In Wyoming, three years ago, Mark and I misread a map scale, which went from -1 to 1, as being a one-mile scale, from 0 to 1. As a result, we got stuck off trail and had to climb our way out on a rough, overgrown mountain for twice as long as we had intended.
Mark now says that if we had read the map correctly, we might not have gone in at all. We might have decided that distance was too far. Instead, we just did it. "Youth," he says, "makes up for a lot of miscalculations."
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| Mark and I traipsing around the Tahoe National Forest accompanied by fish. |
On the third and final day of our trip, we hadn't yet had much luck fishing. We looked carefully at the map and found one isolated lake, well off the trail, which the Internet source we printed out said was no longer stocked, but had a "small" population of natural brook trout.
"Why wouldn't a lake be stocked anymore?" I asked.
"Because no one fishes there," Mark said.
He then scoffed at the suggestion that the population of brook trout was small.
We set off for the lake, walking briskly across boulders. Compared to our 14-mile hike the day before, this was cake. Soon, we reached the edge of a rocky granite cliff face. About 1,000 feet below us was the face of a tiny blue thumbtack, which could possibly have been water.
"That's it," Mark said.
It looked like we would have to walk around another way. Not even a lunatic would consider trying to get down the cliff.
About halfway down, I hopped off the landslide I had been riding and looked around. The lake had swelled now to at least the size of a golf ball. Behind me, and on all sides of the lake, rose up impenetrable, rocky mountains. Their peaks glared down at me from in front of the hazy sky like the spires of a gothic cathedral.
"I don't think we're going to make it out of here," I said. I often say hopeless things like that while we're backpacking, because I'm often hopeless. I depend on Mark, who's seen everything before, to say something optimistic.
"At least we'll die fishing," he said, seriously.
We crawled our way down more rocks. We walked through fields of thick bushes that scratched and clawed at our legs. It was about 80 or 90 degrees, and we were wearing shorts. Eventually, we found a creek bed, which was dry enough to walk down. We followed it for a little bit, until the lake was a very short horizontal distance away. It was still far, far below us.
"I get the feeling this thing has to drop off rather quickly pretty soon," Mark said.
Very soon, the creek turned into a 40-foot tall waterfall. There was no water flowing. We climbed down the waterfall, holding our fishing poles with one hand and hanging off the rock face with our other. The index finger I had tried to slice off the day before while cutting lunch started bleeding again. The rocks, which had been sitting in the sun all day, burned my palms.
We reached the bottom and walked through a meadow of waist-high yellow wildflowers that was crawling with bees and wasps. I don't think I'd die from a sting, although I went into mild shock last time. I realized we had forgotten our first aid kit, and that the only way out was up the mountain again. I wanted to get out of the bee field very quickly.
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| Say, Mark, what do you think that little blue thing is? |
We got to the lake. Mark got a couple bites but couldn't hook any fish. I fished half-heartedly, while looking around for an exit route. If one of us got hurt here, Mark would be right. We would die fishing. Probably, I figured, we wouldn't be found for a few weeks, unless a bear found us first, in which case we would never be found.
We edged around the lake, not catching fish. I snapped off my lure on a cast, so I sat on a boulder and watched Mark fish for a while. I thought about bears. Supposing a bear came along, I thought. We wouldn't really have anywhere to go.
We went to the outlet, where we split up and went to separate parts of the outlet pond. On my way, once Mark was completely out of view and hearing, I found bear tracks and sign. It looked like it had only been eating berries, but you never know about these things.
I fished by myself for a little bit, looking over my shoulder for bears, casting, looking over my shoulder for bears, reeling, looking over my shoulder for bears, reeling and looking over my shoulder for bears. Mark got some more bites, but hooked nothing. I got a near-bite, but tried to set the hook too early. Mark came over and managed to catch a small brook trout, which he then whacked on the head and left sitting there, to attract more bears. Then he left to scout out the path while I stayed to guard the fish. It looked up at me accusingly.
The lake was generally overgrown with bushes, with marshy green grass that ran right up to the water. The bushes were so thick near where we came down the creek bed that they were impassable, and they were backed by a 20-foot cliff, so we had to walk around the lake in a counter-clockwise direction. If the circular lake was a clock, we came down the creek bed at 11 o'clock and the bushes were at 12. We caught the fish at six.
Mark decided that the best fishing on the whole lake would be from a landslide at the very top, through the impassable bushes. The only other way to get there was to continue around the lake the way we were going, hopping over the inlet and then scaling another cliff to get over another set of impassable bushes that ran from four o'clock to two o'clock. We climbed again with one hand, hanging out over a ledge where if we had fallen, we would have died.
At best, we were able to plant one foot securely in the rock. The other foot was often left to scramble wildly and hope the rocky surface was rough enough to get traction. We ended up about 50 meters from the landslide, separated by another series of impassable bushes. We walked through them, holding our fishing poles over our heads. We tripped a few times, once simultaneously. I tried to laugh. "Ha, ha," I said.
"Ha, ha," Mark grimaced.
The fishing at the landslide was about the same as everywhere else. We both got several bites, but didn't hook anything. I snagged up on a lily pad and decided to quit. I sat in a crevice under the cliff, where there was a little shade, and also a chance of surviving if there was another landslide, and watched Mark for a while. Eventually, he got tired.
We walked back by climbing up the back of the landslide to get on top of the cliff, then hopping down into the first set of impassable bushes. We started walking through them.
"If we ever want to have a competition to see who can get bitten by a rattlesnake first," Mark said.
"Yes?" I said.
"This would be a good place," he said.
"Oh," I said. "Yes."
I started listening for rattles.
Since we had hiked around the whole lake, we were ready to leave. We walked through the field of bees again. Mark stopped to tie his shoe again, then paused to admire the flowers. "I bet if the girls were here, they'd really like these flowers," he said.
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| Surviving, once again, to witness Nature's glory, as seen here from the parking lot. |
Earlier, we had identified the easiest way up as a sort of rockslide that ran down from one of the mountain peaks. After climbing up the rockslide, which stretched upward about 1,000 feet at more than a 45 degree angle, we would then be able to traverse over to where we started.
Amazingly, it pretty much worked out that way. We crawled straight up the granite slope, without severely injuring ankles or even falling and suffering a really good maiming.
"Youth makes up for a lot of miscalculations," Mark said.