An Alpine Return

May 15

In the desert, waking with the sun helps. I was up and out while th day was still cool, pumping past burned-over Mesa del Rito and along the spine of knife-narrow Obsidian Ridge. The ground was littered with shards and chunks of the glassy, jet-black mineral that had given the ridge its name; very spectacular. But very bereft of humans -- the path here another long-abandoned roadbed. You can head out to the Sierras in the summertime and find a tent in every hidden mountain valley, but out here there's an accessible, spectacular ridge with a name straight out of the Lord of the Rings, and nary a soul. 

The trail continued it's climb onto Sawyer Mesa along good jeep trail and then ducked down to delicious Alamo Spring. I ran into a couple rangers who were hauling a roadkill elk out for a "sky burial." They were appropriately impressed with the whole pack-raft crossing, and generally thought it was cool to see someone so far out. 

"Where'd you come from?"

"Sante Fe."

"We didn't see your car..."

"I walked," I said.

"Cool!" they responded. Sometimes rangers are cool.

 

I cut down past Rabbit Mountain, now above 9000 feet and clearly in an alpine ecosystem. It was good to be "home," that is, in an environment I knew so well. The meadow grasses were impossibly green, offset by wildflowers and the bright tan of bare wood. The forest fire was still evident, but green aspen had grown up in the burns. I finally came down to Highway 4 along the Valle Caldera Preaerve, a huge green meadow valley. A few pretty miles of road walking later, I picked up trail 137, which lead through the paradisical canyon of the East Fork Jemez. Trout in the creek bottoms and anglers along the banks gave me some serious Fish Envy, but town lay ahead, so I hurried along. I finally popped out at the Battleship Rock trailhead.

I hitched in the back of a work truck into Jemez Springs for my first resupply, got a room and a meal. I listened as the bartender at the Los Ojos Saloon told me about what it is like to be a newcomer in the valley. ("It's hard.") She told me what it was like to be a a recent divorcee. ("It's hard.") She then told me what it is to be the victim of a hair-removal-product mishap. ("The doctor took one look at my lips and said 'Nair, right?' And I was like hell yes, Nair!")

I spent the balance of the evening listening to a free blues band at the Cafe across the street, letting big old dogs lean up against me and watching the locals two-step with each other.

Water Challenge

May 14

I woke up after a restless night to the yips of a coyote. I hadn't been able to sleep well; something about being on a nameless mesa in cattle country with a crossing of the Rio in my near future made me antsy.

Yes, on day two of the NNML, the intrepid traveler must find their way across a pretty big river, in this season swollen with snow melt. Brett says you can ford/swim it, but I decided to use a pack raft instead. I'd never actually used a pack raft to cross a river, but at least I'd paddled it across Lake Merritt before leaving the Bay. (The guy at the lake's boating center told me I was "never going to make it" across the lake. When I did, he had to admit I had guts, but also truthfully stated that my belly-crawl exit from the raft onto the dock was "so not player.")

Anyway, before I could even get to the river and start huffing and puffing my raft into life, I had a real cross-country route down to it. Across cactus and through thorns, the route took me up and mesa, over it, and then down the side. There wasn't a human path, but there was a very good game trail.

The heat and still of mid-morning was broken by a snort at one point, and I looked up to see a pair of wild horses some thirty yards away. That would be the reason for the awesome game trail, I realized. They stood their ground. I had the familiar feeling of being in the presence of a large, majestic mammal who could kill me for a lark but probably wouldn't if I just kept my cool.

I did, they snorted some more, and then they cantered off into their 1970s Marlboro reality. I turned my attention back to the canyon wall, picking my way down one footstep at a time until I'd dropped down a thousand very rocky feet to a little flood plain. 

One of the harder aspects of crossing the Rio is getting to it. It is lined with a tough, willowy band of trees; at its current level, the water actually came up well past this barricade. I scanned the shore until I found a spot where a cliff dove down to the water, keeping the waterline clear.

How do you cross a river in a pack raft? I must admit that if there's a special skill, I do not possess it. I just blew up the boat, assembled the paddle, tossed my pack in, and floated out into the swift, warm, milky-green current. A video of the crossing would no doubt be dramatic and something to show the grandkids, but I was frankly too nervous to remember to turn my phone on. So my wordsmithery will have to suffice: 

I paddled like fuck.

Once on the opposite shore, I couldn't find a clear spot to get out, so ended up hopping out of the raft into chest-deep water and bashing a way through the brush, towing the raft behind me. Again, I was too adrenalized to take a picture, but this gives you the idea:

 

Finally up on the other bank and now in Bandelier National Monument, I packed the raft,  stowed the paddle, and started looking for the path that my map showed leading up out of the canyon. To my surprise, it existed -- a very well-made, switchbacked trail led up the canyon wall. At one point, someone had expended a lot of energy building that trail, but now it was choked with growth and dead falls; clearly abandoned, now just a testament to another time. Well, that and my ticket forward.

Up top I took a shot of the canyon.

 

My path took me along a narrow ridge with deep canyons on either side. Towards the head of the canyons, I passed the ancient Yapashi Pueblo, now just a series of low stone walls. The weather had turned cool, and rain clouds popped over the main ridge to my north. What was it like to shelter in these stone houses during a thunderstorm, I wondered. Well, one couldn't beat the view, anyway.

Just a mile further, another ruin: the Stone Lions Shrine. As the name implies, this stone shrine contains two carved stone lion statues. If the Pueblo had given me a sensation of "huh, interesting," the stone lions framed by looming grey thunderheads had a more "let's not get cursed by the ancient dieties of a lost civilization" vibe. I mentally implored the statues not to have their living cousins hunt me for a snack and walked on.

After collecting my first good water of the trip (goodbye, cow-and-soda water!), I climbed back up into a mesa's shoulder to sleep. 

First day at school

May 13

I was too nervous to eat any of the free breakfast at our motel. I think low consumption rates are a design goal of those gross hotel waffles anyway. Lily and I each snagged a cup of their labor-camp coffee, and she drove me down to the Historic Plaza in Sante Fe. 

Time to start the NNML -- the Northern New Mexico Loop, a 500-mile-ish route designed by trail auteur Brett Tucker. It starts (and finishes) in Sante Fe, crossing the Rio Grande twice, hanging out with the CDT for about 100 miles, then strolling down the Sangre de Christos in it's way back to the aforementioned Historic Plaza. I wanted to hike some desert, and I wanted to avoid the crowds I saw last summer on the PCT. Well, I thought, here's a trail no one's heard of yet!

We kissed goodbye and she snapped a quick picture of me with the green lawn of the plaza behind. We had a quick first-day-at-school check (did I have enough snacks?). Then she drove away, leaving me to my own devices. 

 

I promptly got lost. It never ceases to amaze me about myself: Drop me in a canyon or on a ridge, and I can always get from A to B, but in an unfamiliar urban environment, I cannot tell which way is up.

Several tense moments with Google later, I was on the correct road out of Sante Fe. Architecturally, colonial yielded to quaint to quirky to Burger King in about half a mile. The route had me scoot past people's back yards and along an trashed-out arroyo, then through a parking lot to a nondescript trailhead into some open space. Up and over that hill, then up and over another, Sante Fe dropping into the distance below and the snowy Sangre de Christos in the distance to the East. Hope they melt out before I get there.

I passed a bank of mailboxes and things started to get less distinct, trailwise. This was something I had been anticipating: this route has a fair amount of hiking along deserted jeep trails, abandoned single-track and arroyos. And then there's the actual cross-country, where you just take a heading and make your way.

This wasn't full-on cross country. More like I was following a path beaten down by someone who chose to drive their truck in an arroyo in 1978. Like you could tell someone had driven there, it's just that they hadn't left a useful track for you.

This two-track wove in and out with others across open lands, through the backyards of a fancy residential neighborhood, and finally over to my first water source, Headquarters Well.

Which, as it turns out, was way too gross to take water from. Like choked with lime-green algae stagnant brown trough gross. I've drank plenty of gross water, including a lot in NM, but I decided to tough it out. Just up and over that next mesa was 1200 Foot Well.

Which was also a very gross cattle trough choked with lime-green algae. But this time I was out of water, and the sun was nudging toward the horizon. I went for it, sharing the trough with a skittish young brown cow.

The water tasted like baking soda and a bovine locker room, but it was going to keep me healthy, and I was quite grateful for that. A couple miles later I popped up the tarp and lay myself down. 

It was on fire when we got here

July 1

I awoke crisp and bright, the plan for an epic day ready-formed in my mind. Breakfast, breaking camp, and striding out into this new sunshine I'd been given was all that I could ask for. 

And so I rolled out the morning like a piece of pie dough, slowing to stare at the towering spires of rock and then speeding back up again. There are those days, my favorite days, when the miles are like a ball of yarn you've tossed down a slope. Your body ceases to be a cage and and becomes a sleek vehicle; your mind stops chewing the cud and reliving the past and just coolly observes the glory of the world.
Yes, these are glorious days. Days of enlightenment. Days during which you are so overly self-satisfied with how blissed-out you have become that you leave your water filter someplace and suddenly come to the grim realization that you're about to be out of water and there's nary another hiker in sight from whom you could borrow a filter or purification solution.
Huh.
Shit.
Well, I reasoned, better to drink some "live" water than no water at all. That's what I like to call untreated water when I drink it: "Live water." It's not a term I invented, but I do think it's a pretty clever rebranding of "non-potable water." Makes it seem like perhaps the bacteria and protozoa in there are new, beneficial probiotics.
Who knows, I thought to myself as I filled my Platypus with water from a little mountain stream. It's probably fine. It's not like there are that many things living up here on these alpine meadows that could shit in this water.
And on cue, a marmot stuck his insolent little head up and chirped at me. Screw you, buddy.

Thusly dispirited and brought back to the reality of my existence -- nasty, brutish, and potentially about to center around diarrhea -- I hiked down to Carson Pass.
I had great hopes for a yogi here. No, not a guided stretching instructor with vague spiritual aspirations, but an opportunity to "yogi," that is, charmingly panhandle for food and/or beer in the fashion of Yogi Bear scheming on a picnic basket. But there were few vehicles stopping as the dusk grew dim, and they were primarily big pickups and shiny BMWs -- not very good prospects. I shuffled on.

So I punched up over a notch in the ridge separating the highway from the wilderness beyond. There was a pleasant drop down into the canyon on other side. I couldn't see any sign of other campers, but I smelled smoke. There were people somewhere down there, and I intended to ask for the use of their filter.

I found camp at a stream crossing underneath a broad, sheltering pine. Just on the other side of the creek was the source of the smoke: Two boys, or perhaps they'd just crossed over into the territory of young men, were huddled next to the sad black remains of their fire. I recognized immediately that they had committed the cardinal sin of no-trace camping: They a had made a new fire ring.
Or rather, they had failed to make a new fire ring; they had just made a fire scar on the flat, grassy ground. But you know, it's bad form to scold people when you plan on begging them for the use of their water filter, so I simply said hello and prevailed upon their kindness. They regarded me with a little fear and shame, clearly cognizant of their crime.
But we both let it pass. I didn't want to chew them out, and they wouldn't have had mich to say in their own defense -- after all, it hadn't been on fire when they got there.

Goodbye, sublime bullshit

June 30

It was cold and damp in the trees I'd chosen for my tentsite, but I heard my new friend Owl clanking around in his impromptu cafe at the picnic area just yards away. I had no way of knowing that this meant coffee, but my keen addict's intuition told me to go invetsigate. It was enough to impel my sore body up and out of the tent a la Nospheratu rising out of his coffin; my legs jolted me over to the table, wide-eyed and vacant of mind.

My guess was correct.
And not just coffee, but dripper cones and a stove to boil water; I could make a pour-over here. This is a pretty big deal to a professional coffee nerd like myself. I have come to expect much less and be happy with it. Percolators, Mr. Coffees, ancient Bunn-o-Matics from the civil rights era, I will drink it all when I want a cup of coffee. In college, there was a commonly told joke that pizza was like sex, because in both cases, even when it was bad, it was still pretty good. This joke is, I have to say, the worst compound lie I was told in all my years of schooling. However, when you really want a cup of coffee, there is almost no such thing as a bad cup.

Anyway, I know, too much coffee nerdery. He left me to make myself a cup of coffee, which I eagerly did, using a heroic dose of ground coffee to do so. The result was ink-black, bitter, dark-roasted Peet's coffee. A related result was me going through the same process of rejuventation that happens to Popeye when he eats a can of spinach. I stuck a piece of chocolate cake in my mouth, leapt to my pack, wished everyone a great day, excellent day, toodles, and scurried off to the trail with the grace of a frightened cat.

Cake and strong coffee had an effect on my metabolism similar to pouring gasoline on a fire and then deciding to go ahead and also put in that stick of dynamite you'd found at the swap meet. I was sugar high. I mean like really high, like illicit-drug high. The trail seemed to be obliging me by flattening, widening, and generally becoming easier to hike. My one remaining trekking pole was tucked into my pack, leaving me to concentrate on my legs and feet. Flying over dirt, careening off boulders, executing antics while hopping across streams. I was making killer time and I knew it. 

The funny thing was that as the sugar and caffeine ebbed, the trail continued to improve. There were no mosquitoes to speak of, either. I looked back across the pass below to the mountains behind. Clothed in brilliant white ice and funereal grey, they seemed to hold some sublime truth. Only that truth seemed to be one which I couldn't quite absorb it. It kept getting stuck in my throat. I saw not just bold, raggedly cut beauty, but also felt the wet seep of mud into my shoes, the annoying throb of bodily danger when crossing ice, and the way the mosquitoes hit my face like confetti.
I love adventure, but in a very important sense, adventure is not what my PCT is about. It's about the miles and the open country. I come here to do big days, see lots of light, feel my mind bleach out in the constant sun and physical labor. That back there? Yeah, it was sublime, glad to have done it. 

Looking back at the Southern Sierra... screw that (glorious) noise

But goodbye, sublime BS. I'll take this PCT that winds it's way in and out. This trail of wildflowers and dust sloping ridges in the distance. No, the angles of the peaks are not so sharp, but the curves of the valleys invite the eye to rest in a way that the High Sierra cannot.

Mostly, I was happy for good trail.

Accordingly, I pounded out the miles. Ten miles, fifteen, twenty.
Sometimes the trail serves flashbacks. I suddenly remembered taking a break with the Croat, perched on our packs in these meadows of green grassy flowers and red dirt. Another turn and I was thinking about what a funny man he was, what a good trail companion. My mind was running reels of footage believed long-lost, all the way back to my childhood with Dan Mikesell, and my first encounters with a natural world kind enough to let my brain do its own thing. I didn't have to think about where my next step was going to land; it was all good trail. And that day good trail meant it was all good.

It was well after sunset when I finally slowed down and started scouting for a campsite. I found one hidden in a stand of junipers on a small lip of land above a lake. There was a majestic stone fireplace and enough wood for a week, so I made my first fire of the trip while dining on instant noodles. The fire burnt down to coals with minutes of the last bite being shoveled into my mouth. I doused the coals and let my mind extinguish itself, wrapped in my bag and covered by my tent. 

Snap June 29

June 29

I awoke to once again find my entourage awaiting me at the door. Before allowing my adoring public access, I packed up as much of my pack as I could, then slipped out. I was dressed in my "mosquito spacesuit" -- headnet, rainjacket, long pants -- and my shoes were soaked. Get me the hell out of here.
Munching pop tarts and hurriedly slurping tea, I regarded the surroundings as I was trotting by: Swampy buff-colored rock outcroppings. Swampy dark green forest. Verdant, very swampy meadows. The ridges on either side of the canyon I inhabited did not look swampy, but one could not be sure without crossing more swamplands to check.
There was only one solution: Forward progress. I needed out of this alpine bog in the worst way. Out of here and into... what? A place of better drainage?
It's a low standard, I thought, but there you go.
Basically, I needed out of Yosemite.

Goodbye Yosemite, you crumbum!

I got my wish, as the trail shot straight north up the canyon, then past the inviting shores of a swamp named Dorothee Lake. At the head of the valley, I crossed into another watershed and saw, buried in the snow, the sign of my release and relief: I was out of the national park and into Hoover Wilderness.
Before me rose a very different kind of range. Slopes of porous volcanic rock and scree surrounded pinnacles of uneroded stone. I knew from experience that this softer, more porous stone held less water and wasn't as likely to form glacial lakes. From a nature photographer's point of view, I suppose that's bad, but for me, it meant good drainage.
Just a mile or two past the border, I walked past the 1,000 mile mark. Good stuff, I thought. Then, quite quickly, I was walking up Kennedy Canyon and onto the volcanic ridge that leads to Sonora Pass (where Highway 108 crosses the trail). The sloped were open, the views astounding. I could see storms building up thirty miles to my east, and the green grasses and rust-red stone were accented by bright yellow flowers.
Still quite a bit of snow, though. Couple challenging fields on the way up to the ridge -- but I've done worse, I thought. The snow's consistency was really challenging -- melted soft as a Slurpee on the surface by the day's heat, but too dense and firm underneath to kick steps easily.  It was two steps forward, another sideways, some slapstick-banana-peel moments, another step. And then: >snap<
I looked down. My beloved Gossamer Gear trekking pole had sunk deep into the snow and snapped as I tried to pull it back out.
My heart sank and my anger rose. These poles are the epitome of grace and joy as tools; I would not choose to hike with any others. Knife enthusiasts talk about specific blades as being balanced, or seeming to belong in your hand. That describes my relationship to these poles. They were also, coincidentally, very out of stock. It took a huge effort on both Lily and my part to replace the tips at Vermillion Valley Resort. And I had broken it going through one of my last snowfields.
I raged. Raged against the PCT for the routing, which seems to take a tour of every patch of snow remaining on the slopes. I raged at myself for breaking the pole, although i am unsure what I could have done differently. For good measure, I went ahead and got pissed at the useless, enormous bear can I was still lugging around.
Cursing and flailing with one pole, I slipped and stumbled down the loose dirt and slushy snow to the road. But upon reaching the pass, my spirits got the much needed boost: Somebody had set up an impromptu cafe at the picnic area at the pass. Two somebodies, it turned out: Owl, who gave me cookies and a beer, and iPod, who gave me two hot dogs to add to my noodle dinner. I'm not trying to brag, but the Knorr Teriyaki Pasta Side pairs quite well with hot dogs and lukewarm beer. My fuel cartridge ran out, but Owl let me use his. They took my trash, including my tragically broken pole.
I felt almost whole again. It isn't all bad luck, I thought. I can hike without a pole. Well past dark, I and a few other stragglers left the cafe and set up camp in some trees near the highway.

True love in the corduroy canyons June 28

June 28

I had chosen a campsite in some rocks up to the left of the trail. This had some distinct advantages: Slightly fewer mosquitoes than in the crowded trailside campspot, below. I had privacy, not that I had anything to engage in that required it -- it's not like I was washing or anything. But the little nook I'd found between huge boulders was comforting and snug in the fashion of an outlaw's last redoubt.
But nothing's free in this life, and my hideout had the disadvantage that I had serious trouble finding my way back out. Hiking in exhausted after dark appeared to have had the same effect on me as a blindfold during pin the tail on the donkey. I walked down off the rock outcropping in one direction and found a stream and a eager fan club of thousands of mosquitoes: Nope. Returning to the campsite, I used the sun as a compass, which made me feel proud of being a Boy Scout but also told me nothing, because I had no idea what direction I needed to go in.
I eventually lucked onto the trail and started the engine. Legs up, legs down, breath in, breath out. The trail started climbing up and down in an erratic fashion, diving in and out of canyons. These were not like the epic, 3,500-foot ascents and descents of the Sierras. They were quick jabs of elevation, episodic, sporadic, but always there. Our quest for mountain enlightenment had been replaced with high intensity interval training. No longer did John Muir perch on my shoulder muttering about the range of light; this was Richard Simmons country.

People fetishize Yosemite. Lots and lots of tourists from other countries come to see America, and when they want to see the beauty of the west, they take a bus to Yosemite. But honestly, when it comes to this part of the park, it's not easy to see what the hubbub is about. True, it is green trees and grass, black soil and grey rock, white snow and blue sky. But all of those elements have been diced up into small portions and scrambled together into a swamp. The trail bolts up and down like an ant over wide-wale corduroy. It's a wilderness of half measures.
Yes, sad but true, I suspect the northwest backcountry of Yosemite has inspired very little poetry. My ant metaphor may be the grandest homage to date. 

More probably, it inspired the formulation of DEET. Because those mosquitoes? They are real, man. Very real. "Fierce," "implacable" and "siege mentality" are the words that most readily comes to mind in this context. It's hard to convey the phenomenon without having you, dear reader, out to experience it yourself; it's kind of one of those things you must experience to comprehend, and yet simultaneously have no desire to experience. 

I wore long sleeves and long pants all day, although it is really too hot for such attire. I'd place your headnet on, same reasoning. Before eating, which requires removing the headnet, I'd apply DEET to my face. Ah, but when I lifted the veil, a mosquito -- probably like the Olympic gymnastics gold medal winner of her swamp -- manages to dart in and land on your eyelid, a place you cannot use DEET. I now had to drop my food to swipe at her, compounding my anguish.

All day it's like this up here.

There's no real use in getting upset about it, though. I try not to expend mental energy becoming incensed at the LITTLE DAMN THINGS AHHHH. Instead, I try to reframe them. For years, I tried to think about them as weather. Sleet is awful to hike in, yet I do not rage at sleet. No point. Aren't mosquitoes just like sleet?
No, because sleet isn't possessed of an evil intelligence. 

So I have taken this exercise in reframing one step further. I have decided that what mosquitoes are is love. And not just any love; mosquito love is the truest love. Some people will love you for your looks, others for your wit. But the love of a mosquito for a hairless mammal is an eternal love, a love for the ages. 

Love.
Some will die for it. Other will kill for it. Still others will be forced to wait outside my tent all night just for a chance at it. These little ladies I call my "entourage." They follow me wherever I go, just steps behind me. Do I take a swim in a lake? They will wait at the shore. They're dying to talk to me, whisper in my ear, fly into my mouth and die in that rank, peanut-butter-scented cave. I did not ask for this fame, my friends.

My escape that night involved a hasty, eyelid-swatting dinner and a campsite once again up in some rocks next to a long, damp, green swale and a thin ribbon of creek. True happiness for me was shutting the screen door on my tent. The star shuts the limo door, peace reigns, and the blood meals are over for the night.