My gift for getting myself out of trouble I get myself into is still quite pronounced. I have a flair for extrication. Perhaps better climbers, or smarter hikers would not find themselves in the kinds of messes I do, but they also would not perhaps be able to weasel out of them. My hand, as Leo DeCaprio says in the abysmal violent "The Departed", does not shake. Everyone else I know gets the shakes just looking at pictures of what I do, though personally, I don't think I've ever done a single dangerous thing in my life. I know my limits. Sure a lot of it would be dangerous for other people, but not for me. (I know now you counter with: that's the attitude of almost every dead mountain person I've ever read about.) Well, okay I grant you that. But everyone ends up dead eventually. Not that I'm convinced yet I have to. I'm still willing to philosophically argue that gravity is not confirmed yet- an argument no one ever understands. I accept that it has been proven for every second of time up to now, but that is not confirmation gravity will still be operating tomorrow. Nor is everyone else who ever lived dying proof I have to die. I kid.
My trip to Washington went well on the whole. Almost nothing went wrong. The car ran great and had no problems. My radiator blow up in Montana was probably caused by a leaking cap, by the way. $11 part. A slow drip only began to matter when I drove 1000 miles straight through and then went over 2 mountain passes, which added steepness, pressure, more work, heat, etcetera, and dried out the engine. I am now much smarter and check my engine every morning before starting the car. This may seem tedious as we like to pretend our cars are magic and thus learn as little about them as we can get away with in life, which is a lot (to not learn about them), but truckers do it, and its good practice. And you get used to everything. Its no longer a chore, its just part of the routine of life, like tooth brushing. I got in almost all I wanted to, and I held up pretty well. I got somewhat depressed as I hit 100 miles hiking on day 10 because my body and spirit started to break down, but I moved slow over flat rainforest and beach trails for 2 days and recovered. I just don't think 100 miles and 9 mountains is enough to tire me. I felt very unfit, very old. But then I pushed for another 4 days at the end and can feel more, not pride, but an absence of shame. My totals were 160 miles on foot, and 14 mountains. That's more like it. My goals when I went over the maps and wanted to do everything, and then cut the plan down to the essentials was 160 miles and 16 peaks. The bulk of this was done in a 15 day period, and included a whole lot of elevation change from sea level to the 7,000 foot summit range. Nine of the peaks were "cake walks", or my preferred term "cupcake runs", while 5 involved some climbing and plenty of challenge. I say some in the loosest sense of the term. I do mountains largely the old-fashioned way: basic maps, basic gear, alone, or at least un-tethered to a team, without knowing the route, and without any guide book in my pocket to tell me just where to put my hands and feet. I like a little mystery. This, to most people, is either insane, or perplexing, as most climbers have every kind of safety gear even up to helmets, and very detailed descriptions (often multiple such) of the route, even with photos, and often sketches, and foot by foot details. Go seventy feet, then look for a rock that looks like a cloverleaf, put your right hand on it... Where is the fun in that? These folks usually give up easily and come back another day. I've climbed with some of them. Though they are persistent, physically fit, and athletic, and make it eventually. So I should not judge. But I prefer a good thorn in the knee, a nice awful run up a moss-covered slab to get a view of...thousands of feet of more moss-covered slabs and cliffs that no one can possibly have ever climbed before, meaning I must go back down 500 feet through a landslide-prone burn debris forest of tottering charred trunks. I'm old fashioned. I also say, "some" climbing, in that as I do not read trip reports usually before going, I have to assess things myself, and can only assess the line I take. So Boston Peak, which I will blog about eventually and post pics of was a vicious climb for me, up some nasty rotten face of overhanging jags with sharp crumbling handholds and not very fun. I thought I would die. Apparently there are other ways up, though I looked around and picked what I thought looked least miserable and sketchy, which are rated "third class", the climber's backhanded compliment. Like describing a trout-faced sister as being "friendly". It is a derisive dismissal. I also found the last team to climb Boston Peak had penciled in that the climb was "not near as dangerous as they say" and "a waste of a morning; only a 16 out of 100 for being worth it". 16? Not 15? Not 17.3? How specific. And also, if it was so tedious, did you think of dropping your helmet, special rock-gripping sticky-soled shoes, and unroping from your buds? Because I had plenty of "fun" climbing those cliffs solo up and down, past 3 sling sets professionals use to rappel down. I don't think I could have stood any more fun, and if I had not hiked/climbed/glaciered 8 miles to be there, I might have opted against the fun. I also have the same problem with "Pinnacle Peak" which is casually dismissed as a "scramble" on climbing sites I have since perused. Yet those smug reviewers left 2 sets of slings up there to rappel down. If its so beneath you as a mountain, then why didn't you just climb down like me? Or "scramble" down like me. Seems awfully silly to use rope where it isn't needed. So there will be some as I post stories from my climbs who may sneer and say, pushah! Boston Peak! What a sissy lump of boulders that is! To those people I say, the mountain had my full attention, and I changed my boots for shoes, so it was a climb. And I enjoyed it. Overall, I passed 8 sets of rappel slings meaning I climbed something around 500-700 vertical feet that "pure" climbers use rope and specialty gear on. That seems like a healthy amount to me.
I skipped a few mountains due to fatigue and avalanche risk and added some I did not intend when they looked cool. One has to be flexible when climbing and hiking in the archaic way. One gets surprised. I spent a whole morning going towards Mount Lava Forest (my own name as it has none official), an unmarked spec on the maps, which looked very cool from 7 miles away at the end of a famous ridge that people climb to the end of the 6 mile trail, only to find the last 200 feet were a choice between an impassible pine forest of interlocking branches covered in sticky sap and impossible overhanging vicious broken cliffs of crumbling volcanic rock which I gamely tried for a few feet before a massive rock slide 100 feet away convinced me not to press my luck. I joked with the info booth and rangers after giving up that someone would have to go up with a chainsaw or a blow torch to make the summit and they looked nervous, like I shouldn't say that so loudly to give any a-holes any ideas on how to be the first to ascend an unclimbed peak. Or that they thought I might to back next day to actually do this. I try not to destroy the wild, personally and I don't repeat trails often. I saw my first bears (or bear?). Bears all look alike, though probably the bear(s?) I saw were thinking, man these men all look alike. I was stalked by a goat, had goats run about me screaming like demons in a salt orgy ceremony licking my well-placed urine I knew they would find from miles away at midnight, spooked 3 "generations" of deer from a single bivouac site under a tree, (newborn fawns, fuzzy antlered "puberty" deer, mommy's assistant babysitter does, and mother and full-grown big-ass elk) just missed the greatest baby deer photograph in the history of baby deer photographs, rolled my ankles dozens of times, probably sprained my left wrist lightly three times (it doesn't take much after all the breaks and sprains, and I should really stop catching myself with it), put a crampon blade through my palm (fell on the left wrist while holding ice cleats in them to cross some muddy rocks I thought would be dangerous in ice cleats), fell on ice, snow, rock, mud, scree, moss, and sand, hiked beaches, and meadows, and saw approximately 50,000,000,000 wildflowers. Its not an exact count, I admit. I will start posting real pictures tomorrow for those interested. I have two weeks until the next trip.
Washington was great, mostly. I had almost perfect weather, which was probably luck, and a dry month, August thing. When there were clouds, they were choice and fleeting. Just right for photography. When I had rain, it was light and welcome, on hot steep climbs. I managed as much by luck as skill in planning and reading topo maps, to hit every trail at about the right time, missing the worst of the sun, and getting some amazing alpine glows. And of course, when you do something repeatedly, its always a bit of a surprise to not have any slip ups. In 160 miles and 14 mountains, I cliffed out a few times but was never in serious trouble, unless you count slipping and falling away from a cliff twice with crap in your hands, and having to invent clever new fingertip grabs on the fly as serious. I don't- since I did not fall and would have only fallen 20 or 30 feet if I had, though, miles from the next nearest human and days from help. But the survival instinct is not only a strong, but a marvelously creative thing when forced to be. I think I invented some elbow tuck holds and arm bars no one has tried before, or at least, not bragged about yet and written a book about. Perhaps they are too hard to describe. People in Washington, when I saw them, were friendly and often interesting. Very willing to talk about the trails and offer ideas for where I should go next and to praise their state and hear it praised. Washingtonians all assured me Washington is the only place to live. The people were articulate, cultured, and intelligent, compared with Utahns, Arizonians, and mid-westerners anyway, though perhaps not on topics like, "dry heat", "drive through liquor store pros and cons", "Ditka verses a train", and perhaps, "offensive line adjustments from game to game and at halftime", but those are subjects which did not, thankfully, come up. Seattle broadcasts a great classical station through much of the state, though fuzzily, which I enjoyed heartily. The cuisine is superb, with less derivative chain restaurants and more options for creative and locally inspired grub, lots of glorious soups and bisques, seafood, and more. Its a pretty state with variety of landscape few can match. Utah is actually one, though we do not admittedly have an ocean. Utah does have the world's smelliest lake though, and its saltier than an ocean, and Washington's beaches mostly suggest not swimming due to drift logs and polution and jagged hidden rocks and rip tides, so they aren't so cute as tourist pamphlets make out to get you there into the parking lot. However, there are a few downsides to Washington and I will deal with them below.
One, a lot of Washingtonians seem to think there are too many people in the state, and driving through Seattle, or within 100 miles of it, at 5 mph, all times of day, I can't disagree. However the coping strategy many drivers have invented is rather dangerous and Freudian: they refuse to use turn signals under any circumstances and pretend other cars are not there. The very specialist move is pulling out into traffic at 20 mph and nearly causing 10 car pile ups. I did not enjoy that one. All red lights are 3 minutes in both directions. That is annoying. If you catch a red, you might as well open a book and turn the engine off. Maybe even walk over to any near corner, where instead of having a Walgreens or CVS Pharmacy like Arizona or Utah or Illinois or any "normal" state, there will be a drive-through or bike-through espresso station. Or walk into any grocery store. I never found one that did not feature a Starbucks where "customer service" would be in other states. Then again, good coffee or even bad coffee is probably better than any customer service I've ever received or offered in my time on this earth. So maybe Washington has it right there. Washington has a slight know-it-all problem and everyone in the state has a hiking knowledge solely on the level of the REI customer, which is to say, that of an over-marketed bumpkin. I lost count of how many times people sneeringly and mockingly asked me if I needed my ice axe, as if I were a poor dupe over-geared up for a trip through the forest who must be coddled and condescended to. Firstly, I wanted to say, and would have, had I not been so incoherent, feral, crabby, hot, and tired, and pressed for time due to an ambition schedule: its an alpine axe. You only think its an ice axe, good only for glacier travel, because REI tells you so. They do this because if they market an alpine axe as an alpine axe, useful all-around tool, then they could not also sell you trekking poles for spring, summer, and fall, and the ice axe for winter. But many people would be better off with an alpine axe in all seasons. It is good to tap against rocks and make ringing noises with to alert animals to your presence (works better than bells you know-it-alls or expensive heavy bear horns), it is a third leg when climbing down steep scree, it can be leaned on to reduce strain on knees going up, it won't bend or collapse during a rock slide or a fall like trekking poles, it can be driven into mud and used as a seat, or used to hang drying clothes on in the sun, it is a defense tool against annoying know-it-all, psycho with spear (for those who don't live in Utah, in 2010, a kooky shirtless hiker stabbed another hiker in the arm with a crudely fashioned spear he'd made himself while on the trail), or a goat or bear, it makes a great dead tree branch hacker when lost in a burn zone (and that was fun and stress-relieving too, I promise you). I used it for all of those, except sort of the defense. One hiker was danged lucky a crowd was around because I was sufficiently crabby and feral after all the time in the woods, and was a little "knife jumpy" where I just instinctively reached for my 13 inch bowie at every sound, which is not a great instinct to have in a crowded parking lot, by the way, that had a group not approached just then from both directions, I might have demonstrated to him just what a versatile tool an "ice" axe is. I had already taken one step towards him and my face I am sure was making a menacing expression. This brings me to my first of possibly many laws of the wild to come: "If something is in the wilderness and does not look miserable, lost, uncomfortable, or out of place in any way, it is probably wild, and should not be petted, poked, or even approached no matter how adorable or charming it may appear." And as for defense, I did have some goats coming around campsites with their sharp horns looking for salt, but a couple swings of the axe usually convinced them to go to other camps of the less prepared. So that is sort of a defense.
But on the whole, I liked Washington, and it is certainly a liveable state. Though Seattle is way too much for me. I am not comfortable in cities anymore. I'll take a bear over 1,000,000 people anyday. I can predict what that one bear will do. I could move there, though the Olympic Peninsula was a letdown with an ugly and long drive, bleak towns, and mountains I did not enjoy quite as much as the Cascades. If I don't move there, I might need to get to Washington once a year for a week or two of chow and camping. It was hard to come back to Utah and pass through Idaho, where the air is approximately the same color as the inside of a cigarette-smoking coal miner's lung. And where the people are bloated and uncultured and can't hear Beethoven without saying something appalling like "you should really listen to Blankety Blanksmith, he's an LDS composer, who is really good" as if to say that this nobody schlub who writes middling music middlingly is somehow overlooked by the world because of its rampant persecution need towards poor Mormons. Mormonism has never produced a single worthy artist, and yes I am counting Orson Scott Card in there. One sci-fi book of merit and 300 other books of little merit does not make you an artist.
Well, I am getting snippy. I will post plenty in the coming few weeks and the rest of my blogs will have pictures. I know I got a few good ones, but there are a lot of bad pics to wheedle out too. I will review all 4 of the National Parks and Monuments in Washington, plus lots of restaurants over on the food blog, and several beers and brewers over on that blog too. And I won't forget my favorite place in the world: Fairhaven District! Where the food is even better than at "The Mark" in Portland. I gave up on eating solely from my trunk when I realized the food in Washington, even soup from a grocery store, was so good. Gourmet is not a word in Utah, unless you believe as Arby's and most Americans do, that the sole quality of food is quantity. I can eat Ramen Noodles endlessly in Wyoming. I don't have to worry about the temptations or even the pretentions to chefery there. Yes I am making up words. Check back, for more of my entertaining wit and moxy and to learn where you should hike and what you can skip.
And actually thinking back to the fall with the ice cleats in hand, I thought of a second rule of the wild: "Often in life, we don't have to choose between right and wrong, or good and bad, but different wrongs and bads." That is, in hard terrain, sometimes you leave your ice cleats on because you're lazy while crossing some muddy rocks and slip and land on your knee and think, dang I'm a jerk, next time I WILL take them off, and sometimes you take them off and then carry them like a good boy, or so you think, and your boots are wet from snow and even being careful, you slip and put a blade through your hand, and then decide, okay, from now on if I carry these, I will always have a glove on and I will hold them like this so the blade probably won't go through my hand, but either way, you were going to fall. I mean, its hard country. Same thing with sunscreen. Maybe I put it on so I don't burn, but if I do it drips into my eyes and my eyes burn when I sweat. Either way, its not ideal. But still, its weird being back in the "real" world. Feels like a dream. This isn't how we're supposed to live. I've been eating like crazy. Whole jars of peanut butter, half tubs cottage cheese, whole milk (should I try cream?), whole pizzas, bags of chips, and still getting thinner. Its like high school all over (and if I did not get younger, I must have looked younger anyway- maybe it was the happiness of being in Washington and the wild so much, because I got carded a lot, and carded with nods, rolled eyes, with cashiers and waiters taking a step back, and putting hands up in defense, as if to emphasize just how much they were carding me. It was like being double carded. Out of 8 or 9 opportunities, I was carded all but once, and I was shocked by the not-carding, as the fellow looked at me with extreme dubiousness, but apparently thought me no cop, or just felt like being my chum or something. And half of my cardings were violent cardings. Made me feel good. And several people on trails started sighing to me about how they wanted to be 25 again. Me too, I replied. Me too.) And being on a computer, a phone- I did not miss these things. Not having to think about water first thing every morning, checking the maps for stream crossings, possible snow run off areas, checking my filter and checking for my filter to make sure I did not leave it behind- how different. How strange a faucet is, the ease of water. And our diet with so much salt that we never crave salt. I spent a lot of hours licking my lips and thinking about water the past few weeks. You have never been thirsty if you have not dreamt of water the way many men dream of naked bimbos on stripper poles. The modern world is so much less vital. Every problem so much less pressing. I don't mean that as a good thing. We're wired to deal with stress. When we don't have it, we invent it. I miss the wild, real problems. But then again, that soft bed that jiggled when I sat on it, which made me jump, is very nice. In a week I probably will be thinking about how hard Wyoming will be, will be dreading it a little. Its very strange to be back. But I'll save this all for the other posts, with pictures, to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment