Wilderness Trip

A Story by CaptainBill

Five of us make a wilderness trip to the King's Canyon area. Everyone explains things to a hiker new to group.

Wilderness Trip

by CaptainBill

One step, one step, another… I can make it. This is harder than I expected. All that training, I hoped it would be easier… I am making it. It’s just hard. The scenery is really something, as usual. I always like mountain streams. That’s a small river, not a stream. That deep green pool just wants me to jump in. Got to keep moving…. 7 or 8 miles already, only 1 or 2 more. Maybe it won’t be steep all the way. And maybe it will.

Every year we make a five or six day wilderness trip. Every year it has been good. One year the weather made us come back after one day, but that was Mount Rainier early in the year. Rain we could handle, but a blizzard coming in? We’ve done Grand Canyon to the bottom twice, Caribou Lake, Marble Mountain, King’s Canyon, Mount Whitney, Mount Shasta, parts of the John Muir Trail.

Nicolas remembers when he started, when he was eight years old with a kiddie pack while Dad carried everything important. Now…

“How are you doing, Dad?” asks Nicolas.

“I’ll make it.”

“Let me take a few pounds.”

“I won’t say no.”

Brian thinks about the new boots that Nicolas told him to buy. He thought his running shoes were good enough, but bought the boots anyway. When they cross the wet rocks near the waterfall, he notices that those new boots didn’t slip at all. Brian always wanted to try a wilderness trip, and here he is. The redwood forest is impressive, and so are the steep granite canyon walls. But this is quite a hike, up a steep trail. And he never even heard about mosquitoes like these… attacking even while they are moving!

We top the next rise and the trail levels out. Then there are some posted signs. We made it! Nicolas scouts the campground, and the campsite right in front of us is the only one open. Tents up, sleeping bags inside and unrolled, and we stretch out and rest a while. The mosquitoes were ferocious on the way up. King’s Canyon was one of our first expeditions, so we expected that. My wife Laura even sewed a mosquito net that went over my hat and tied around my neck. But getting into the tent is still a nice escape from them. DEET is one choice. It works pretty good. But you feel grimy with it. I put that off as long as I can.

First a rest, then some camp chores: Jim gathers wood for the campfire, Nicolas and Brian pump water. I set up the cooking stove for dinner, then gather wood. Tinder, small wood, medium wood, bigger pieces, and a few logs. I had to drag it from a good distance, since previous campers had taken the closest wood, naturally.

Our camp is on a wooded and rocky hillside, with a small river below us. A big bear box to store our food is nearby, so we don’t have to hang our food. The late afternoon sun is pleasant, especially with the light breeze that blows. We sit on logs around the campfire ring, just relaxing before we start dinner.

“Too bad Mike isn’t here, with his dragonfly frequency mosquito repeller.”

“Yea, we miss Mike, but we still have Mike stories, good for a lot of years.”

“The mosquitoes are bad as usual. That one woman said that they were

leaving a day early, because her two daughters couldn’t handle the

mosquitoes.”

“Are we going to have a campfire tonight, or wait until tomorrow? “ asks

Brian.

“We have a fire every night, if we can.”

“So what are we having for dinner tonight?”

Freeze dried dinners were our choice for a lot of years. This year we have some, but a few other things too.

After dinner chores are done quickly, with everyone doing something, and busy until all done. Dinner dishes, pumping water, gather some more wood.

Jim joined the group in the first years. Jim really wanted to do wilderness hiking, but it was hard to find someone to do it with. He hadn’t done much since he was a Boy Scout in Hong Kong. Laura was talking about our first trip to King’s Canyon at work, and Jim told her he didn’t believe she could do it. She brought pictures to work the next day. Now he believed it, and more… He couldn’t help it, and asked, “Can I come on your next trip?”

Jim remembers the decision to ask, and that Chinese didn’t usually complain about racism. But that didn’t change the possibilities. What could happen in the wilderness with very few people around? What if bad people wanted to be bad? Jim thought that being part of an integrated group in the back country was a much safer thing, indeed.

Jim wonders if he can start the fire with one match. No, it takes two. The tinder gets going, the twigs catch, and the middle size branches start smoldering, then catch. A pine cone flares and … a fire! There is warmth in the evening coolness. Someone mentions how the Indians use campfires: a small fire and getting close. Someone else says ‘How about a big fire and still get close?’ Looking into the red coals, the flowing flame from under the log, the ragged edges at the top, just seems timeless.

The smoke from the fire keeps the mosquitoes away. Usually we move away from the smoke, but tonight we move into it if the pesky things are buzzing close.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“My idea is a day hike up the trail about 4 or 5 miles, with just one light pack between us. There is a bridge over the river, and it looks like a good area to hang out.”

“Sounds good. Anything tonight?”

“One of our traditions is to look at the stars for a while, when it gets really dark. There’s a lot of clouds, so maybe we’ll do more tomorrow.”

We get into our tents and sleeping bags. I ask Nicolas if he remembered our first trip, to Mount Shasta. He was eight.

“Sure, how could I forget? That mountain was huge, and it was a big deal. “

“We were so new to wilderness camping that we had canned food and a glass jar of jam with a full loaf of bread, ” I say, with a deep chuckle.

“We didn’t make it to the top on that trip. But I made it 5 or 6 years later. I remember that I made it and you didn’t, “ Nicolas says with pride.

“I made it the year before on a guided trip, so I didn’t feel like I had to push it on that trip. I had altitude sickness in a medium way, and was better off getting back to our tent at Lake Helen, the base camp.” I say this mostly for Brian, since Nicolas and I have this conversation at least once every trip.

“Those college kids that camped next to us were nice. They let me hook up with them, and even shared Gummi Bears with me.”

As I listen to the river and night sounds of King’s Canyon, I think about those first trips. I had to laugh when Nicolas told me about a conversation among his school friends, talking about camping in the summer. Somebody asked Nicolas if he did any camping that summer.

He answered, “I don’t do car camping.”

The friend asked: “What do you mean, ‘car camping’? “

Nicolas answered: “You guys all camped next to your car, right? Maybe the little kids even slept in the car, right?”

One friend nodded, and said: “Yea, and what did you do?”

Nicolas answered: “This year we went to Mount Shasta with ice axe and

crampons. I made it to the top. Last year we took the trail to the top of

Mount Whitney. Both are more than fourteen thousand feet.”

Another friend made a disbelieving face, and said: “You’re kidding us,

right? Those sound pretty tough.”

Nicolas said: “You asked, I don’t believe in bragging. But I’ll bring the

pictures tomorrow. I took some of them myself.”

And a few years later, they asked him to organize a camping trip for their group.

The next day we are all on the trail for our day hike. The early morning is chilly, so we wear most of our layers. We take them off as the day warms and we sweat.

We stop for a rest about half way there, sitting on logs and rocks next to the trail.

“We camped at the place we’re going a lot of years ago. We were coming out from the Rae Lakes, doing ‘The Rae Lakes Loop’. So we saw this place at night, not much during the day.”

“Don’t you usually move during the morning, and set up camp early, like you did on this trip?” asks Brian.

“Usually. We left close to noon, because we were going back. Mike was with us then, but had to drop out for a number of reasons. So our famous Mike kept asking for breaks. If someone needs one, that’s fine. But going down hill? Then we get to the camp I thought we were staying at, and there was no bear box. We didn’t plan for anything else.”

“Now we hang our food from a high tree branch. We have two bags about the same weight to counterbalance each other. But we hadn’t done that before that trip, just used the bear boxes, “ adds Nicolas.

“So we decided to go on to the next camp, 4 or 5 miles away. Mike still asked for breaks. When the sun dipped behind the mountains, I knew we had to do something else. There were five of us, so we wouldn’t be leaving someone alone. Nicolas and I would go ahead, find the camp, claim a site, and set up for dinner while we had a little light. The others could follow at their own pace. There were no forks in the trail. Everyone agreed. Setting up at night didn’t sound good. Nicolas and I zoomed off. There was no bridge then, so when we got to the river, it took us a few minutes to figure out that we had to use two logs laid side by side, with their up-ended roots still attached. Just when we were getting up on the logs, here come Mike, Jim and Eric. ‘We didn’t stop. The trail just looked dark,’ says Mike, with a small bright flashlight in his hand.”

“It sounds like Mike made your trips interesting, “ says Brian.

Everyone laughs.

We cross a flat area, a meadow overflowing with summer life, with grasses, flowers, shrubs of many kinds, and many small trees. We have to push through greenery at times. A number of narrow lines of water cross the meadow.

Then we move across a bare rock expanse, threading through big rounded boulders. In a few places, there is no identified trail. We can see the high ridge lines on both sides, and where the river is or should be, so we have our direction. Even so, a few of our efforts end up with dead ends and backtracking. We pay closer attention and look for ‘ducks’, small piles of stones that mark a trail.

We spot some official signs, marking the upper campground that is our destination. Further along there is a raised foot bridge over the river. On the other side, we relax. Boots off, socks off, feet in cold water … Aaah! Nice! A wilderness trip makes you realize that simple things can be really, really enjoyable.

“So, Brian, can you explain why they went through the trouble to have the bridge 10 feet above the water level?” I ask. Brian’s face is blank.

“Look at that tangle of logs downstream. If some of that came down with the heavy spring melt, a low bridge is gone. “

“Okay, I have a question. This is the end of July. Why is this water so cold?”

“You can follow the river with your eyes, right up to that ridge of mountains. See that black line that ends in the middle of the big white patch. That’s where this river starts… in a snowfield still here from winter.”

“Wow!” considers Brian.

Later the next day Jim finds a beach area a distance from our camp. We spend a lazy mid day there just relaxing, getting some sun, getting some shade, checking the gold colored flecks in the thick sand to see if they are gold dust or just fool’s gold.

We come back from the beach, and find a black bear sniffing around our tents. We had a bear talk from the rangers when we picked up our wilderness permit. The advice for this situation was clear. You can’t let the bear hang around. If you did, it would be trouble. So we follow the book. Everyone yells and waves their arms. The bear looks up. I throw a small rock, trying to hit him in the butt. Nicolas throws too. Then everyone is throwing rocks and sticks, yelling, and waving arms. The bear ambles up the hill. We all follow, and throw a few more rocks, and yell some more. Now we are laughing too. Wow, it works, just like the ranger said. He is bigger than a cub, but not full size. Someone says he was probably a two year old, just kicked out by his mom. Ten minutes later, we hear yelling, screaming, and pots and pans being banged, from the next campsite.

That night we come back to that beach by headlamp. We want a wide open area to observe the stars overhead. The wide beach is perfect for that. The mosquitoes are thick, so we lay down on sand and rounded rocks to protect our backs. Those mosquitoes are biting through our shirts, our pants, and sometimes even two layers! Laying down protects our backs and then we can nail the mosquitoes that land on our front. We found that position for another reason, but it is perfect to observe the open dome of the sky, just lying there on our backs. We see small bats flying, turning and scooping up mosquitoes. We want to adopt them as our brothers.

“Where is the Big Dipper?”

“Look over that mountain peak, then up.“

“And there’s the Little Dipper!”

“How many constellations does anyone know?”

“That one with 5 stars shaped like a pentagon is Cepheus. That long

curving line is called Draco.”

There are the muted splashes of the rushing river, and quiet, as we absorb the sharp brightness of the stars above mountain heights, and the deep dark immensity of the infinite heavens. I feel myself a small atom in a stark universe. But an atom connected to all of it.

On the hike out, Brian comments, “I’m a little surprised how friendly everyone is.”

“There is no one around for many miles but the very few backpackers we see. They all know that too. We might need help sometime, or they might. And they are coming from where we are going, so exchanging information help us and them.”

“It’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this trip.”

“Check this one. Now we say hello to everyone we meet, and they are friendly. When we are closer to the trail end, a dayhiker will look at you like you are a weirdo when you say hello. That’s when you know you are close. It’s usually two and a half or three miles from the end.”