04.14.13 - 11:45 am

DAY 4

i lost the map.

the plastic, tired map we had been using so regularly was now missing. its spacious netted pouch on my backpack was empty. son of a bitch.

our morning started with grays and whites. overcast. after our gear was stowed, we continued to follow the snow shoer discovered yesterday. a lone walker. out in the middle of nowhere. fascinating to find these foot steps and wonder who made them. where they were going. why they were alone. how far had they traveled to get where we were? as mike and i followed them, we did so with a sense of relief that we were on the right track. this guy had to have come from a parking lot somewhere, right? but he (or she) obviously was not dragging a pulk. the footsteps would meander about, finding the steepest of inclines possible�..and then go up them. and we unquestionably followed him. straight up. straight down. it was exhausting. i was taking an oxygen break every ten steps. where was this guy headed? eventually it began to snow.
and snow hard.
mere moments passed and suddenly we were submersed in a fog of densely falling snow; and a growing fear that our foot step trail would be soon filled in and smoothed over by the wind. just as we feared, his trail vanished as we wandered blindly into a barren treeless expanse, stranding us. this would have been a good time to pull out the map. with no poles visible marking the road, no foot steps to follow outlining the trail, and no other signs of human activity to scour for direction, we turned to hunches and intuition. again.
eventually the clearing fell behind us and we trudged through increasingly dense forest. with the trees came the nearly vertical mountain slopes. and we enjoyed these for hours. our path on the tiny gps screen resembled just as one would imagine two lost hikers to make: mindless zig zags and wandering lines getting further and further from the image of the lake. we had no choice, really. huge canyons and steep ridges broke apart any linear trail we attempted to forge. we threaded through these wooden spires slowly and with difficulty. because of the angles, mikes pulk would constantly twist and tip over. countless times we would have to unharness our pulks, turn them over or free them from the grip of trees or branches before we could continue. there was a moment of sheer panic when the snowflake shaped end of my walking pole vanished, leaving me with only a needle like spear to continue on with. I'm sure mike rolled his eyes when he heard of my loss. certainly this was not going to make snow travel any easier. i hurriedly dug through three feet of snow where i had last seen it disappear and gratefully found it. kissed it. lovingly replaced it and continued on.
we tried to stay as close to the craters rim as possible however, most of this terrain was either cornices of certain death or imaginary pathways that lead straight up. mike was growing frustrated without the map. i filled more with shame and irritation as i had been the one in charge of this vital guide.
with only our unknown location in the middle of nowhere and the outline of crater lake provided by the gps, we had basically resigned ourselves that we would need to hike the miles to the main highway and hitch hike back to the lodge if we could not spontaneously find the trail. so we wandered. again dependent on our intuition. mike seemed to have a much more fine tuned instrument of direction than i did, because while i was certain i knew where i was going, i would surely have lead us to cannibalism and snow caves in retrospect.
facing steep impenetrable canyons or rocky cliff walls, we decided to head down from our location. we had been traveling across and up an endless ridge when the navigator decided down was now the best option. this was the most frustrating part of the journey. constantly angled into the side of the mountain. sleds swiveling downwards, their weight pulling me off my feet with every step. mike had it the worst: with his flimsy rope connections and shallow sled design, his pulk was impractical and useless over this steep, forested terrain. it would constantly flip over. he would either have to detach his poles and turn around to flip it and then reattach himself, or he would have to wait for me to catch up and flip it for him. naturally i would be two dozens steps behind him, waiting for my legs to fill back up with oxygen before i could continue. all of this was painfully time consuming. our morale was rapidly sapping. my own sled was more like a plow. instead of riding smoothly on top of the snow, it drudged through it like a barge. a barge going sideways.
i was starving. mike seemed to have lost any desire to consume food or liquid. when we did finally stop to eat, we froze. the temperature was very cold. i activated several hand warmers and kept them stuffed into the palms of my gloves, but they took forever to do anything. my cold, wet gloves. today i demanded a hot lunch, and it was an incredible reward for the anguish of our difficult travels thus far. but there is no time for prolonged enjoyment on crater lake; we had to keep moving before we ran out of body heat or daylight.
during the steepest part of our painful and gradual descent, mike and i crafted different methods for lowering our sleds. hiking wasn't going to cut it anymore, we had to just point down. he attempted some sort of reverse stair stepper, i tried the wheel barrow. my method seemed to make most sense, to me. my pulk in front of me, i would lean back and slowly lower the sled and navigate through all the trees. easy peasy. naturally my sled slipped from my grasp and swung free of the trail i had been forging and down the mountain it erupted, with a ferocious speed. for no apparent reason it exploded the contents of my gear which in turn also shot down the steep slopes like misfired rockets. sleeping bag. bag of apples. flask of fireball. sleeping bag mat. jacket. all now traveling downward in every direction well out of reach. if there was ever a time to face palm, this was it. and then i suddenly had to poop.

so with my gear spread all over the side of the mountain, i found a tree with a natural trough under it and started preparation for defecation: unzip blinding blue jacket. take off body odor saturated sweater. undo pant suspenders. unbutton pant. firmly press back into bark of tree and tolerate discomfort. grip wet wipes tightly. ignore the sting of cold on bare skin. concentrate. focus. think of porcelain. and then i pooped again. there was satisfaction in this production. and a healthy amount of excess material was removed from my body. don't tell anyone that i dropped my package of wet wipes directly into the drop zone.

so with an empty sled, i stumbled down the mountain, clumsily collecting my gear as i went. as hard as it had been snowing, all of my equipment was starting to get very wet. fortunately with some forethought, the important things (sleeping bag, spare jacket) were safely stowed and dry in my water proof sack. and then i heard my partner bellow deep into the canyon:

"i found the trail!"

oh thank god. there was something so draining about wandering aimlessly for hours amongst snow and trees. having to constantly remove your sled from between stumps. or flipping sleds over. or pulling a sled straight up a mountain. or trying to keep it straight behind you while traveling on slope. i detest the slope. i broke through the trees to see mike standing, filming my awkward decent. with my gear loose in my hands and an empty sled behind me i stepped foot on level ground. finally. what a relief to be able to stand and not lean. i carefully began to restow my gear with such a sense of content. we were on some form of road. maybe a service road, under several feet of snow of course. with as relieving as this was having found our sense of direction, this deep powdered snow was now going to completely wreck havoc on my body. my elbow had become increasing sore due to the heavy dependency on the poles and their impact with each step. my groin was inflames. my body needed a steak. maybe some hash browns. definitely a chocolate milkshake.

the untouched road carved a beautiful clearing for us to easily travel on. mike and i took turns leading, counting steps and pausing to break. after a time, some tracks spontaneously appeared. however these were not snow shoe tracks. these were not cross country ski tracks. these were�.shoe tracks. or maybe not even shoes. while we were on a service road of some sort, we were still incredibly remote from any main road or trail. miles and miles from any parking lot. and with how deep the snow was, there was no efficient way to travel this far out here without snow shoes. if someone was just out here walking with regular shoes on, they were absolutely crazy. it would have been exhausting. some might say even impossible. we would follow along these tracks for a mile or so. they would stay on the road, then cross to circle around a bush off to the side. then they would cross back and walk out into the forest and just continue on�.parallel to the road. at times we would walk right along side them. small, very deep foot prints. steeply angled with most of the weight towards the front of the step. obviously something bipedal. mike was certain it was some sort of animal. but, there is only one type of bipedal animal. I'm not saying there isn't another explanation for what they were, but they seemed very inhuman considering the circumstances and their behavior and how incredibly out in the middle of nowhere we found them. cue heebeegeebees.

no maps. no marker poles. no signs. we followed the road and just hoped it lead somewhere. hours of exhausted walking through forest, clearings, inclines and declines, cold air and snowfall would finally connect us to what we had spent all day after: the main trail. peppered with human activity. ski tracks and the deep scars of snow shoes and lined once again with narrow tree poles marking the road. finally back on track. this was an incredible blessing. lets camp and rest and eat.

however when it started to get dark and mike showed no indication of slowing down, deep inside i knew what was occurring. i was starving. eating energy bars had become like chewing paste. i had burned through my fruit roll ups. my pretzels were flavorless. the apricots were gross. all i wanted was some burger king. some french fries. 15 minutes to just sit and be warm. i think mike wanted these things too, only he was determined to get them tonight.

eventually the head lamps came on when the invisible sun set behind a sky covered in dense clouds. it was snowing again. it was cold. my legs were filled with sand. my groin was grinding metal on metal. the glow of mikes headlamp was always so far in front of me. i kept my footsteps inside the feet of those stepped before me as we marched right through the well used trails of previous snow shoes. we had been told to keep off the trails made by the cross country skiers, but at times they felt better to walk on so i had no problem destroying their dainty, almost invisible tracks with my hungry bulldozer steps.

i pulled back inside myself and became a mindless drone. my only goal was to keep moving forward. to continue stepping. eat snow for fuel. steady pace. head down. do not stop until mikes sled appears in front of you. eat the gross things out of the zip lock bags. breathe in tune with your steps. days could have been going by i was so focused.

twice my heart would stop when with the false hope of relief when mike would yell, "i see lights!"

lights. i hadn't seen anything man made in days. lights meant we were close to roads. houses. burger kings. lights were something so incredibly foreign to me at this point. the idea of electricity and homes with plumbing and roads and computers were all features of humanity that even after only a few days, their very existence became exciting. zomg lights!
these hopes were dashed of course, the lights were not the finish line i had been begging for. the endless trail merely ran parallel to some very large expensive looking cabins. and then ranger cabins. then a truck went by. a big noisy automobile. oh how i had missed the internal combustion engine! we didn't stop. our headlamps danced with every cold wet step. and then finally, the road we drove in on appeared. then trail we first started out on manifested. then the snow covered blue izuzu trooper.

and with that, the end of our trip. i just wanted to sit down and not get back up.