Fur Trail: Sierra Crossing: Day Two (10/31)

I had to chew on my toothbrush to work the ice out of it, and had to pour boiling water on my boots to thaw them before they fit right. Dawn had broken, but mountains to the east still shadowed my camp. I knelt by the stove to boil water for oatmeal and boot-thawing. My fingers were stiff, and it hurt to spark the lighter. I wondered how long it would take for the sun to climb above the mountains and shine directly on me.

I was camped in a grassy flat along Return Creek. After crossing over the 11,000-foot saddle yesterday, I had descended the other side to Summit Lake, mostly without a trail. Finding your own way in mountainous terrain is not easy because you must almost always choose a route without being able to see it all. Invariably, trees, hills, or dips in the terrain obscure areas where you’ll be walking. You can only hope that those areas are passable. Additionally, if you’re limited as to the steepness of grades you can climb – if, for instance, you’re a Georgian hiking through Sierran snow with a 60-70 pound pack – you’ve got to judge the grade of a uniformly white slope from afar. For a novice like me, that’s hard. The net result of these difficulties is that in my own off-trail navigation, I resembled a ball in a pinball machine, bouncing off various obstacles and reversing course until, as if by luck, I made it through.

So it was with great relief that I had found a deep-rutted trail on the north side of Summit Lake. I had followed the trail alongside the lake, out of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and into the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park, happy to trade the adventure of stamping new footprints in the snow for the predictability of following where others had passed. The lakeside trail was level and clear and I had the sensation of moving rapidly with almost no effort, as though I were being propelled forward on greased ball bearings. I could walk like this forever, I thought giddily. Duke had trotted ahead of me, tail high and wagging. At the Park’s edge a sign proclaimed that dogs were not allowed, hikers were required to have “Wilderness Permits,” and firearms were prohibited. I had left my revolver in the truck, I reflected pleasantly, which meant I was batting over .300. Duke peed on the sign, and I stopped to take a picture.

That had been yesterday afternoon, when the sun was shining and the air comparatively warm. At my creekside campsite, I sipped tea as I waited for the sunlight to burst over the mountain and warm my chilled hands. When sunlight struck I would strip down to my hiking clothes and get back on that wonderful, unmistakable Yosemite trail.

The joy and pain of hiking is hard to recount, because the sensations reside in uncountable repetition and gradual revelation. There is no single step on which your quadriceps start to burn, only a mounting ache that builds as you walk; there is no crescendo at which the weight of your pack jerks you backward, only the persistent tug of its straps as you tick off tenths of miles. There is no moment of glory when you defy your desk-weakened legs to reach your destination; no gravity-defeating moment when you overcome the weight of your pack. Those victories come slowly, step by step. It is determination, not flash, that prevails.

With the sun came welcome heat, and as I stuffed my sleeping bag, I felt hot in my long johns, wool shirt, and double layers of fleece. I stripped down to my hiking tee shirt and a jacket, shouldered my pack and buckled it around my waist. I picked up Duke’s pack – it had worn sores behind his front legs, so I would carry it today – and walked to the trail.

The trail led alongside Return Creek, descending gently through a red fir forest where sunlight filtered through the canopy and snow was relegated to intermittent patches. The scent of pine pervaded the air and the fallen needles were soft beneath my boots. The buckle on one of my snowshoes, which was now strapped to the side of my pack, tapped against the snowshoe’s plastic body in metronomic time. Gradually my right bicep began to ache from holding Duke’s pack. I draped it across my left arm instead. The buckle tapped in time with folk songs that my father had taught me when I was a boy. Let me tell a story, I can tell it all / About the mountain boy who hauled illegal alcohol / His Daddy made the whiskey, the boy he hauled the load / And when his engine roared they called the highway Thunder Road . . . The trail entered a broad meadow, tawny grass filling an oblong patch where the pines bowed away. The stream tarried in the sun, its path veering capriciously from one side of the meadow to the other. It burrowed out its bank in one place, widening its turn to ludicrous proportions; in another it cut through a narrow band of earth and sawed an oxbow into obscurity. The buckle tapped against the snowshoe. And there was thunder, thunder, over Thunder Road / Thunder was his engine and white lightning was his load / And there was moonshine, moonshine, to quench the devil’s thirst / The law, they swore they’d get him but the devil got him first . . . The trail left the creek and climbed among light gray granite boulders. Lodgepole pines, smaller than the stately red firs but equally erect, began to supplant their larger brethren. I switched Duke’s pack back to my right arm. A rocky precipice nearby afforded a view of the forest below; a rocky precipice in the distance left a stream with nowhere to go except into the late autumn air, where it tumbled whitely into the green forest below. An ache developed in my left knee, high and just behind the kneecap. The buckle kept tapping. On the first of April, nineteen fifty-four / The federal man sent word he’d better make his run no more / He had two hundred agents, spread throughout the state / Whichever road he took, he said, they’d catch him sure as fate . . . The trail descended now, switchbacking along a granite face. The quartz of the rock glittered in the sun, and I ran my fingers along the cool, bumpy rock. Below was the sound of rushing water. A breeze drifted up the canyon. The trail kept descending, my knee kept aching, the buckle kept tapping. Son, his Daddy told him, make this run your last / The tank’s filled up with hundred-proof; your car’s tuned up and gassed / Now, don’t take any chances; if you can’t get through / I’d rather have you back again than all that mountain dew. At the bottom of the canyon the trail reached the Tuolumne River where a tributary lept over a granite wall to join it. The tributary’s waters broke apart in their race to the Tuolumne and poured across the wet rock in three distinct white streams like the billowing beards of three old men. I switched Duke’s pack to the other arm. The waterfall roared as I crossed the river on a well-built bridge and started the ascent on the other side, my knee hurting in earnest now. The buckle of my snowshoe kept tapping. But there was thunder, thunder, over Thunder Road / Thunder was his engine and white lightning was his load / And there was moonshine, moonshine, to quench the devil’s thirst / The law, they swore they’d get him but the devil got him first . . .

As I stared into the campfire’s coals that night, my left leg outstretched in front of me and my wet socks draped across the rocks that formed my fire ring, I wondered again why I was doing this. Duke’s head rested on my thigh. It was hard to know. I wondered what tomorrow would bring.