Scary, beautiful time in the Sierras
Posted by unbrand on 4 October 2002 | 0 Comments
Sibylle and I just got back from a backpacking trip in the Sequoia National Park. Beautiful scenery, warm weather, no mosquitos, no crowds, nothing but late summer goodness in the mountains. Well, after all our planning, including checking weather forecasts, we got spanked by nature.
While hiking to Redwood Meadow from Timber Gap Jucnction (elev. 7500 ft.), we ran into a hailstorm. We didn’t even know it was a hailstorm until I saw the rain bouncing off a rock. At that altitude, rain bouncing off a rock doesn’t seem too weird. At least, no weirder than the other auditory and visual non-drug-induced hallucinations I’d seen in the past 48 hours.
But this was different, because Sibylle saw the bouncing rain, too. Ok, it’s not a hallucination. “Let’s just wait this out in the redwood here.” So we waited inside a fire-damaged redwood for the hailstorm to pass. Our packs and us (and probably a few of our friends could have) fit comfortably inside this redwood.
So we wait it out then walk on. We start noticing a faint drizzle of rain. And lots of loud planes going by overhead. Sibylle and I wonder aloud if we’re officially at war now with Iraq again. We both get nauseous at the prospect of the planes overhead going off to crimianlize someone we used to help (refer to Manuel Noriega and Daddy Bush for the original game plan) so we can have more oil.
Anyway, it starts raining harder, and we take temporary shelter under a tree and have lunch. Only problem is that now, instead of just rain, it’s mixed with snow. And the sky is black. And there’s really loud thunder that’s getting closer and closer and scaring the living shit out of us but we’re too dumbfounded to make sense out of the situation because it’s changed so rapidly and now FUCK if we continue to Redwood Meadow we’ll end up spending an extra day here and we don’t know if it’s going to snow more and if we go back we have another 3 fucking hours of hiking through this storm not to mention and JESUS look how much snow has accumulated since we’ve been freaking out about the storm and wait a second, those weren’t planes we heard earlier, that was the storm and DAMN it’s getting louder and closer!
So we decide to head back to camp from the previous night. Our gear is wet. We are wet. The forecast said sun. We’re trudging back to camp in a snowstorm at 7000 feet on October 1st. Now there’s about 4 inches of snow on the ground. It was lightly raining about an hour ago. Putting on a brave face, I tell Sibylle everything will be fine, then I look down and see bear tracks in the snow. After about 30 seconds of contemplation, I figured out that the bear made the tracks in the snow, and the snow didn’t exist an hour ago, so the bear must be not too far off. There’s nothing like the feeling of panic of being in remote wilderness with no other people within miles and being unprepared for a snowstorm and knowing there’s a big-ass and probably hungry bear nearby.
So we make it back to camp. I try for a long time to make a fire, but the wood’s too wet. We go to bed early, very cold and very wet. Long time in the tent, very little sleep. Mostly thoughts of how the hell to make it over Timber Gap in one day with the trail all covered with snow.
The next day we wake up to the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen. You read about this in nature books and you hear of other people expericencing this, and you still can’t believe your eyes. The most pristine winter scene imaginable. We took some pictures, but it still doesn’t do it justice. So we put on our frozen boots and begin the climb out.
2800 feet up, then 2000 feet down to the car. That’s the day’s agenda. The trail is completely covered in snow. I thought there would be maybe 2 or 3 inches of snow on the trail. Turns out it was more like 12-18 inches of snow.
There are 3 rules we learned about finding the trail in the snow. One, look for a path that has a slight indentation from the snow around it. Two, look for an area that has no vegetation sticking up. Three, follow the animals’ trails. The animal trails are deceptive though, because they’ll stay on the path for awhile, then veer off for no good reason. That’s where rules 1 and 2 come in.
So we made it up and over Timber Gap, following the rules above. 8 hours of hiking over 5.5 miles in snow. Thoughts of John Muir and the settlers came to mind and we were thankful that we had our high-tech clothing and walking poles, even though we were unprepared for snow.
The biggest thing going through my mind overall was a sense of gratitude. Gratitude for being with the one I love, for being able to make it through a tough time, and gratitude for seeing nature at her best: scary, beautiful.