I can tolerate hiking in 40 mph winds. I can tolerate hiking in 40 deg F temperatures (and even a lot lower if the sun is out). I can tolerate hiking in the rain (I even kind of like it). I can tolerate hiking in TWO of the previous three conditions, but if I have all three, I have heroin flashbacks to Katahdin last October. I need to be sedated. We made the right decision staying put yesterday. Conditions were ripe for hypothermia.
Not that today was a whole hell of a lot better. I woke up at 6 for…hell, you do the math; I’m 55 years old and sleeping on the ground. It was still gusting up to 40 mph and drizzling, no sun, and cold as hell. This was our coldest night so far at pretty close to freezing. I started boiling water for coffee when I got back in the tent. Not because I wanted coffee, but because I wanted a hot water bottle that I could eventually drink.
At 7 Bunny rolled over and said we should go ahead and eat. She who must not be denied has spoken. We ate and listened to the rain and decided we needed a nap before doing anything too reckless like getting up. By 8, the clouds were thinning a bit and bright spots in the sky could be seen. We weren’t sure, it might have been alien spacecraft, but we were putting our money on the sun. Around 8:30 our hunch proved correct and we saw some sun and blue skies. We agreed we’d get up as soon as the sun stayed visible for 10 minutes. At 9, it was close enough for me and I could hear the sirens calling from the outhouse.
There was water standing in our tent, but we fared pretty well. Just the tent was packed up wet along with the bottoms of our sleeping pads. We were hiking by 10. Not as bad as it seems since 10 used to be our historical start time.
Have you ever watched rabbits in nature? At least on National Geographic programs? They are timid and move around so calmly until something frightens them and then BAM…bat out of hell. They move fast! Pumas have to give up the chase if they make their appearance known too soon. Why do I mention this? My wife is named Bunny Tracks. When she gets scared and she’s in front of me on the trail I can forget about catching up to her any time soon. What frightens my sweet little Bunny? It’s a long list but we’ll settle on a few highlights: stranger’s following us on the trail (as in two days ago), lightening or any kind of storm, and high winds.
As soon as we hit the trail, the winds picked up and Bunny was off. God help us if there’s a turn in the trail because she’s not slowing down for anything like checking a map. I had no chance of catching her until she got behind some boulders that blocked the wind. My only hope of keeping her in check was to walk in front of her and not let her pass. We had intermittent drizzle throughout the day, occasional patches of sun, but nearly constant wind. How else are we going to make nearly 16 miles starting out at 10 and getting done in time to set up camp when it gets dark at 6?
We were forced to stop when Bunny was moving so fast that water was literally pouring down her backside (not one of the periods of rain). It was obvious she had blown out one of her bladders. I was just hoping it was her drinking water bladder and not an overactive, nervous, urinary one. It turned out that her cap had unscrewed and she poured a liter of water down her back and butt.
When we stopped for a snack break about 7 miles in, we refilled her drinking bladder but she couldn’t find her pack cover. The best way to stop the rain is to get out your pack covers at the first sign of dark clouds. Nature abhors a prepared hiker. Somewhere in the last 4 miles, Bunny lost her pack cover and we have our first trail gear casualty.
It was really good for us that we didn’t hike yesterday because we would have missed amazing views of the stage route which we had seen a couple days ago. Upon further reading of signs where we were staying the last couple of days, it was the first transcontinental mail route. It had actually been completed before the mid 19th century. I’m pretty sure we actually walked a bit of the route dropping down off of the ridge this afternoon.
It’s really amazing to think what our forefathers had to endure to build such a route. There weren’t any aircraft to do aerial surveys of the land; no satellites. They had to get out on horse and foot to find the routes and then lay the beds by hand. There wasn’t any earth moving equipment. Plus, all this had to be done in hostile lands because they had chosen to ignore indigenous peoples in the process (but morality aside—it was an amazing accomplishment).
As we were nearing our stopping point for the night, Bunny spied 3 vehicles in the valley below us. One of them turned out to be the donut vehicle, at least it looked like it to me. As soon as I told Bunny this, it started doing donuts again. The biggest concern for us, though, was that we had been hearing gunfire coming from their direction. Rednecks with guns and 4 wheelers, no big deal. As we got to where we wanted to camp, the vehicles were there. Bunny, assuming the alternate rabbit stance of utter stillness when danger might be at hand, wouldn’t come around the turn until I assured her they were gone. Sure enough, the camping area was a mass of circles. We opted to set up off road and hope they don’t come back.
The only real problem I had today involved chafing. The rain of this morning got my pants wet and it continued to worsen throughout the day. Because of the weather conditions, I didn’t want to take the time to do anything about it. Not to worry, I’m a real man and real men aren’t afraid to carry their own vagisil.
EFG