Here is an excerpt from Which Way to Glacier Lake?, one of 18 stories of misadventure in Volume I.
“At the end of the 20-mile dirt road, we arrive at the trailhead. I hoist my pack and immediately regret the obscene amount of extras required when backpacking with two dogs—the two-person tent, the doggy sleeping mat, the dog coats, and, of course, five days’ worth of dog food. Many people make their dogs carry these things in their packs, but Rosie has never gone this far and I don’t want to wear her out. Scot can carry a load, but he tends to take me out behind the knees when he has a pack on—frequently. Also, the pack he has is chintzy; he can dump it off when I am not looking—a good way to lose things. So I have it all, and it is a lot.
We cruise the first couple miles along the flats, then hang a right and enter the South San Juan Wilderness. We immediately encounter two fallen logs that are not easy to navigate over or under. I maneuver awkwardly beneath my load, then we go up. And up. And up. My pack is like the hand of the devil trying to drag me down to the underworld. I fight with all I am worth. I understand why there is only one campsite along this climb. The forest of aspens that gives way to spruce and fir is crazy thick. Today it is dark below the clouded sky. The spruce trees here have yet to succumb to the effects of the spruce beetles, but they will in a few years.
The piddly 6.7 miles feels more like 67 by the time we get there. Next comes the ritual of searching the area for the best tent spot. I drop my pack in the flat spot next to the trail on the densely wooded ridge and spend the next half hour in a fruitless search. The eyes can play tricks when looking down a slope; many spots appear flat until you go down to them. And after being lured further and further down the steep slopes, I have to drag myself back up to the trail again. I fall for this trick on both sides of the trail. On the left side of the trail, the slope continues down into oblivion. On the right side, the slope ends a few hundred feet down at a crashing stream. On the far side, impossibly steep gullies reach up to the mountaintops that house craggy caverns, still holding last winter’s snow.
After all this searching, I determine there is no perfect spot here. In fact, there is actually only one spot—the spot where I dropped my pack. It is barely big enough for my tent and there are a few suspect widow-makers looming overhead. I pull out my tent, complete with my new tent pole to replace the one that Rosie had broken a few months before. (She really wanted to get in the tent and I wasn’t there to open it, so she tore her way in.) The poles have a neat configuration where they sit parallel and each has a perpendicular short cross pole on the top that connects horizontally to create the rigidity of the setup.
But there is a problem. Despite telling the man on the phone at the tent company that I needed the pole with the male end, he sent me a pole with a female end. There I was on the first day of my five-day trip trying to insert female into female. We all know this does not work.
But, I think, I have a pole splint. I can use that! I go to look for it, but it’s not there. I have no pole splint. Damn it! How am I supposed to erect my tent! I certainly do not have enough duct tape.
I rummage through my pack and find the pen I brought for writing in my journal. I disassemble it and find that the widest part of the barrel will fit over the pole. I pull out my knife and begin to saw off the narrower part of the barrel, but I press too hard and crack the whole thing. Now I have a useless pen and still can’t erect my tent. I scour the contents of my pack again and… violà! I had the pole shim all along. Sigh. I didn’t want to do any writing anyway …”
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