Given that my
retirement plan relied to a large extent on hiking, some early drama
centered around the state of my knee. It had been quite swollen and
painful early in the summer but had been gaining strength and hurting
less as I began walking regularly with a knee support strap. It held
up fine on a few moderate day hikes in early August so I took it out
for a true test: a two-night backpack to Heliotrope Ridge on the
north slopes of Mount Baker. Much of this hiking was off trail over
rough, rocky terrain on a beautiful expanse of periglacial landscape.
Streams pour down from the snowfields and glaciers of Baker and its
satellites, the Black Buttes, over the rocky surfaces recently, and
increasingly, freed of glacial ice, creating nascent flower gardens.
In addition to the close-up view of Baker's north face and the Black
Buttes (less daunting here than from the south side of Baker; here
they appear as nunataks.), and distant views to British Columbia's
coast range, the visual star is the sweeping view of the Roosevelt
and Coleman Glaciers, as spectacular a scene as the North Cascades
has to offer.
The alternative,
which I prefer, is to follow the climbers trail as it splits off
from the main trail and heads directly toward the mountain. At first
it is very steep going but in a relatively short distance yields
great views, including the aforementioned two sweeping glaciers as
well as expanses of flowery meadows that are reward in themselves and
utterly lacking on the main hikers trail. Again, it's steep, but I
take it really slow, rest as much as I need, and at my leisure enjoy
the great views. I also take a lot of pictures.
Once the trail levels off, relatively anyway, it breaks down into
several use trails that all lead eventually to a large base camp,
mostly cleared patches of glacial rock, for the climbers seeking to
summit Mount Baker. These people tend to be the only ones who come up
this way, and they have a job to do so they don't do much wandering.
As I said, the terrain
was rough and rocky and I had been hiking quite deliberately the
entire time. I wouldn't say I was favoring my knee but I was
certainly trying to avoid any unnecessarily hard impact. But
inevitably it happened: I stumbled on a tricky slope and as I lost my
balance I knew I could only stop myself from an ugly tumble by
planting hard with my right leg, exactly what I had been trying to
avoid. In that split second I readied myself for a shooting pain, my
knee maybe buckling, and a fall that while not fatal would likely be
bloody. But none of that happened. My knee held fast, without a
twinge. I felt glorious relief. Victory even.
That evening I took a leisurely stroll to some overlooks of the
climbers’ camps, the Roosevelt and Coleman Glaciers, all amid the
rock gardens at my feet. Sensing my relaxation but with little
concern for my location, my bowels decided it would be a swell time
to let go. Defecating is one of the primal concerns in back country
travel. Some back country camps, particularly in national parks,
provide pit toilets, but most of the wilderness does not. Leaving
your mess under a tree is rude, unhygienic, and pretty disgusting.
Proper behavior calls for the “cat hole”, a six-inch hole in the
dirt subsequently buried. To avoid fires, toilet paper should be
carried out, not burned.
How many
backpackers comply with these standards is unknown; certainly more
than before the standards were promulgated. I do my best even as I
find it rather unpleasant. I do not carry a little shovel for
assuring a six-inch hole and usually resort to supplementing what
hole I can dig with a pile of dirt and forest litter I then tamp
down. Probably good enough unless hard rain hits. As for the toilet
paper, no, I burn it, on a boulder if possible, carefully pulverizing
the ashes before dowsing them with water. I will not start a fire.
NOLS would give me, what, a B-?
But the situation
becomes more complex in the alpine country above treeline, where
there is no soil to speak of, and certainly not six inches. Leaving
messes up there had long been the thing, even more disgusting
because it doesn't decompose and more unhygienic because not only
aren't you 200 feet from a watercourse, you are at the top of an
entire watershed.
Hence the blue bag,
which is simply a means to carry it home with you. I had seen blue
bags at trailheads but until this hike I'd never had cause to use
one. I had picked mine up at the trailhead but it came with no
instructions, leaving me wondering what was the recommended method:
poop and scoop like a dog owner or direct delivery. When the time
came I opted for the latter and experienced one of the low points of
my hiking career. As I was evacuating heartily, out with no authority
whatsoever came a stream of urine which my stooped position and state
of undress was simply not prepared to accommodate. In short I pissed
straight into my pants as they dangled at my knees; I had absolutely
no way to adjust, given what was going on elsewhere. It was awful.
The actual blue bag
operation went about as well as could be expected, however, so now I
had a bag of shit in my hands. I immediately discovered the bag had
no magic properties. One could see and smell the contents just fine.
This was depressing enough as I had a long way to travel. Yet I was
supposed to carry it with me in my backpack for another day? How this
could work for a team of mountain climbers up for three days
continues to elude me.
It was now simply a
delicious evening, but I had to get back to my tent. The area I was
hiking around has three basic elevation levels, not counting the
actual glaciers and mountain slopes. The highest level is the rock
gardens where I had lounged the afternoon away. The middle level was
where I'd camped the first night, waterfalls galore. The lowest level
was where I had pitched my tent this night, and I decided to return
along that level back to my tent. This was maybe not my best decision
as this was a route I had yet to explore. For starters, I was now
hiking directly into a very low sun, and I couldn't see a thing. I
had to wind in and around slide alder stands and down and up water
courses, water course that had been garden-like on the top level and
wonderful waterfalls on the middle level were deep gulches on this
level. Finally, I had to execute this increasingly steep clamoring
with one hand, in deference to my awkward cargo. What had been a fine
jaunt out had become a challenging ordeal back.
It was taking way
longer than I’d expected, and as blinding sunset gave way to
rapidly dwindling light I began getting nervous about even finding my
tent in the dark. I ascended each gulley hoping hard that I would
spot my camp and was thwarted time after time. Nevertheless,
throughout my travails I, like Horton, had absolutely no intention of
abandoning my responsibility. I vowed that even if they found me dead
in a gully they would see I had held on to my blue bag. But I did
eventually get to my tent, placed my bag fifty feet from both my tent
and my bear canister, and left the animals to do what they would,
which proved to be nothing. I did have a second blue bag in my tent
and once I put the first into the second it became reasonable to put
it all in my backpack, and that was pretty much the end of that saga.
Moral: always carry two bags.
The next morning
brought a reprise to the previous evening’s fiasco. I had all day
to get back to the trailhead but I still got an early start and
quickly recognized that I had poor balance and a poor sense of route
finding. I slipped and fell on my butt once, stumbled once to my
hand, staggered about some, and took a really indirect way out of my
little meadow. Even then I wasn't sure exactly where I was going.
Once again the sun, this time rising, was in my eyes so I could not
see, but at least this morning I had time to rest several times –
every fifty feet it seemed – and wait for the sun to get high
enough to not be in my eyes. I found the entire first 30-45 minutes
disheartening and disturbing.
I actually decided
at one point to take the low road again; I could descend to it and
take as much time as I needed. Thankfully I outvoted myself on that,
climbed solidly up a very steep slope to the middle road to see I had made the right decision. By this time the sun was where it
belonged, shining on the flowers instead of my eyes, and I celebrated
with a light breakfast along a flowery stream before mostly ambling
across the kinder, gentler, cross-country route, eventuating in the
sighting of the climbers trail moraine. At that point I could declare
victory and enjoy what had become a super sweet morning. I would have
hung around longer except I needed to get down and claim a campsite
at Douglas Fir. Which I did, for a quiet afternoon, the Meat Puppets'
This is Paradise finding its way out of my subconscious.
II - August 25-26: Ptarmigan Ridge - Mount Baker Wilderness - North Cascades
