mistermocha

I just got back from a long trek in the woods, and have been waiting for the moment to share my stories with everyone. Now, that I have the captive audience of the Internet, here goes...

Friday 4pm: The journey begins
After a morning of work and an afternoon of whirlwind delays and packing, we finally make it to the trailhead. It's just myself and my good friend, K. We're loaded fully for the weekend entirely in our packs. We park the car, notify the ranger at Devil's Puncbowl National Park that we'll be back on Sunday, late in the day. Then the hiking begins.

The trail started with a good incline, then it leveled off and meandered through some woods. The map said we'd be by a dam, but it wasn't even there. Eh, no time to be upset at minor details. We lost the sun around 7pm, and had been slowly-but-steadily climbing since a bit before six. The moon rising over the Eastern horizon was gorgeous, and made the scenery look very different.

Exhaustion from a long hike for two out-of-shape twenty-something men made that last mile up the hill the longest. We worked up to the top of the hill by a quarter past nine, and the view was spectacular! Burkhart Saddle sits at 6959' elevation, overlooking a vast expanse of sparsely populated desert along the Pearblossom highway. The vegetation reminded me of home (South Lake Tahoe, 6250') with the creeping trefoils and jeffrey pines. We boiled & ate instant pad thai noodles and got to sleep within two hours.

Saturday 6am: The day began beautifully...
Morning came, and I had an opportunity to wake up before the sun. I brought my Minolta X-700 with two rolls of 400 speed film, and decided to burn some photos on the changing colors of the landscape. I took a nice photomosaic of the sunrise at the saddle. The colors of the desert with the mountain foreground made for a very interesting color clash. K didn't wake up 'till much later, and we didn't break trail until about 11. However before we left, we did have time to wash up, do some yoga stretching, and get a lay of the land ahead.

Lesson #1: Conserve Water when hiking in high elevations
We realized as we left camp that we had only about two liters between us (in comparison to the 11 liters combined we left the car with). It would be a very long hike to the river we intended to reach, and perhaps if we got out of there a couple hours earlier, we might have had better luck. Also if we had been more conservative with our water, things might have been better later as well... but I'll get to that.

Saturday Noon: Into the abyss
Burkhart Saddle is a low point between two high peaks: Will Thrall to the west, and Mount Pallet to the east

If my mapreading calculations were correct, we should be at the creek within about four to six hours. The hike was up and down, but the collective elevation was a big drop at the end. Which meant about 2-3 hours of strenuous ups and downs over the next three peaks, then 1-2 hours of rapid descent.

As we climbed from camp to Pallet, the thought kept crossing my mind that we didn't have enough water to carry us to the creek. Once we got to water, my Sweetwater Guardian pump-action microfilter would take care of save drinking water. K was convinced we could make it to the creek, and didn't want to take no for an answer. After a few minutes of kibbitzing, we agreed to make the top of Pallet, and then make a decision.

The view was spectacular!!! We could see all around us. We were on top of the friggin world! I took lots of pictures, including one mosaic to make K and I appear to be in the same panoramic shot (he took me, I took him, both lined up in the same spots... yadda yadda) We found a marker from the Sierra Club and signed the book. My new declared trail name is "Cookie", because I knew how to pack gourmet camping food (and indeed, we ate like kings every step of the way). I dubbed my companion as "Camel", because of his ability and determination to continue on with such a lack of water.

So, with this newfound inspiration, we busted out the maps and figured out the next paths. The guidebook said that we would be without trail for a spell, but it would be easy to locate.

Lesson #2: Double and triple check your calculations
I gauged off of a peak that looked like one along the Pleasant View Ridge, and roughly estimated the back azimuth from a familiar point to locate where we were on the map. The location was deceiving because I saw "the trail." It struck me that we didn't have to climb the first peak, we could go around the side of it and gain no elevation. Since there was a trail for us to connect with, it would be cake to trim a switchback over a 600' climb.

Lesson #3: Never lose your trail
We set off on the trail, and cut to the right. All we had to do was cross this creek bed and we'd be linked with that other branch of the trail. Turned out that the "trail" was really the footprints of a bighorn ram. It appeared to be heading in the direction we were going, so we plodded on. Water slowly fading, Sun slowly creeping westward, and my spider-sense telling me we were going too southward to be right on, I stopped when we got near the saddle I was aiming us towards. After some calculations, I realized that I was aiming us for the wrong saddle.

Well, as Douglas Adams would tell us, "Don't Panic." Once we realized where we were, we figured if we headed straight uphill, we'd get back to the trail. Cake, right?

Saturday 3pm: On becoming a raisin
We had been pushing towards the ridge for nigh on half an hour, and I was running out of steam. I was sipping very conservatively on my remaining droplets of water, and my legs were not willing to carry me a step further uphill. K kept calling for me to catch up to the next shady spot. I kept trying, but the distance between rest points for me kept getting shorter.

I knew I was dehydrated. My gung-ho partner wasn't so sure. He wanted to leave me behind to go find water at the creek and bring it back to me. I was not about to let us separate. That's the worst thing that two hikers alone in the sticks can do is separate. So, I laid and rested in the shade while he pulled his survival guide out and read off several symptoms of dehydration. I agreed to every one of the "Moderately Dehydrated" symptoms (tingling in fingers & toes, headache, nausea, inability to walk, and a couple others I can't recall). I wasn't "Severely dehydrated" yet, but moderate was enough for me. I had to make an executive call.

So I prayed. Thanks to lessons I have learned along the way, there is nothing wrong with asking for help from divine sources. I had already been praying for the strength just to make me go one more step, but now I was just praying for the solution. Then it came...

I broke out my map and located our position, and the direction we came from. The dry creek bed eventually led back to a trail, and it also drained into an actual creek! It was the opposite direction of where we were headed, but it was a shorter journey and except for one moderate mile of incline, it was all downhill from where we were. A quick turn North, and we would run into the creek bed. We could follow it to water or trail, whichever came first.

The creek bed was more difficult terrain than a typical trail because it was wild untamed land. Overgrown with willows, barred by fallen trees, and torn apart by erosion, we hopped rocks and logs all the way down. I felt better once I was moving downhill, and my spirits rose as I knew that water was coming soon.

The trail was unfriendlier as we continued. Greenery thickened, and so did the swarms of bugs. Our legs were slashed by thorns and branches. The terrain being so uneven was hard to walk along. And the further we got, the more we realized how dry the dry creek bed really was. K was getting frustrated because his pack was off balance, and he was starting to feel dehydrated himself. I kept trying to sing whatever songs I knew to try to pass the day a little more smoothly.

At about five, we found a puddle. The water was barely useful, as it was full of silt and leaves and riddled with insects. However, when in times of desperation, one has to consider survival. I pulled out my water filter and began to pump. Normally water from the Guardian comes out clear, but this came out with a green tinge that made me nervous. It didn't matter at this point, because it was water! Glorious delicious nectar of the nasty pools of the creek! We sipped back and were renewed. I only pushed a little over half a liter, because I knew it was killing my filter, and we needed that filter later on down the road.

Renewed, we pushed on and found the trail about twenty minutes later. The next two miles were probably the fastest (and quietest) two miles we hiked all weekend because we knew there would certainly be water at the end.

Saturday Evening: Victory Dance
We were just losing the sun, and the trail was descending faster. As we rounded the bend, that familiar sound came echoing up the canyon... it was the rushing of water!

We ran down the hill, stripped our packs and shoes, and engaged the icy cold clear bliss of the creek!! Before getting too zealous, I advised K that we should splash a little downstream from where we would tap our drinking water. But an extra ten footsteps to the next flowing pool was no problem for us at this point. We broke out the Guardian and the Nalgene bottle and started to lift up fresh, clean, filtered, mountain spring water. Never had I been so happy to enjoy a drink of water!!

It was getting dark, so we filled up the 1L nalgene and half of my 6L dromedary, then went back up the trail a bit to where we could camp away from the river. K pitched the tent while I roasted turkey sausages over the fire. We drank, ate, and drank some more. After the long day's adventures and grueling toil, we were so happy to simply be alive and have everything we needed right there.

Sunday Morning: Oatmeal
I truly earned the title "Cookie." Now that I had water, I could fix oatmeal for breakfast. I broke out my MSR Pocket Rocket camp stove, my boy scout mess kit, and went to work. When cooking with a backpacking stove like the Pocket Rocket, it helps to be conservative with your fuel, because you never know when it will run out. So, before cooking, I pre-soaked the oatmeal (i.e.: I put the water with the grain, but let it sit before applying heat). While it sat, I prepared the leftover turkey sausages for the campfire. I cleaned up a bit, cranked the stove, turned the sausage on the fork, and came back to stir the oats. Just as I finished pulling the first sausage off the fork and putting on the next, the oats were cooked. I began setting up the second pot and foraging for more food.

K was down at the creek, filling our dromedary bags and the Nalgene bottle with clean water. When he came up, I had already eaten my breakfast and handed him a fresh pot of oatmeal. He said "I wish I had some sugar for this..." then I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out a sachet of Raw Turbinado Sugar (courtesy of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf). I considered cooking some tea or coffee to go with this feast, but time was of the essence, and we had to get moving by 10.

Lesson #4: Know when to surrender
So by 11, as we are finishing up packing and breaking trail, we're thinking hey, we can follow the trail back to the car, and not have any problems going home! Certainly we're prepared now to stay another night if we so desired, but now we can make it out if we liked. I figured it would be about a nine-hour hike from where we were to the car. About fifteen minutes up the trail, my head started spinning. This happens to me occasionally, as I am a prone epileptic.

We sat down and recalculated where we were and where to go. It was about eight to nine hours back to the car, but it was only three-ish hours to the opposite highway and the nearest payphone. We made the executive decision to turn around and go the other way out. The scenery in this direction was stunning! I had a pocket full of sliced pork loin that I fried up before leaving camp, that made a great trail snack. More importantly, I had a dromedary full of fresh water.

There was a challenge in finding someone who would drive an hour and a half out here to come pick us up, but we got a ride from K's dad. All we needed was a lift back to my house, (1 1/2 hours) then I could give K a ride back to his car (another 1 1/2 hours, each way).

Sunday Evening: Victory Dinner
And nothing spells Victory Dinner like a double-double animal style from In-N-Out Burger with a large shake. After a weekend like that, we needed to eat like kings.