I always wonder about these ultra-light hikers.
I know people who carry a smaller pack on a week long hike than I do on a day hike. And their day packs -- I've owned purses bigger than those.
Yes, yes. I know all about Ray Jardine and the Ultra Light Backpack movement. I also know that Jardine himself says that ultra light is not for beginners, and one has to know when to bag it and run. The problem is, when you can't bag it, and you can't run, and you don't have your ten essentials when they suddenly become very essential indeed.
During the 70's I eked out a living leading backpacking trips in summer and working at a cross country ski resort in winter. My boss at the winter location promised us a day-long, rough and tough ski trip from the top of the downhill mountain, Mt. Warner, to the highway at Rabbit Ears pass. Finally several of us banded together for our trek.
We took the downhill ski gondola to the top of the mountain. I am not a downhill skier, so I'd never been on groomed slopes before, not to mention the gondola. The attendant took our "skinny skis" with a slight sneer, slammed the door and locked us in, and we swung out over nothingness.
I tried not to think of my old treasured poster of a Steamboat gondola lying crumpled in the snow. The wind wasn't blowing THAT hard today... We were deposited at the upper half of the mountain and mounted the lift.
Glenn told me to be sure and keep my ski tips up and give a little shuffle as I got off the lift so my skis didn't stick and the ski lift take off the back of my skull. This cheerful advice made me long for the gondola. However we all got off the lift with no casualties and set off across the top of the mountains.
There is a ski route which leads along the ridges for about eight miles, marked rather casually with blue stakes. The stakes are not quite as long as the snow is high, so they aren't exactly like following, for instance, the Bright Angel Trail. We crossed a couple of suspicious looking slopes where I insisted that we ski across one at a time, ski poles loose, watching and listening for sliding snow. Everyone complained, but Glenn agreed it wasn't a bad idea. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean something isn't out to get you.
Sometime after lunch, Glenn started skiing down a rather steep hill. A couple of the guys protested, pulling out a map and starting to gestulate, but the rest of us figured, Hey, Glenn's been here before and we haven't, so we all followed.
If I had been thinking, I would have wondered why we had to lose so much elevation, but I was following happily and haplessly. I lead so many trips it is a treat to let someone else take control for a change.
We skied around and about, falling into holes and pulling each other out. Jane's boot split at the three-pin and we had to fix them with duct tape. We got pretty wet fooling around in the untracked snow. It was about three PM when Glenn pulled over, took off his poles and said, "We're staying here tonight."
I said something profound along the lines of "huh?".
"We're lost," he announced calmly. "We're not getting to the road by dark, and we need plenty of light to get ready to spend the night."
I couldn't believe it. I'd never been lost before. I'd hiked out to the road and not found the car before, and I'd wandered along the top of slot canyons not sure exactly where I'd come out of them before, but I always knew where the car was, and was confident that if I hiked another two or three miles I'd make it. I was always right, too. But now we were LOST!
We had a lot of group emergency gear. Glenn organized the digging of a snow cave. Several people started gathering wood. I had a tiny emergency saw, so I helped with that. Three of us skied a ways down the draw, listening for cars on the highway. I still couldn't quite believe we were LOST!
We got a fire going. We had a little pot to melt snow, so we all kept drinking hot water. We pooled all our food and divided that up. I had packed a huge lunch and not eaten much of it, but by the time we split it up between seven people, I didn't get much back.
Since we had been on a day trip, I'd only brought a fanny pack. I had no down jacket. I had a thin pair of wool knickers and a wool sweater (this was before pile was as popular or as available as it is now). I was wearing a cotton shirt under the sweater because I was allergic to wool, and it was wet, clammy and cold.
I did have a set of nylon pants and jacket that I had made. The theory I had always read and believed was that one put on the nylon, then stuffed it full of pine needles and such like and it was just like a down coat.
Lies, all lies. Pine needles in the snow are wet. Wet pine needles are pretty cold. I tried drying them off by the fire, but they caught fire and sputtered. I thought longingly of my nice, thick down parka. Back in the cabin.
We ate and drank a bunch of hot water, then crawled into the snow cave. The entrance to a snow cave has to go down and up, like a drain trap, so one has to crawl through the snow to get in. That's cold and wet. The roof of a snow cave has to be smooth, so water doesn't condense thereon and fall onto the occupants. This one dripped. As I found out later, many survival experts agree that once lost, digging a snow cave burns too many calories and makes one too wet for optimal survival. I now tend to agree.
We made beds of pine boughs and huddled together. To take my mind off of the situation, I started to write a song to honor the occasion. Just as the woman next to me decided I was too quiet and maybe she should give me a good shake, she was startled when I started to sing:
Take the pine boughs from the trees
Pile them up so we won't freeze
Then we'll split up all our food
And we'll share our calories
Lay down by my head and feet
Till the early morning light
All I'm asking is your heat
Help me make it through the night
No one applauded, but maybe their hands were too cold.
It was steadily getting colder and wetter. At one point one of the young men dozed off and we couldn't get him to wake up. That did it.
"I'm going back to the fire," I announced, and slithered out through the tunnel. One by one, everyone else joined me.
The night was overcast, which was a break. A clear night would have been colder. Every hour or so someone had to leave the dubious warmth of the fire and get more wood. That was a cold, wet proposition, since one also tended to sink hip deep into the snow, and under the trees where the dry wood was, one got dumped on by the upper branches.
Hypothermia, of course, is a condition of lowered body temperature that is responsible for 85% of all outdoor deaths. I knew all about hypothermia. I was alert to its wiles. I figured as long as I could pronounce it, I wouldn't get it.
Well, brethren and sisteren, I had an emergency space blanket in my pack. I was wearing my pack to keep my back warm, and I wondered if maybe I should get the space blanket out and spread it around me and trap some of the fire's warmth. Naw, I figured. I'd never get it back into that little package it came in, and then I'd have to buy a new one. Can you say, "hypothermia"? The whole time I was saying, "I'm not gonna get that," I already had it.
The fire had melted down into a pit about four feet deep. We were all sitting around the edge, legs into the pit, like a snowy amphitheater. Jane tipped to one side and slid down near the fire.
Hmm, though I. That's probably not good.
No one moved.
I should pull Jane out before she gets burned. On the other hand, no one else is pulling her out. Maybe she's supposed to be in there. Oh, don't be ridiculous! She's not supposed to be in the fire pit!
I leaned over, very languidly, and pulled Jane out. She sat dully for a moment, then muttered, "Thanks".
I have been in a few life threatening situations in my time (the afternoon lightning caught a bunch of kids and me on a 12,000 foot pass -- the night a bear sniffed at my bare arm -- later the same night when an idiot from another camp was running around shooting indiscriminately with a handgun, determined to get the bear). Nothing has ever scared me as much since as the thought of how stupid we all were with the cold. How easily we could have made dangerous mistakes, or just plain died from being dull and dumb.
The sky finally started to get light. We put out our fire and started to ski. We knew that we were somewhere north of the highway, and that the highway ran east to west. Therefore if we skied south, we should hit the highway. Ipso facto.
Glenn, however, started skiing pretty erratically. Rather than go around little hills, he would go up and down them. Since we were bit shaky and clumsy, this meant we all fell a lot and got even wetter and colder. It also seemed to me that we didn't want to ski up any hills at all. A freeway wouldn't be on a hill: it would be in the meadows. It never occurred to me, of course, that Glenn was probably making irrational decisions because of the cold. Finally, however, I suggested that he rest and I would ski down a long draw to see if I could find the highway. Wearily he agreed.
Another skier and I headed down the draw. It looked pretty wide. It led to a large, flat area, just the right place for a highway. We saw that the snow had been pushed up into a rough, dirty bank, like maybe by a snowplow. We clambered up the bank. There was the highway! We had made it!
Everyone hastened to join us. Just as we were wondering how to get to our van at the trailhead, a truck pulling a trailer full of snowmobiles roared up next to us. The men inside jumped out. I said cheerily, "I bet you're Search and Rescue and you're looking for us!". They were.
A year later, we did the same trip. This time I carried a big pack. I had my down jacket. I had my backpacking stove. I had a whole bunch of food. Glenn led the trip again. He started to ski down that same hill AGAIN! I said, "Glenn, if you ski down that hill, you are going all by yourself."
We got out the map. The trail at that point climbed a little bit of a hill, then continued along the ridge. We climbed the ridge, picked up the route, and were out at the car by early afternoon. I hadn't needed my survival gear, but that's Okay. The next time I need the extra gear very badly indeed, I will have it.