It was still dark when I heard Brad shuffling his crap around in his tent starting to pack up. “Go back to sleep, Brad. It’s too damn early!” As soon as I yelled his name, I heard him snort himself awake—all the racket wasn’t Brad after all. Nonetheless, the rustling stopped so I went back to sleep.
About 20 minutes later, the rustling woke me up again. This time, I woke Pam up. It’s always nice to have a witness to a bear mauling. I unzipped the tent as quietly as possible and reluctantly stuck my head out. I turned on my spot light and scanned the area. I caught some movement in the shadows over by where I had stashed the Jiffy Pop tin. Thankfully, it wasn’t a bear; just a porcupine. I yelled at it and chased it off. After I had secured the area, Brad stuck his head out of the tent and said that it had kept him awake all night. All I can say is that he did a great job pretending to be asleep earlier with all the snoring coming from his tent.
The rest of the night was without incident. Brad was feeling pretty good after having conquered (or so we had heard) the two toughest passes on the loop. “Do you still think I’m prissy now? I’m holding up pretty well, you’ve got to admit.”
“Yes, Brad, you’re doing much better than I thought you might have done.”
“Do you think we could boil some extra water so I could take a sponge bath?” In the course of a 2 minute conversation, Brad asked me to admit he wasn’t prissy and that he was tougher than I had thought he was and then to please draw him a bath at my earliest convenience—managers!
After Brad’s sponge bath and back country spa experience, we continued the climb up to Foreskin Pass. It wasn’t a steep climb, but it was drawn out almost 5 miles to climb the 2300’. We did pass a couple of nice campsites higher up and water was plentiful most of the way. Pam is always nervous on any pass after our experience in Olympic last year but this was the easiest pass we have gone over. The last ½ mile is a cake walk—less than 100’ of elevation gain. This side of Buckskin is more of a high meadow. We passed a group of boy scouts coming down. They were doing the loop counter clockwise in 3 day itinerary.
On top of Foreskin, we peeled off our packs and sat on a small snow patch to have our lunch. The mini-bears (chipmunks) were plentiful and begging for food. They were obviously a pretty successful lot and well experienced—they were as fat as the average American. It was also becoming apparent that even though Brad’s clothes were still spotless, they could not be considered clean when you noticed all of the flies that were hanging out on his back.
The hike down the Aspen side was not as pleasant. It wasn’t steep, but there was a tremendous amount of scree which made us thankful for the hiking poles. This four mile stretch convinced me that a counterclockwise trip might be better than the direction we were headed. For me, it’s easier to walk uphill with all the loose rock. Around 3p a runner passed us, but he was only walking. He was very upset with himself for not having the energy to run the entire loop—he had less than 5 miles to get back to his car but he had run out of steam after only 10 hours of running. Here we are 4 days to do about 8 miles less than what he did in 10 hours. I wish I had the stamina to run the trail, but I’m not interested in flying over the trail, I want to go slow and enjoy every minute. I just want the strength to do it.
Once we got to the turn for the Aspen parking lot, there were multiple signs warning of bear activity in the area around Crater Lake with the most recent activity less than 2 weeks ago. This confirmed my desire to not want to camp around the lake. We ran across a ranger while we passing the lake and he gave us a bear prep pep talk. We asked what the camping situation was further up the trail and he responded that there were sites stretching along the trail for a couple of miles.
According to Brad, this day was a death march (and I have to agree). “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?” We pressed on for another mile and a half past the lake. It started getting pretty rocky so we decided we had better stop at the next place that resembled a campsite. We found a small level spot right off the trail and decided to stop. It was cramped but we didn’t want to set up camp and cook in the dark so we took it. Brad boiled water while I hung bear bags and Pam took care of getting our tent/sleeping area in order. While I was hanging the bear bags, I found a really nice camping spot but everyone agreed not to move now.
There were three drawbacks to this site: 1) it was very small; 2) it was too close to the trail; and 3) it’s a dry camp. We ate supper on the side of the trail. It was a meal I was afraid of—chicken breasts and mashed potatoes. I wasn’t afraid of the food, just Brad’s reaction to it because he has complained multiple times about going to weddings in Kentucky and this seems to be the standard fare. Maybe it was the death march today, or just being out for 5 nights, but this was actually his favorite meal so far. We finished off the bourbon after supper and I had my first cigar.
While we were finishing our cigars in the twilight, a woman and five kids came through camp. She was carrying one child and the others were straggling around eating Cheetos out of a box. She had a pack and a couple of the older kids had small packs. She said they were going to try to make it over the pass, still. It was almost dark! We went to bed not too long after they passed.
