Madonna Tribute - Cast of Glee
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. FUUUUCK. WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING LAKE?"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I heard from behind me all the way across the one and a half mile marsh that turned into a three mile marsh that we hiked in the cold and the wet at 11pm, by moonlight. Did I mention cold and wet?
Yes, it was the annual summit trip, that turned into the annual hiking trip because nobody was able to summit. Before I even tell the stories, you may be asking why nobody was able to summit.
Well, there's an argument that we were wrong that this could be done in two days and that all along it should have been a three day trip (up to camp, summit and back to camp, off the mountain). I think that I think that it would have been possible to do it in two if you got an early start on the first day, though that climb down off the mountain on day two would SUCK. Either way, we ran out of time to try for the summit. Why did we run out of time?
Well, firstly, there were flight issues. Not for me, but I drove. I pulled into the hotel parking lot at 9:30pm. At that exact moment, my cell phone rings and it's PBM. We start talking, when it dawns on me. "Hey," I say, aren't you supposed to be in the air?" PBM is delayed in Denver. He should be in around 1:00am. Then I check my email. Frank is delayed in Chicago. He should be in around 1:00am.
PBM calls around 11:30pm again. I answer the phone, "Shouldn't you be in the air?" PBM's flight from Denver is canceled. He can't get to Salt Lake City to meet us until 8:30am the next morning, and that's going to be with little to no sleep. Awesome.
So, Frank gets to the hotel around 2:30am. PBM gets to the hotel around 9:00am the next day. We let PBM sleep for a couple of hours, and then there are still all the logistics of going to Wal-Mart for last minute supplies, driving to the mountain itself (several hours), stopping to see a moose (see below) and putting packs together.
So we don't actually hit the trail until ... wait for it ... 4:00pm in the afternoon.
I mean, we should have known.
The first day is an 8 or so mile hike to a lake. A lake where we will camp and then in the morning will pick up the trail to the summit. The idea, per usual, is to head for the summit around 2:00am, be back off the mountain (realistically) by one or two in the afternoon, and then off the mountain by early evening.
It almost looks possible. We're moving slow on the first stretch of the hike, but not super slow. There aren't thousands and thousand of breaks. But we started late, which means were hiking late. Like hiking as evening sets in, ie: it gets dark. So, we cross over this mythical footbridge, from which point it's supposed to be two miles to the mythical lake. The first thing that happens is that suddenly there's a lot more snow. We lose the trail. Okay, in fairness, Frank does not lose the trail, he stealthily guides us through. But if it had just been PBM and I, we would have been lost. So, the trail goes up an elevation gain, and then you come out onto a meadow that stretches for about a mile and a half. And on the other side of the meadow is the lake.
I should self-correct here. In the morning, when it is light but all of the snow has refrozen in the cold, cold night, it is a meadow. It's about a mile and a half across and you can walk it in 45 minutes and on the other side, to the left of the tree line is a lovely lake, and just beyond that lake is the summit climb.
This, however, is not what this is like at 11pm. I should note, that though it was cold, it would have been pleasant to hike across that meadow at 11pm if it were *dry*. The moon was up and almost full and bright and bouncing off the mountains and snow. The walk is flat. And yes, it was cold, but I was never too cold when we were moving and before my feet got wet. Oh, but my feet got wet because...
At 11pm when the sun has gone down but the snow has been melting all day, this walk was not so much a meadow as it was a marsh. And we had to march across the marsh. There was water everywhere. Big expanses of cold, muddy, water. In the freezing cold, so you wanted to avoid them. To avoid them, you had to keep crossing back and forth over stones and jumping over huge puddles. This meandering path turned a 1.5 mile walk into something much closer to two or three miles. Then there are the brambles. Since the path itself is now flooded with run off, you are walking on what would be the land surrounding the path, and that land is full of brambles.
It is cold. It is wet. You get wet which then makes you cold even if you are moving. You get muddy because, oh yes, it is very muddy. You get hit with brambles. You are tired because it is 11pm and you have been hiking for seven hours and you just want to get to camp and warm up and eat something. But you have no idea how much longer it's going to take you to get to the tree line on the other side of the meadow/marsh, and you're not even sure how much further the lake is from there. But you know that, if you turn around, you're hiking back for over an hour or so to the last campable ground you saw AND you're further away from the mountain, so you're not doing that.
I miss a rock and land in the water up to my calf, and my left foot slips in, too. So now I am hiking for however long we have to hike with wet pants, wet boots and wet socks. I lose a snow show in the brambles and don't even care because the idea of backtracking is so horrid (we found it on the way out the next day). I start to cry, OUT LOUD, and don't even care that the boys are hearing it. PBM steps in mud about a thousand times over, and that's when I start hearing the title of this blog entry from behind me over and over again.
We finally get to the other side and ...
... wait for it ...
we completely lose the trail. Can't find it. In the morning, we would realize that not only could we not find it, we were not even close to it. We were, quite literally, lost in a forest.
We give up, and pitch camp, not even bothering to get out the tents, even though they would have held body heat in for us. And it is cold. And at least two of us have gotten wet. Frank, apparently, walks with the hand of God guiding him around puddles.
In the morning, we finally find the trail, which isn't all that near to us, and the lake, but by that time, it's too late to make for the summit unless we don't want to be off the mountain until six the next morning, and that seems unsafe even beyond unsafe. So we agree to try for the summit another time, and head back down the mountain. Which is a bummer, but it's not like I personally didn't get my dose of "hard." And I got to spend time with Frank and PBM. And maybe next year I'll have a story for you where we actually make the summit, but not this year. This year, I have a story for you about PBM walking behind Frank and me through a marsh in the middle of the night and cursing to the high heavens.
That is all. It was an awesome weekend, even with the fubar parts.
See all the pictures here.
Yes, it was the annual summit trip, that turned into the annual hiking trip because nobody was able to summit. Before I even tell the stories, you may be asking why nobody was able to summit.
Well, there's an argument that we were wrong that this could be done in two days and that all along it should have been a three day trip (up to camp, summit and back to camp, off the mountain). I think that I think that it would have been possible to do it in two if you got an early start on the first day, though that climb down off the mountain on day two would SUCK. Either way, we ran out of time to try for the summit. Why did we run out of time?
Well, firstly, there were flight issues. Not for me, but I drove. I pulled into the hotel parking lot at 9:30pm. At that exact moment, my cell phone rings and it's PBM. We start talking, when it dawns on me. "Hey," I say, aren't you supposed to be in the air?" PBM is delayed in Denver. He should be in around 1:00am. Then I check my email. Frank is delayed in Chicago. He should be in around 1:00am.
PBM calls around 11:30pm again. I answer the phone, "Shouldn't you be in the air?" PBM's flight from Denver is canceled. He can't get to Salt Lake City to meet us until 8:30am the next morning, and that's going to be with little to no sleep. Awesome.
So, Frank gets to the hotel around 2:30am. PBM gets to the hotel around 9:00am the next day. We let PBM sleep for a couple of hours, and then there are still all the logistics of going to Wal-Mart for last minute supplies, driving to the mountain itself (several hours), stopping to see a moose (see below) and putting packs together.
So we don't actually hit the trail until ... wait for it ... 4:00pm in the afternoon.
I mean, we should have known.
The first day is an 8 or so mile hike to a lake. A lake where we will camp and then in the morning will pick up the trail to the summit. The idea, per usual, is to head for the summit around 2:00am, be back off the mountain (realistically) by one or two in the afternoon, and then off the mountain by early evening.
It almost looks possible. We're moving slow on the first stretch of the hike, but not super slow. There aren't thousands and thousand of breaks. But we started late, which means were hiking late. Like hiking as evening sets in, ie: it gets dark. So, we cross over this mythical footbridge, from which point it's supposed to be two miles to the mythical lake. The first thing that happens is that suddenly there's a lot more snow. We lose the trail. Okay, in fairness, Frank does not lose the trail, he stealthily guides us through. But if it had just been PBM and I, we would have been lost. So, the trail goes up an elevation gain, and then you come out onto a meadow that stretches for about a mile and a half. And on the other side of the meadow is the lake.
I should self-correct here. In the morning, when it is light but all of the snow has refrozen in the cold, cold night, it is a meadow. It's about a mile and a half across and you can walk it in 45 minutes and on the other side, to the left of the tree line is a lovely lake, and just beyond that lake is the summit climb.
This, however, is not what this is like at 11pm. I should note, that though it was cold, it would have been pleasant to hike across that meadow at 11pm if it were *dry*. The moon was up and almost full and bright and bouncing off the mountains and snow. The walk is flat. And yes, it was cold, but I was never too cold when we were moving and before my feet got wet. Oh, but my feet got wet because...
At 11pm when the sun has gone down but the snow has been melting all day, this walk was not so much a meadow as it was a marsh. And we had to march across the marsh. There was water everywhere. Big expanses of cold, muddy, water. In the freezing cold, so you wanted to avoid them. To avoid them, you had to keep crossing back and forth over stones and jumping over huge puddles. This meandering path turned a 1.5 mile walk into something much closer to two or three miles. Then there are the brambles. Since the path itself is now flooded with run off, you are walking on what would be the land surrounding the path, and that land is full of brambles.
It is cold. It is wet. You get wet which then makes you cold even if you are moving. You get muddy because, oh yes, it is very muddy. You get hit with brambles. You are tired because it is 11pm and you have been hiking for seven hours and you just want to get to camp and warm up and eat something. But you have no idea how much longer it's going to take you to get to the tree line on the other side of the meadow/marsh, and you're not even sure how much further the lake is from there. But you know that, if you turn around, you're hiking back for over an hour or so to the last campable ground you saw AND you're further away from the mountain, so you're not doing that.
I miss a rock and land in the water up to my calf, and my left foot slips in, too. So now I am hiking for however long we have to hike with wet pants, wet boots and wet socks. I lose a snow show in the brambles and don't even care because the idea of backtracking is so horrid (we found it on the way out the next day). I start to cry, OUT LOUD, and don't even care that the boys are hearing it. PBM steps in mud about a thousand times over, and that's when I start hearing the title of this blog entry from behind me over and over again.
We finally get to the other side and ...
... wait for it ...
we completely lose the trail. Can't find it. In the morning, we would realize that not only could we not find it, we were not even close to it. We were, quite literally, lost in a forest.
We give up, and pitch camp, not even bothering to get out the tents, even though they would have held body heat in for us. And it is cold. And at least two of us have gotten wet. Frank, apparently, walks with the hand of God guiding him around puddles.
In the morning, we finally find the trail, which isn't all that near to us, and the lake, but by that time, it's too late to make for the summit unless we don't want to be off the mountain until six the next morning, and that seems unsafe even beyond unsafe. So we agree to try for the summit another time, and head back down the mountain. Which is a bummer, but it's not like I personally didn't get my dose of "hard." And I got to spend time with Frank and PBM. And maybe next year I'll have a story for you where we actually make the summit, but not this year. This year, I have a story for you about PBM walking behind Frank and me through a marsh in the middle of the night and cursing to the high heavens.
That is all. It was an awesome weekend, even with the fubar parts.
See all the pictures here.
Labels: awesomeness, my body, things that rock, travel
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