Better Days
Bit of a pickle. Four hours into the climb, I stumble on a downed log hidden in snow and tumble into what seems a bottomless drift. Roll a few times. Come to a stop. No avalanche and I can breathe, so that’s good. Snow all around me. Snow up my jacket. Cold. Laying on my back, snowshoes pointing skyward, one pole still wrapped around my hand, the other who knows where. This would be a good place for a chuckle.
The weekends are the hardest. The work days come and go, filled with challenge and opportunity. And people. The challenges get turned into opportunities and the people carry the community forward. I help where I can. There are more lucrative, and less lucrative, professions. There are easier, and more difficult, gigs. I’m enamored of the profession and don’t see much point in complaining about the gig. Or any gig I’ve ever had, for that matter. It keeps me productive, and that’s a blessing.
The FOS is a blessing too, of sorts. Is it a shed with a cot and a hotplate? Or is it a music-filled cottage, heated by a fireplace, nestled in a forest? Perspective matters, and helps to keep the gloom away. As much as perspective matters and the music helps, it doesn’t fill the void of solitude. Nearly two years in and I’ve never spent an entire day - not even once - at the Fortress of Solitude. There’s a few technical / logistical reasons but the real reason is it ain’t home and it never will be so … leave. Every. Single. Day.
Last weekend it was the joy of an Arizona hike with Amanda and this weekend it is the cold hell of a solitary Oregon slog. Never seen Crater Lake and I have three days to kill, so let’s go. Being alone in the wild seems normal. At least, far more normal than what passes for this epoch of my life. Make some basic preparations and head north.
Crater Lake National Park receives forty to fifty feet of snow in a typical year. Seventy feet was the record. So the normal person, who sees the “Road Closed” sign, would figure these guys probably know something about snow, and would not venture upward. But I have three days to kill, and driving here only takes one day. That leaves two more days to … I should probably stop using the word “kill” in this story.
4:00 AM and 37 degrees in a down mountain parking lot, after sleeping in the Jeep. A few donuts and sorting through the pack before heading up to a below-freezing trailhead. Make it light, because uphill is hard. Make it survivable if multiple things go wrong, because winter, high-elevation solo backcountry is no joke. Make it light. Fill it with what you need to survive. The zen of a backpack. At 4:00 AM and, now, 36 degrees.
Suit up at the 29 degree trailhead and make final preparations. Four tech-bros drive up in a Land Rover and want to see the sun rise at Crater Lake. Probably sounded like a good idea, last night in Cupertino. No showshoes. No cross-country skis. Just boots. No map. Some GPS thing. There’s no way they are going to make it. They ask if they can follow me. “Free country, sure”.
Two of them turn back in thirty minutes. The other two last two hours.
Would have been handy to have one of them here, now. With a rope. A deep breath followed the chuckle and then the laughing stopped when I reached my hand down into the snow to push myself back up. Nothing to push against. Who knows how much snow but there’s no solid ground I can touch. Early in the season and the snow hasn’t compacted enough to support my weight. Alone. In a crevasse, acting like quick sand. Along a trail of snowshoe prints that won’t last eight hours in the wind. Bit of a pickle.
Were it not for the Quad City Times, I’d be raking leaves today, and Marcia would have some warm cookies ready when I came in. The life you want and the life you have only get paired up again if you get out of this mess. Forget the cold. Forget the four hours of breaking trail tired. Think.
4:00 AM Jeep zen to the rescue. Wrestle the pack off, and pull out a not too heavy to take with small tarp. Would have been used with my bivvy sack for shelter if need be, but can also be used to distribute my weight. Unclamp the snowshoes, cinch them over the pole, and rest the package over the folded tarp for weight distribution. Wrestle with the contraption a bit, and it starts to work. Kinda like at work when I pretend to be an engineer.
And thus, the crux of the climb. One more hard hour heading up to the crater rim that is its own Fortress of Solitude on this frosty day. No one, for miles. In the panorama of cold, I have two (below-freezing) cookies and some slushy water. Some November day. Next year? The one thereafter? The cookies will be warm, again.
11/12/17
