d be able to use the snow to build a roof above the trench, but this was not to be. Though the snow was compact and chunky, I found that it wasn’t quite consolidated enough to dig out decent-sized snow blocks (or the more frequent, irregular snow boogers.) I did have a reflective tarp that I could use instead.
I wanted support beams for this, so it was time to do some woodwork. Fortunately, I’d packed a miniature “chainsaw” — non-motorized, unless you count the operator. There’s a toothed chain with two nylon handles that I can work around a trunk or branch like a garrote, running it back and forth to make a cut. Almost as fast as a bow saw, it made quick work of a blackened tree post, that I cut into sections. The effort helped get me warm too.
I set two long logs in an X above my snow trench, then added reinforcing girders from lighter branches. I plunged two heavy log posts into the snow at either end of the trench so that I’d have a sturdy place to hitch the tarp.*
At first, I set the tarp lengthwise, but it didn’t look long enough. I realized that I wanted to set the tarp on a diagonal with the trench so that I could have the most coverage from head to toe. I also used pine boughs and snow boogers to expand my roof slightly.
A few remaining holes kept me busy trying to secure things. Then, I remembered a trick from a book on backcountry ski camping, and dug a mini snow-cave at the end of the trench. It was just enough room for my feet and knees, but it meant that I now had plenty of room for my head to fit beneath the tarp. If I’d thought of that earlier, it would have saved time and hassle.
I set my pad and sleeping bag inside, laying them over some fresh fir boughs. The wind didn’t blow inside my trench. It was plenty comfortable, even cozy, down there.
I’d just used the elements to MacGyver myself a shelter. It gave me more pride than any tent I’d pitched.
But now it was getting dim and I had to gather more firewood, because I’d used most of the sticks I’d gathered to build the roof above the snow trench.
I dug out a kitchen area near the entrance, set three stout logs down in the snow so I had a platform to build a fire. Though the wind was blowing above me, the pit protected me from most of it.
I arranged strips of dead pine bough above a cotton ball coated in Vaseline, used a flint and steel striker to start the fire.
The warmth was welcome; the choking smoke was not.
Soon, I had a hearty blaze that I used to cook a meal of pasta and red lentils. I dried my socks on sticks near the flames. I had to shift the pot several times so it wouldn’t collapse into the fire (note that it is much easier to do these things with a pot you can hang) and got rewarded with choking draughts of smoke into my lungs. By the time I slurped down the last of the lentils, my eyes were watering, my throat was raw and I had a dull headache.
According to my watch, it had taken about four hours from when I settled on my campsite to the time that I spooned the last dinner morsel into my mouth. Time to go to bed. I felt cold dots land on my forehead. The first snowflakes were whirling down from the dark sky.
Setting the burner on high
Reluctant awakenings
The sleep was good, warm and dry. I woke up late to the sound of a mean wind roaring through the canyon. It was a world I was uninterested in joining. Too bad my bladder had other plans. I struggled out of my sleeping bag and trudged a couple feet outside my shelter in whirling snowflakes to take my morning pee.
Back within the shelter, I weighed my options. Though I had thought about climbing the mountain, the wind and flakes would make for unpleasant going, not to mention the fact that a whiteout could throw off navigation. Having spent one night in the canyon, I felt that I could call the trip a semi-success before heading home.
I made my breakfast on my camp stove inside. This was a wonderful luxury, considering I wouldn’t have risked using a stove inside a flammable nylon tent and that would have meant I’d have had to cook in the blowing snow.
View from inside the shelter
The shelter had kept most of the heavy snowfall out, but I was glad that I had put my sleeping bag into a lightweight bivy sack to keep it dry. The outside of the bag was damp, but I’d had that on tenting trips too. and it was probably moisture from my own body.
Packing up was slow trying to corral various loose items within the cramped space. Pulling away the roof was the hardest part, because after that, I had no shelter to crawl back inside.
Must go up
Backpack fully loaded, I was ready to start the return journey. Of course, the snow chose that exact moment to relent so that I could feel like a total wimp. Because of this, I started skiing up-canyon instead of back. What the hell? Maybe I could go for an hour or so before turning back, just to look around.
Within five minutes, I came to the place where I should have camped. Live pine trees made a good wind break; a gap in the snow above the creek revealed clear running water.
There was no easy way down to the current without the risk of falling in, so I tied a bottle on a string and lowered it into the current off the end of a ski pole as if fishing for water.
Easier than fishing catfish I suppose
I put skins on the skis and started again. Soon the storm was back at full bore. The howling wind made me nervous about falling trees. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting to see a tree trunk flying down at me like a death angel.
Moving was slow and harder work then it had been skimming above the crust a day earlier. But the fresh snow was good news too, because it meant that there would be ample powder to carve on the decent.
The climb steepened, forcing me to make several switchbacks. Looking into the wind was coldest, but I preferred it to having the wind at my back, where I wouldn’t be able to see which way a falling tree was coming.
The western sky was a dark mass of snow and menace. I watched the darkness grow, felt the wind rise. Soon sharp flakes whipped all around and the world went over to fading grades of white. Maybe the top of that ridge was the place to turn around, I thought. By the time I got there, the snow had let up somewhat, though I could see another blast bearing down from the west.
Well exposed
There was another ridge higher up, and I decided that since I had come this far, I might as well go to the next one.
I skied toward an overlook above a 1,000-foot bowl. A lonely pillar of burnt pine gave me a place to put my back to the wind and chew a chocolate bar in relative shelter. Wind and flakes flew past me and over the gulf. The sharp columns and rock flutings of Big Agnes and the Zirkels stood jagged, half-visible on the other side. Snow streamers blew off the ridges like chimney smoke, leaving white imprints against the dark sky.
The storm showed a side of the mountains’ nature that’s harder to grasp on those perfect sunny days. The high peaks defied the winds ravaging their slopes, but also fed them, glorying in the chaos. It was a violent ritual, but nonetheless, necessary to affirm what the mountains were.
My stubborn ascent, the night in the snow trench, were another kind of affirmation ritual. I needed to prove that I was tough for evidence against the times when I was not tough. I needed to show that there was a place for me in these mountains, even when my instincts sought the routine and comforts of home life. Now, I saw that the blasted mountain range across the gulf, with its tough, unfeeling rock columns, was far more confident in its position than I could be.
Zirkels in the wind
I had sought exposure in nature as a means to enlighten myself. Now, the mountain ridge looked very exposed indeed. The light was treacherous.
More than once, I wandered into a snowbank, because I couldn’t distinguish it from the rest of the white snow. The mountains, practically lost in the white of whirling flakes, looked just like what happens when I set my camera’s shutter speed too slow. It was getting harder to tell things apart and set a course.
This overexposed world required a smaller aperture. I needed to close up, narrow my focus to the foreground elements and put one ski in front of the other.
I skied out from behind the tree trunk, intending to turn around. Instead, I found myself skiing along the ridge, then continuing up toward the unseen summit. Switchback after switchback, I climbed furiously.
2 p.m. was my hard turn around time. Get to the top of this damn thing, I thought. It would remain to be seen if there would be time to ski back home before evening. It was possible I might just hole up in a forest service outhouse for the night.
Finally, I topped out on a broad ridge, where I would have to go down before I went back up again. The dark bulk of The Dome rose out of the veils of snow. Forbidding rock faces frowned down at the land below. Even if there were time, it didn’t look like anything I wanted to try without technical equipment and more experience.
I had, however, climbed the topo lines to the unnamed black dot on the map that I had set out for. The whole trip had built up toward a couple of brief blasted visions of distant peaks. I could weigh whether I’d learned anything later. It was time to go back.
I peeled the skins off the ski bottoms and pointed the boards downhill.
The fresh snow was great for skiing. I weaved through the burned trees with a series of juicy telemark turns, covering distances that had taken me 20 minutes worth of climbing in two minutes. The wind had mostly obliterated my old tracks, so I navigated by going downhill and to the northwest, checking my compass periodically. The snow kicked up and washed out my view of mountains or any other landmarks I could have used to navigate.
At one ridge, I found myself looking down a gulf to my right and to my left, unsure which was the one I’d come up from because I didn’t know where I was standing.
By dumb luck, I saw a ghost imprint of my old tracks going toward the western valley and went that way.
I switched from bold telemark turns to slower, zigging kick turns as the terrain steepened. Wind had shaped the powder into unpredictable formations. One moment I’d be crawling through shin-deep snow, the next, I could be rocketing over bare crust. It was impossible to know what the snow ahead was like until I was already skiing over it.
As I went deeper into the canyon, the wind started to relent.
I noticed a familiar clearing, then saw the place where I had refilled my water bottles in the stream when I’d set out that morning.
I filled them once more. There were hours of skiing left before I got back home over tricky terrain and uneven snowmobile trails. It was a relief to know where I stood.
A near whiteout on the high ridge
*(Footnote regarding shelter construction)
I probably reinforced the tarp more than I needed to. Because I left it flat, that meant that I needed to bring more lumber than if I had built a pitched roof, which could have shed snow weight via gravity. One downside to the alternative method was that it would require me to settle for a smaller roof. The fact that I weighted the tarp made it less susceptible to the vagaries of wind.
“To hell with it,” I announced, clicking out of my ski bindings so that I could kick up the icy slope in boots.
I had just started the trip, but was already fed up with the skis chittering every which way and the strain of setting the edges into snow crust so that they didn’t slip. The time and energy it took to fight the crust was taking away from the effort I’d need to spend in the miles ahead. So why not try to turn that crust to my advantage by just walking up it?
As soon as I put my boots on the snow, I found that I could get uphill easily. The crust held me above the snow as I beat a straight line up the ridge, skis cradled in my arms.
It’s a good thing I’m not a purist about staying in the bindings. Taking on the hill this way was much faster — even faster than when I was skiing with climbing skins.
The changing nature of the snow beneath my feet was a key player in deciding whether my all-day trip from doorstep (7,800 feet) to the top of Farwell Mountain (10,800 feet and about five miles of skiing distant) would be success or failure. Now that we were getting warm weather, the south slopes of the mountains were getting mushy beneath the afternoon sun, only to become tilted ice rinks at night when the cold temperatures refroze the snow. With the new day, the sun would work its magic again, and much like a tub of ice cream left outside the freezer, the crust would soften up, sometimes to the point of gloppification, whereupon it would stick to the ski bottoms.
Within this cycle was a theoretical sweet spot, a time when the snow would have perfect softness for skiing down, not too hard, not sticky mush. I hoped the time would be right when I started back down the mountain and that the snow would yield to the ski edges like ice cream to a spoon. If the window opened for a few hours in the afternoon, I’d have one chance to carve through softened snow without accelerating to terrifying speeds. The window would start to close even before the sun set. Once the sun was low enough in the sky, it would lose the power to hold back the cold below, and the cold would turn the surface back to ice.
Ski boots can walk too
The icy snow was very hard to carve in the morning
I gave myself a hard turn-around time: 2 p.m. If I didn’t start heading back by then, I figured, I would likely end up skiing on ice slopes.
I chastised myself for taking a 7:30 breakfast and not hitting the trail until 8. Probably, I wasn’t going to make it. The last time I’d tried a day trip to Farwell, I had started half an hour earlier and had been somewhere on the summit ridge when 2 p.m. rolled around, but it wasn’t the top.
Of course, white-out conditions had complicated navigation on that trip. The falling powder also made me slower going uphill, but it had also given me fairly good control going back down.
Now I puffed to the top of the ridge where I promptly fell through the crust to my knees.
I tried jogging a couple more steps and fell through a couple more times.
OK, time to put skis back on.
I skimmed up a more mild incline, along the rim of the col where I had my igloo, still standing nearly two months after I finished building it. The summit of Big Agnes glimmered in the far distance. Until we meet again, my friend.
Picture on summit ridge from my previous trip to Farwell
A heavy windstorm earlier in the month had knocked down several of the beetle-killed lodgepole pines, creating new obstacles for me to navigate. Detouring past one of these deadfalls took me down a wimpy slope that was still so icy that I almost fell face first. At a second ridge, I decided to try climbing in my boots again. Sure enough, the slope was rock-solid and easy to climb without post-holing. The extra-tilt had probably made the difference, since it meant that the winter sun would hit the snow at a right angle, creating more melt followed by more ice.
When I got to the top of this ridge, I put the skis back on and started going hard, following the ghost of my old tracks for a while, then cutting further west to try a new (I hoped) more gradual climb up the mountain.
I left my climbing skins on as I followed the ridge, to a third uphill section. This time, I climbed the hill in my skis. I could already feel the snow softening. It was getting warm out. When I got to a flat section, I went ahead and peeled off the skins along with a light jacket I’d been wearing.
Nordic rhythm
Fox tracks and ski
The backcountry Nordic skis on my feet were light and narrow enough so that I could maintain a decent stride and glide to eat up distance quickly. While not as light and delicate as track skis meant exclusively for groomed trail. These are not the skis most people would use on a mountain like Farwell. I knew good and well that if I would be hard-pressed to make them turn if I took them down an aggressive pitch.
Moreover, their free-heel bindings, connecting them to the boot via a single metal bar, are far more fragile than the clunky Tranformer-esque downhill ski boots and bindings designed to carve the gnar. The soft boots would not withstand the kind of torsion forces that a recreational downhill skier would put in on a lift-operated hill. There was higher risk of broken ski or broken skier.
With that in mind, a typical backcountry skier going out in short, heavy boards and monstro boots would have eaten my snow dust trying to catch me on the flats.
Daring downhill descents may get more GoPro coverage, but there is an equally worthy, if more subtle challenge for those who want to cover ground in cross country skis with efficiency and body awareness.
I concentrated on kicking hard off the back ski, letting it float into the air behind me, then bringing it back down to the snow tip to tail.The goal was to balance on one moving ski at a time— maximum thrust, minimum friction, minimum superfluous body movement. If I did well, my reward was a steady whooosh-click with poles and skis. I changed the rhythm to match the terrain, but there was always rhythm. If I got off kilter for a moment, or lost concentration, I felt my speed suffer and the rhythm disappear. It was jarring, like playing music off a scratched disk.
Aspens and sky on Farwell’s south slope
I hit pause as I came out of the trees to look at the mountain in my path. Farwell rose to the north, a 2,000-foot wall of snow, trees and rock. A massive bowl, ripe with avalanche potential lay dead center. On my earlier trip, I’d skinned up the trees on the east side of the bowl until the going had gotten steep enough for me to switch to snowshoes for the final push to the summit ridge. Here, I’d met fierce winds and whipping snow. Half an hour of snow globe climbing brought me to a rock outcrop, where I couldn’t see anything higher than I was (though I couldn’t really see more than 200 yards at this point.) I decided that though this probably wasn’t the summit, it was a great place to turn around.
Now, looking at the mountain again, I was convinced that my original plan, to go to the west of the bowl was the best way. This route would take me up through a steep aspen forest and to a ridge where I could (hopefully) skin up to the summit and then ski back down the same way. It was longer than my failed route, but I figured that I could make better time if I stayed in my skis. I didn’t even bring snowshoes this time.
Before I started climbing, I had to ski downhill into a basin. The slope here was north-facing, so it had powder instead of crust, but it was still fast snow.
I carved out a couple of telemark turns through a grove of pine saplings, and then realized that I was heading for a sunken log at high speed. I sailed over, picking up air, before landing in a lunge in a small drainage gully.
I pumped my fist in the air.
“Whooo! That’s what I’m talking about!” I shouted to the trees and squirrels.
Who knew if I would make the top today? I was glad I’d come out.
Skinning Farwell
Author taking a quick break to record what he looks like in new shades
Back on crusty snow in the drainage, I resumed skiing up a slight incline, following some fox tracks. The sky was deep blue, cut with pearl-white aspen boughs. A deep ravine loomed up in my path. Instead of losing elevation by going down it, I stayed patient and followed it uphill to the east until it receded into the mountain. I took a break to eat and drink, then put skins on my skis. I’d brought two pairs for the occasion so that I could cover almost the entire ski bottoms with the strips of synthetic hair. The hairs lie at an angle so that the ski slides going uphill, but resist sliding backward. This friction, would allow me to power up steep pitches that would have been impossible otherwise.
Even with skins, the climb would take a lot from me. I began making switchbacks that required wobbly kick turns with the skis. Soon my heart was pounding and a sweat zone was spreading between my pack and spine.
How easy to forget — even when there is a direct way up, even when there are no boulders to scale or avalanche zones to bisect — climbing the side of a mountain is hard.
Switchback after switchback, I watched the land drop away, revealing the Pearl Lake Reservoir, Hole In The Wall Canyon and the Colton Creek drainage. The tooth of Hahns Peak rose to the west. It had been too long since I’d climbed a real mountain. It is a fine way to take a new view of the world. Part of climbing’s thrill, is that it gives you the opportunity to imagine that you have transcended the paltry concerns of the world below. This isn’t true, but the perspective is refreshing and leaves the door open for other subversive thoughts. When I look out from high, it reminds me what a vast space we live in, and how much life and possibility exist to fill it.
Alpine scenery like this will keep me climbing mountains
The view up the mountain was less encouraging. The ridge I was aiming for seemed to get further back the more I climbed. I bargained with myself that it might be easier to take a more middle path up the mountain, closer to the bowl, even though this might mean steeper terrain, possibly greater avalanche risk (though unlikely in the old, compacted snow.)
The aspens thinned as I climbed, then gave way to dispersed evergreen groves. I noticed long stretches running down the slope, where nothing grew. That was where the avalanches had been, I thought, where they could happen again. A slip there on the hard-pan snow could mean a long, ugly fall. I did my best to avoid these places.
As in my earlier hike up Big Agnes, I stayed in trees as much as possible, or lined myself up beneath boulders as I climbed. Still, there were moments where I would ski out above one of these big empty corridors, anxiety welling in my gut, before I got back into the cover of some pines.
I found one area of disturbed snow, that I thought for sure had been the site of a slide. I looked closer and realized that I was looking at snowmobile tracks. The fact that noisy engines had barreled straight up the treeless pitch without triggering anything reassured me that the snow was stable, though I also wondered if the drivers had even considered the risk.
I got back into the cover of some pines, tackling trickier and tricker switchbacks with the skis. The snow up here had hardly softened a whit in the full sun, ski edges could barely scratch them.
Nearing the top of the ridge, I took the skis off again and started kicking up the slope.
A nice picnic spot that I found
Within a quarter mile, I was on the ridge, which was a quick ski away from the summit.
The exposure and the altitude gave the top of Farwell the grizzled alpine quality I love about mountain tops: gnarled trees, jagged boulders stripped bare by the elements. Hard winds had carved the snow into scale-like sastrugi, beautiful repeating shapes that were the music between the mountain and the wind — improvisational, yet rhythmic patterns riffing within some divine free jazz masterpiece.
Amidst this, stood an improbable wall of solar panels, antennae and a corrugated metal transmitter station, surrounded by snowmobile tracks. The panels, like the mountain face I had just climbed, were tilted at an extreme angle to maximize the sun’s input. Cell phone conversations and high definition television were no doubt passing through my body from the dish nearby. I wondered if there would be a place where I could eat lunch inside, or even grab a beer, but the lonely outpost offered no such accommodations.
View of mountains and snowmobile tracks on Farwell summit
Just as well. I skied over to a high ledge looking out over the valley I’d just climbed out of. The view was worth suffering a little wind. The stark plains of Wyoming lay to the north. I scanned east over the Zirkel Range, recognizing the snowfield that I’d taken (almost) to the top of Big Agnes. Was there any other way I could have climbed that mountain? None of the other routes I could see looked possible or free from serious avalanche risk and this made me feel a little better for not standing on the exact top of that mountain.
Going down slow, going down fast
This was the most badass line I carved on the trip. I was sliding down on my ass.
A more immediate concern was how I would get down off the mountain I was standing on now. It was about 12:45, well before my mandatory turnaround time. The hardpan snow that I had just climbed made me a little iffy about the ski down. If I went that way, I would take skis off and glissade (slide on my butt) over the steepest sections, then keep my skins on the skis so that I wouldn’t build up more momentum than I wanted.
If I took another tack, I could follow the summit ridge line east, and come down the way I’d gone on my last trip. If I could stay north of the ridge for a while, I would have a bit of powder to ski instead of hardpan. I scanned my surroundings for a while and double-checked my map, then decided that this was the way to go.
Leaving the skins on the skis for the descent felt awkward and jerky at times, but it did allow me to take on slopes that I wouldn’t have dared to try otherwise. Skiing in slo-mo, I cut bold lines down a small bowl, made a quick glissade down the steepest section, got back into my skis for a pretty fast set of turns through some trees.
The powder on the shadowed north face of the ridge was more enjoyable to ski than the ice snow and I felt good control in the skins. Unfortunately, the way back meant going south, and that meant I needed to take on the ice slopes at some point.
I followed the ridge through thick pine forest, then climbed back onto the south side where the aspens grew. Here, the snow had finally begun to soften. The pitch was still way too steep for me to ditch the skins in the skis that I had, so I contented myself with long traverses. In any case, I was making better time than I would if I were in snowshoes.
I swooped down to the top of a drainage and saw ghost tracks in the snow. A familiar-looking pine tree reminded me that this had been the exact spot where I had put my skis on when I’d been going down the mountain on my previous trip. This, I figured, was as good a place as any to ditch the skins and ski all out.
The crust was mostly melted now, which meant that I could carve, but I would still be moving above an icy layer, and moving fast — much faster than I had gone through the powder on the earlier trip.
I pointed the skis along the old tracks and started flying. Though I barely turned down the hill, it felt like I had rockets at the ends of my skis. I used the telemark position to absorb the shock of bumps, and to desperately turn into the hill to cut speed. I would come to a stop, adrenaline pumping, kick turn and fly down in the opposite direction.
I dropped into the drainage where the pitch began to get milder. I could see a couple of crisp turns in my old tracks and decided try and match them. Bad idea. I went ass over teakettle, landing hard. I felt a sharp pain in my hip and got up immediately before it could decide to be a serious injury. I was still miles from any help and it was a bad place to fuck up.
I started skiing again, more cautiously. I did get in a few turns I was proud of as the pitch mellowed. I also lost my balance a couple times. Finally, I spilled out at the base of a willow drainage at the base of the mountain.
There was a pine tree plantation to ski through, that afforded an impressive view of what I’d just climbed, the snow faces reflecting mid-afternoon sun.
I knew I hadn’t done anything too incredible in terms of skiing prowess, but the skis were a means to getting to the summit and getting back down. I was proud that I hadn’t felt the need to leave them on at all times. Nor was I ashamed that I had left the skins on the skis for the descent, because that had allowed me to use the light, narrow skis that minimized my approach time.
Now that I was heading back, I shed the downhill mentality and got back to thinking like a Nordic skier, searching for the rhythm that I needed to power over the flats. There would be the final set of ridges to come down before I got home and I wanted to get to them before the sun got low in the sky. I could feel the snow consolidate as the cold began to freeze the surface back to ice.
The window was closing. It looked like I’d make it through just in time.
Building shelter is one of those challenges that isn’t necessarily easy in the backcountry, but like starting a fire, gathering food or navigating off trail, it offers its own satisfaction.
We seek empty spaces as a way to commune with nature; what better communion than to sleep in a dwelling made from the elements of nature?
In the Routt Mountains in northern Colorado, the element I notice above all others is the several feet of snow on the ground, snow that an enterprising adventurer could stack, sculpt, or burrow into for warmth. The air trapped within creates insulating properties that my three-season tent doesn’t have. Plus, the snow is already there. I don’t have to haul it in on my back to make a home out of it — though a snow-shovel can be helpful.
So why have I bothered lugging my tent along when I go on a multi-day trip when I could build a better product out of snow? The fact that I can set the tent up in minutes rather than hours has something to do it. Then there is that fear that I could screw up at shelter building with no recourse except a night in the cold fury of the elements.
Therefore, when I decided to try my hand at igloo building, I chose to erect my first shelter up on a ridge, maybe a quarter mile away from the very solid, timber-built, central-heated structure where I actually sleep most nights. If I screwed up here, a warm bed would be just down the hill.
Champagne powder into snow boogers
Canoe paddle being used to quarry snow
I should make a note about what I’m talking about when I’m talking about igloo building.
When I tell locals that I’ve built an igloo in the woods, they will often ask if I have actually built a quinzee. In order to build this kind of structure, you build up a big mound of snow and dig it out. My dad and I built quinzees during some of Connecticut’s epic snow years.
To build an igloo, I planned to take blocks of snow and raise them up into a dome. Blocks of snow? This seemed impossible for this part of the Rockies where the snow has the consistency of baby powder.
Snow is a malleable medium, however.
I stumbled upon a eureka moment on my trip to Big Agnes in early January. While digging a pit for my tent, I could shovel snow out in large chunks if I went over it in snowshoes first and left some time for it to set up. The chunks weren’t blocks per say; they were more like irregular snow boogers. Still, I started thinking that these boogers might make a viable building material.
If I could build a shelter with this stuff, it would be a cheap alternative to an Icebox, which is an igloo making device that a Colorado company makes. I had pondered buying one of these so that I could leave my tent behind on trips. That said, many reviews I read online reported that it still took four hours or so for them to put the igloo together. Craig Connally, author of “The Mountaineering Handbook,” says it only took him two hours to build a decent structure. Connally, advises mountaineers to eschew four-season tents when there’s snow on the ground, and get an Icebox instead. He argues that there will not only be a weight savings, but also a time savings.
“Remember,” Connally writes. “…the people who spent the night in their tent will have the pleasure of digging out the frozen anchors, attempting to dry the frost and condensation in the tent, and packing the frosty tent away with a little extra weight to carry.”
This endorsement had me close to buying an Icebox, but then I started thinking that I might be able to build an Igloo without one if I compressed the powder with my snowshoes.
A week after I got down from Big Agnes, I went on a shorter trip up the ridge behind my living quarters. I scouted out a horseshoe-shaped ledge in the hillside where the snow was deep and the firs grew tall. This place would be in the shade most of the time, meaning colder nights, but also a longer lifespan for any structure that I built.
I started tromping circles in the fresh powder, pressing it down toward the earth. After I had compressed it to the max, I took my snowshoes off and started packing the snow in boots alone. I left to grab lunch, then came up a few hours later.
Working with the snow shovel, I dug out beachball-sized snow boogers and arranged them into a horseshoe about six feet in diameter. I kept building until the walls were about belly high. Then it was time to go in for dinner. I stomped out more powder so that there would be more building material for the time I came back.
Putting it together
View of ceiling under construction
I came back about a week later with my canoe paddle.
I’d just hauled the kayak to the top of the ridge and planned a to go for a fun-filled descent later on. In the meantime, I tried using the paddle to stab out snow blocks.
It turns out that the flat blade was able to extract a much better product than the curved head of the snow shovel. Most of the blocks were still irregular; a snow saw, the kind used by actual arctic natives, no doubt would have been the best tool for the job.
I compensated for my goofy building blocks by mortaring gaps with broken chunks of snow and loose powder. Snow is awesome to build with when you consider that you can squash different pieces together and make it one whole. It forgives plenty of mistakes.
The part that made me nervous was leaning the walls together. I had visions of myself cursing over the collapsed walls. Due to my reluctance to lean the blocks, the igloo was becoming more cone-shaped than dome. My early plan had been to leave one gap in the walls so that I could walk inside in order to lean the top blocks together to create the ceiling — but this wasn’t working. The gap made the whole structure unstable. I had to close the ring, and dig my way in later so I could put the top pieces on.
Digging my way in
When the walls got above shoulder height, I started scooping snow around the base, creating a step ladder from the powder so I could put the top blocks in. This fresh snow (I hoped) would also reinforce the walls for the big hole I was about to cut in the side.
I planned to dig under the walls as much as possible to avoid compromising the structure. There was maybe three feet of snow between the bottom block and the dirt. I started my burrow a couple feet away in the already-packed snow, making a mini-quinzee for the igloo foyer.
It took me about half an hour to stab my way through and excavate the rubble. I crawled through the tunnel to the cold blue sanctuary within. There was a manhole-sized gap in the ceiling — the last part of the job. I dug some boogers out of the hardpack beneath my feet and then I was closed in.
There was just enough room to stand, and I could lay flat with my feet jutting out into the entrance tunnel with room for a guest (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.)
The insulated walls created a stillness. It was calming to sit in the soft blue light coming in through the cracks between the slabs. It is that same calmness that follows a face-plant skiing. For one cold moment, you look down into that cold, still world beneath the snow, a place which is devoid of the noise and motion outside.
“I could stay here, a while” you think.
I spent some time filling in cracks with snow mortar. Then I went outside and broke a mess of branches off from a nearby fir tree. The flat needles made a perfect floor for my new dwelling.
I decided to leave the structure up one night to make sure it wouldn’t fall down for no good reason. Assuming this wouldn’t happen, I planned to spend the next night in my very own snow booger hotel.
Sleepover
The cozy finished product.
Pale moonlight filtered through the snow clouds as I tromped my way along the pathway up the ridge. Cold flakes melted on my brow as I climbed. A hush on the land. No wind.
From the top, the far flung points of orange light from different houses in the valley looked like ships on a dark sea. A leather slap beat of cowboy boots on hardwood echoed from a barn dance below, but I was in no mood to fumble through a botched set of promenades and dos-i-dos.
The noise faded as I retreated through the pines — the dark deep realm that seduced Robert Frost one snowy evening.
My igloo entrance beckoned out of the from gray snow. I got on hands and knees to crawl through to the womb I’d built for myself.
The scent of the fir boughs lent their crisp scent to the still air. Within minutes, my body warmth boosted the temperature inside my dwelling. I blocked the entrance with my backpack, zipped into the sleeping bag.
I kept the snow shovel close to my head just in case I needed to dig myself out of a collapse.
As my eyes adjusted in the dark, I could see the gray outlines of the blocks I’d built for myself. The ghostly, non-uniform shapes made good dream food.
I slept deep.
The next morning, I checked the water bottle I’d left next to the sleeping bag. No ice whatsoever, though the weather service had predicted the temperature would be 17 degrees that night. An inch of powder had fallen outside. I took a sled ride down the ridge and got to work on time.
Some notes on snow building
Snow boogers stuck together, as seen from within the shelter
I call it a snow booger hotel. Others might call it a rubble hut. I call it an igloo sometimes, but I know that I didn’t build it with the same craft as a true igloo. I guestimate that I spent about eight hours building the thing but I wasted time with a few mistakes that I wouldn’t repeat on a second go round.
Could I use something like this on a real trip and leave a tent behind? I’d be willing to try as long as I had a backup tarp, no bad weather was moving in and I got to camp by noonish.
One mistake I made in this project was that I spent way more time packing snow more than I needed to at first. I’ve found that tromping over the snow with snowshoes a few times with the snowshoes and waiting 10 minutes is a viable way to get snow chunks. I’ve also been able to dig up juicy chunks out of the half-melted snow near fire pits. Areas of wind-blown snow could also work (similar to what the arctic people would use to build) because wind will shatter snowflakes and create a denser medium. Snow that’s also been in the sun would also work. When I was camping at 10,000 feet the snow was deep enough that some of the bottom layers were naturally chunking up, but the base isn’t quite deep enough to get those benefits at my current elevation.
I dug some OK chunks out of a groomed snowmobile trail as an experiment. Building a snow shelter this way will make some snowmobilers unhappy, but in a survival situation…
I also built this snow shelter much larger than I needed to for strict survival purposes. If I did build something out on the trail, I would build a lower ceiling to save time and allow more room for warmth to accumulate. The shelter did sag a bit after a couple days, probably because my dome was sloppy, but I reinforced it with more snow and it seems OK so far.
Digging under the wall as opposed to leaving a gap in it throughout the building process worked well for my purposes.
I’d like to try using my stove or a candle inside to see just how well that works to warm the whole structure. Another challenge would be to see how well I could compress the snow for block making if I were using skis instead of snowshoes.
As for whether I will buy an Icebox, there is no question, that the product makes a better looking product, and I could probably build an igloo faster if I had one. I’m going to save my money though.
Considering how much snow is lying around northern Colorado, it might be fastest just to build a snow cave or a quinzee in order to make a shelter in a pinch. I’d like to try both before the winter is out. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The kayak barely moved at first. I had to wriggle back and forth to inch it forward on the snow ledge I’d created. I saw the chunks of crust break away as gravity grabbed hold of the bow. Then the boat tilted over and we started tearing down the gully.
White powder sprayed up into my face. I could barely see what was happening, only that I was moving very fast. My efforts to steer with the paddle hardly mattered; down was the only direction my boat was interested in going — and it was going that way faster and faster. I squinted ahead to the fast approaching tree stand, wondering how the hell I was going to thread my way through.
Something bumped beneath my hull. The world instantly flipped upside-down and went white. My head was buried in the snow.
The ride was over.
I flipped myself right-side up, observed that my boat was almost completely buried in powder and that my paddle had flung out several yards down slope from me. To retrieve it, I had to take my sprayskirt off and wade through waist-deep snow. I’d need that paddle to get the rest of the way down the hill.
In the traditional model, I would wait to go kayaking until the snowmelt.
The powder on the mountains here in Routt County will begin feeding the rivers in a couple of months. Rivulets beneath the crust will merge, feed into drainage gullies, streams and willow fens, down to the Elk River in the Colorado River system. From the Yampa, to the Green River and eventually the Grand Canyon, the melting white stuff will build standing waves and hydraulics for whitewater kayaks and rafts to play in.
But just because the snow hasn’t melted, doesn’t mean that I can’t kayak over it. All it takes is a steep enough hill and a lot of powder.
Climbing with a paddle
Kayak tow system for winter
Getting a kayak to that steep hill is the first challenge. My system involves snowshoes, a backpack, carabiner, rope, and a canoe paddle. I set the ascender bars on the snowshoes and start wallowing up the deep powder with the rope tied to the bow, clipped to the carabiner on my backpack. The first run is always the hardest because I’m breaking trail and pulling my kayak uphill through powder. I lean forward like some hobbled supplicant, praying that the kayak won’t yank me off my feet.
In some ways, the canoe paddle in my hands works even better than the hiking poles I typically use with snowshoes. Paddling the powder on flat sections gives me a decent momentum boost from my upper body. The paddle also balances me. I can brace the flat of the blade against the snow, much as I would use a high brace to prevent a kayak from capsizing in waves. When the going gets steeper, I use the paddle more like an ice axe, sinking it deep into the snow above me and using it to pull myself up.
I often fall when the snow gives out from under me or my snowshoes lose their grip. Here, I can get back on my feet, pushing off the flat of the snow, like I’m doing an Eskimo roll.
The paddle can even dig out steps for me when I get to the steepest sections of the slope.
Going up the hill this way is one of the most physically grueling workouts I’ve ever done — a full body punishment system. My heart pounds like an express train when I finally get to the top of the ridge, maybe 150 feet above my start point. It’s a lot quicker on the way down.
Set up
Kayak, pack and paddle
The climb was over. Finally.
I wiped sweat out of my eyes and surveyed the run. It was a south slope and the sun had just come out. Hence, a delicate crust was already forming on the powder.
I pulled my sprayskirt out from my jacket where I had stashed it in an attempt to keep it warm and stretchy.
There is something reassuring about this sprayskirt, a solid piece of neoprene that has stood up against the fury of waves and rivers. This pricey, “serious” piece of gear, helped me feel that, yes, I did know what I was doing up here, looking down a 35-degree snow slope through an aspen glen.
I used the paddle to dig out a notch in the slope where I could set the kayak down.
Getting the sprayskirt attached around the cockpit was a chore in the cold, even after I’d stashed it in my jacket to keep warm. The skirt wasn’t strictly necessary to go down the hill, but I did like how it kept the powder out of my lap. And I had that psychic comfort of knowing I was using a piece of gear that had served me well on past trips.
It did feel a little weird being in a kayak without a life vest however.
The backpack on my shoulders was another thing that was a little different from my standard kayak trip. I’d already given up trying to tie my snowshoes to the kayak for the way down. It was easier to put them into the nylon loops at the sides of my pack and fasten them together with a cam strap.
I put a ski helmet on and sunglasses. I wrapped a mesh t-shirt around my head like a burka to deflect all the powder that was about to come flying up at my face.
I looked at the canoe paddle, a cheap wood thing I’d bought in Minnesota. Having already busted up a couple kayak paddles last year, I decided that I wasn’t ready to invest in quality piece of equipment only to smash it in while jackassing in the snow.
Making it work
The mantra for this run was “Lean that mother!”
Just as I had leaned kayaks on edge to turn them in whitewater or waves, I planned to use the same principles to make the boat work on the snow. Adrenaline had helped me forget this principle on my earlier runs and I had tried turning by using the paddle alone. It wasn’t enough.
With that in mind, I planned to lean far enough to put my whole body against the snow if need be.
I pushed off and the kayak began grinding downhill at a slow crawl. I leaned the boat way to the left and dug the paddle in on that side. Sure enough, the boat began to turn that way. The sound of crust breaking beneath the bow accelerated at a slow grind to a faster swoosh. Snow began flying up into my face. Now, I was moving at a skier’s speed. I leaned right toward a gap in the scrub oak and the boat responded in a neat arc.
I was carving!
The boat responded to the powder exactly the way it was designed to turn on the river, the same way a skier would cut graceful curves into the alpine slope. I’d stumbled into a unified theory between snow and water.
I shot through the gap in the shrub and the powder started flying up in my face. The view throuh my sunglasses became dim, then obscure. Then I could see only see white. My hands clutched the paddle, unwilling to let go. The best I could do, while flying blind was to lean hard and hope to avoid hitting anything.
After a couple seconds the kayak stopped. I took the sunglasses off and saw that the lean had dug the kayak deep into the snow and basically thrown on the braking power that I’d needed — that along with the fact that I’d steered into some shrubs.
I put the sunglasses in a pocket and analyzed the route down the hill. I pushed off again and carved the rest of the way to where I’d started.
Buried kayak after a flip in snow
Can snow kayaking be the next hot sport?
Some witnesses have seen me going up and down the hill with my kayak and asked where I got the crazy idea.
No, I wasn’t the first person to think of it. There are some very entertaining online videos of others who have gone before me.
Nonetheless, this is hardly a popular sport yet. I’m enjoying something out which doesn’t necessarily have a large body of knowledge surrounding it and gives me the challenge of finding some things out on my own. Nor does snow kayaking (yet) have specialty products designed specifically for the job.
Note: If I were designing a kayak specifically for going down snow slopes, I would probably build metal edges into the sides for better carving. But that would subtract from the fun of doing something goofy in inadequate gear.
Snow kayaking is also a learning opportunity for boat technique
Many similarities between boating and snow sports became apparent after I started launching my down the hill.
Leaning for instance. I plan to steer with same aggressive edge that I used to carve the snow the next time I kayak in whitewater.
On the flip side, now that I have tried using a canoe paddle with snowshoes, I’m considering ditching poles on my next snowshoe trip with steep hills. Being able to brace against the powder without plunging deep into it (as with poles) is a huge advantage while climbing. So is being able to carve steps quickly.
The paddle also proved instrumental an igloo building project that I will describe in a future post.
Kayak vs. Skis
When the fresh snow falls on the hills and I have to decide whether I’d rather strap boards to my feet or go rambling in my yak, there are considerations to weigh:
Kayaks are slower to move uphill
When it comes to kayaking down a hill vs skiing, the former is obviously far more laborious to haul up to the top, at least if ski lifts aren’t a part of the equation. This is however, a killer workout that I’d would recommend to anyone who wants to get in shape for mountain climbing or trail running.
Kayak gear is tougher to work with in winter
Other changes that I had to make to kayak the snow vs. on water included moving the foot pedals way back so that I could fit inside the boat it wearing winter boots. A sprayskirt is nice for keeping the snow out, but getting it on and off in the cold is a bear.
Because snow kayaking only puts my head a couple feet above the slope, even more powder flies up in my face than what I’d encounter skiing. I’d probably do well to invest in some ski goggles before snow kayaking full time.
Kayaks are more forgiving when they hit stuff, but will hit more stuff
One advantage of the low body position is that I can’t get knocked off my feet like I can skiing, though a flip is definitely possible.
If I hit a tree in a kayak, it will go better than if I hit a tree on skis because I’ll have a bunch of plastic protecting me. The fact that the kayak doesn’t steer as well as skis means that collisions are harder to avoid.
Kayaks excel when terrain is deep and steep
The kayak’s extra volume means that it floats very well on snow. I got some decent runs on a powder day when some of my friends snowboarding friends could barely move. They ended up using the kayak tracks to pick up speed.
On groomed trails, snowboards or skis are definitely faster and more exciting than a kayak run. If I put glide wax on the bottom of my boat, it may change the equation.
Without deep powder, steering is possible, but sketchier. I took a run down a south slope that had crusted over and found myself going down the hill backwards with next to no control.
So far, deep powder and steep slopes have equaled the most fun for me, including one run where I went down slope in a chest-deep mass of churning snow.
While deep and steep snow has made for the best kayak runs for me, that stuff is also the hardest to drag a kayak through.
What I’d like to try next:
At some point I’d like to graduate to a double-bladed kayak paddle, though I doubt I’ll find anything cheap enough that I’d be willing to sacrifice anytime soon.
I’d also like to try setting a luge track in the hill and build banked turns with a shovel. It’d be fun to get up some speed without having to worry about steering so much.
I’m both excited and terrified to see what happens when I finally melt some glide wax onto the bottom of the kayak. I have a feeling that it will be a wild ride.
