Rob, I know it’s not really your fault. I think you’re awesome. I didn’t understand why you had to tell me that you were leaving for a week trip in the Collegiates when I told you about my trip to GMNP; now you understand that when you say “one week,” I hear “57.68 pounds of water.” But you’re still my inspiration.
So I’m at my “oh, shit” moment on the trail, wondering how I’m going to continue to carry this much weight up that big a climb, and the logical thing to do is continue to reduce the load by drinking a pound or so of water. A pound sounds like a lot of water to drink, but it makes surprisingly little difference to the load you’re carrying.
I surprised myself on the way up when I realized my heart was pounding. Not beating really fast–pounding, like it used to do when you were a little kid and you’d run around playing and then you thought your heart was going to explode when you finally stopped. “Cool!,” I thought, “this reminds me of my childhood,” until I remembered that I am 55 years old and was perhaps having a heart attack. There was definitely a feeling of accomplishment when I made it to the top of that ridge, so I celebrated by drinking some more water.
My plans were pretty fluid at this point, limited only by my inability to walk any farther. When I’d checked in at the Park Visitor Center, the ranger had told me that I’d have the entire backcountry to myself (you have to obtain a Backcountry Permit, so they know pretty much who’s in there most of the time). You need to let the rangers know your itinerary, but at this point I figured I could go anywhere I pleased; it pleased me to stop at the first designated camping area. As I suppose most people do, my first act upon arriving at Pine Top was to take off my pack and sit down. Once I’d recovered a bit, I decided to walk around, see if I couldn’t find a more perfect spot to pitch my tent. After about 10 minutes of checking out the possibilities–in an act so typical of me that I now find it hilarious every time I do it–I spent the next half-hour trying to find the spot where I’d left my pack, food, water, and shelter as the sun began to set.
Once the tent is pitched, there’s not a lot else to do up there at first other than seeing how much water you have left. I was disappointed to find that a third of my load was already gone, while my pee was about the color of spicy brown mustard, so hydration was going to be an issue. I figured now was the time to think through the problem for future reference, because I probably wouldn’t give a shit once this was all over. I tried writing this down in my tent that night, but when I tried to roll onto my stomach to write, my feet would cramp; then when I tried to roll onto my back my hands would cramp into claws. So here goes: if multiple nights in Big Bend or GMNP are the goal, then you’ve got to pack with only that goal in mind. That means Step (3) is water. Food gets reduced to a “sundry;” nothing that needs hot water added to it. You can live on energy bars for 3 days, although you might not poop for a week or so.
Sunsets are beautiful up high in West Texas. You share them generally with flies, but these were really cool flies. I’ve never seen such a variety, none of which bit. They remind you that Nature abhors a place to sit. Rob, you’ve spent a lot of time outdoors, so you tell me if I’m wrong: in Nature, you will never find a spot truly flat enough, of the right height, not swarming with ants or covered in sharp little rocks, upon which to comfortably sit and watch a sunset while you swat flies. You have to stand there, and after a while you sort of start to wish the sun would just go ahead and get it over with so you can go in your tent to escape the flies, but you know the big finale is coming so you stick it out. It’s always worth the wait. And then it gets cold, really fast.
So then you’re lying in your tent, looking up at the flies trapped between your tent and the tent fly (I just realized why it’s called that!). You have a lot of time to think about just how stupid flies are. I also wondered how you manage to take whiskey on your trips, because at that point I was figuring it also weighed around 8.24 lbs/gallon. Priorities, I suppose.
I was up with the sun and ready to continue the next morning. I awoke a little disappointed in myself, because my favorite thing to do out west is to get up in the middle of the night and look at the stars. You really feel like you’re walking on a distant planet at night on a mountaintop surrounded by that many stars. But I didn’t want to wake up the 20 or so flies still trapped above my tent, so I just opened my eyes a little at some point and stared up through the mesh.
I spent a bit before starting off again, trying to calculate how far I could go on the water left, thinking a step or two ahead and looking at the map for alternatives so I’d be sure to not only get where I wanted to go, but get back. But mostly I thought about how you’ve done these incredible walks, hundreds of miles, days on end. Even knowing that you didn’t always need to carry all your water, I don’t know how many times I said to myself “how the heck did he do that?” I don’t think I really appreciated what an incredible accomplishent all you’ve done has been until now.
My Name is SCHOOLS 