Friends on Foot

Tags

friends, hiking, mountain guides, new friends, trekking, Weekly Photo Challenge

I wake up, groaning, in a 35-degree lodge, my stomach in spasms, and my head pounding at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, a good week into the Everest Base Camp trek in Nepal. How am I going to do this today, I wonder? Teeth chattering, I dress and stumble out to the small dining room, thinking about how I can tell the guide I can’t possibly go up another 1000 feet or more this morning. And then a guy from Alaska pushes a bowl of warm oatmeal and a mug of coffee at me and gently encourages me to eat. A young woman leaves her mom’s side as we get up from the table and commiserates about my cramps, and our guide slaps me five as we gingerly step into a snowy, misty morning. You’re looking good, Miss Lexie – ready to go? And indeed, there I went, held up by people I didn’t even know when I landed in Kathmandu two weeks before.

Tramping across this Earth has been one of the highlights of my life and, more often than not, I have been introduced to new lands in the company of strangers. Even when I have set off with family members or existing friends, I have collected what I always call “my hiking friends,” people I’ve met on the trail who become fast friends for as long as the trek lasts, and sometimes longer.

On rare occasions, those people become real friends, and some have joined me on future walks. While others do eventually slip away and become simply holiday card recipients or pleasant memories, there is a small circle of us, including a few guides, who will always be connected long after we left the pathways.

My husband and kids tease me about my hiking friends, wondering how I can become so attached to people with whom I have spent a mere week or two. But a week of post-hike beers and dinners gives friendship formation a power boost, and believe me, three days in camps with no showers and one toilet tent creates an intimacy one rarely experiences with friends at home! In a matter of days, we think nothing of sharing our trail food or embarrassing stories, and we take care of each other in ways that belie the brief life of our relationship.

Every step of the budding bond is accelerated when we spend our waking hours chatting on a tough mountain track and our evenings sharing meals, pains, and more life stories. Most of us are in the early-impressions phase of trying to be agreeable and supportive, and friendship blooms quickly and easily with those who are open to it.

In the last decade, I have met my Nepal hiking friends for a ski trip in Utah and reunited with them on the Paine Circuit in Chile, hosted my Tanzanian guide in our home in Chicago, gone back to Peru and linked up with my Inca Trail guides again for some smaller walks on my own, and recently had another Himalayan hiking friend over for dinner here in Houston. They may not be my everyday pals, but my hiking friends and I have a singular connection that I cannot share with anyone else, and my life is richer for them.

Warning Signs

Tags

canyons, danger, Gurvan Saikhan, hiking, Mongolia, warning, Weekly Photo Challenge, Yolyn Am

Yolyn Am canyon was a welcome stop in our exploration of Mongolia last summer. We had been on the steppe for over a week, baking under the Eurasian high summer sun, and we were headed to the even hotter Gobi Desert when we boarded a tiny propeller plane for the south and the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains.

From flat, scrubby expanses, we arrived in a deep, cool gorge for an invigorating hike inside towering walls. Yolyn Am (named after the yol, or lammergeyer, a vulture-like bird) is known in part for its ice field that lingers well into the summer, and we saw remnants of this as we criss-crossed a running stream at the base of the canyon.

Although the hike was lengthy and we had to pick our way carefully in some of the narrower stretches, there was only minor danger encountered that day. Nevertheless, we got a huge kick out of all the warning or admonitory signs on our way into the trailhead! Can you determine what to watch out for or refrain from doing here?

Happy Camper

Tags

camp, confidence, girlpower, girls, hiking, North Carolina, transformation, transmogrify, Weekly Photo Challenge

An unexpected glimpse of my childhood arrived in my inbox this past week. The camp I attended as a young girl had revamped their website and sent me a link, so I poked around it for a few minutes until I came to a video. I blithely clicked PLAY and for the next 30 minutes I was transported several decades back in time to a place that started my love affair with the great outdoors and in many ways transformed the arc of my life.

The camp was founded over 70 years ago and most of the cabins and other facilities had seen little updating by my day, or since. (This is a good thing.) Green Cove is a traditional girls’ camp (the brother camp is nearby), a place where old-fashioned activities continue to be practiced in much the same ways they always have, perhaps with slightly better equipment. There are no team sports here, no competitions, no electronics, and no fancy anythings. The cabins and dining hall smell delightfully of mildew, and the furnishings are of the woodsy, rustic variety.

Here we learned (and the girls still learn) to rock climb, build a fire, sail and kayak and canoe, and ride mountain bikes and horses. We handled carabiners, tent pegs, awls, pitons, booms, paddles, and reins. We got filthy almost every day, and we didn’t care if our wet hair stuck to our faces, our t-shirts got permanently stained, and our shoes and bathing suits never dried out over the course of a month or more. We ate hungrily at every family-style meal, and we burned off all of it and more every day in the lake and on the trails.

We launched arrows and fired rifles, cast fishing lines and hoisted backpacks, carved wood, wove textiles, and enameled copper. We were trusted around sharp tools and hot fires, wobbly river rocks and skittish horses. We were given the confidence to lead the way on a steep ledge, the skill to clean a mare’s hoof, the faith to lean back into a rappel, the nerves to flip a kayak.

In our free time, we swept high out over the lake on a giant swing and dropped into the cold, muddy water, played capture the flag until we were winded, lay back in the grass to count wooly white animals in the sky, wrote long letters home from our bunks, and napped, deeply. At night, we gathered around campfires, sang songs, played ping pong, opened mail from home, talked for hours in our cabins, and slept more soundly on a lumpy cot than we ever would again in a five-star bed.

Camp life was idyllic, but for me, the highlights of my months in the mountains were the wilderness trips. Starting at young ages, girls could start spending from 1 to 6 or more days out in nature, learning to live as one with the earth. I loved that Green Cove’s raison d’être was to encourage girls to seek outdoor adventures and to develop the skills needed to continually pursue challenges in the woods and mountains and, ultimately, life. I went into camp a very shy girl, a girl who played it safe. I emerged with the ammunition to get through my teenage and young adult years with some semblance of confidence, and I started down a path of world discovery, ideally on foot out in nature, that I still eagerly pursue today.

I’m sure a few of my fellow campers no longer want to trek for weeks on end, go without showers for days at a time, or sleep on a flimsy mat under a sleeping bag on a buggy night. For me, it’s still heaven, and I still chase those interludes when iPhones and email, work deadlines and house projects fade into gray, and nothing lies before me each morning but a chance to put one foot in front of the other under a green canopy or on a rocky path. Camp changed my whole relationship with the world outside my door; I fell in love with it, and I never fell out.

Submitted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify

Photo Note: Not a single one of these photos is from camp! Those days were captured on a tiny, crummy old film camera, and I don’t even know where the prints might be.

Missing Mongolia

Tags

camels, deserts, Flaming Cliffs, Gobi Desert, hiking, Mongolia, nostalgia, travel memories, Yolyn Am

Fall is upon us in the eastern U.S. and no matter how much I wished for these cooling breezes and drops in temperature and humidity over the past three months, I am already feeling nostalgic for summer. More than the weather, however, I am missing the yawning span of free and easy vacation days that are one of the perks of being a university professor.

More specifically, I am reminiscing about the weeks I just spent in Mongolia, a place that in itself brought back poignant memories for me: my days of horseback riding as a young child and teenager, sleeping under the stars on a totally black night, county fairs, rock-hopping in mountain streams – all thousands of miles and decades away. As I ride a last wave of nostalgia with my final post on Mongolia, I revisit a summery landscape that caught me by surprise.

I’ve said it before: I’m not a desert lover. One of my new travel mates in Mongolia couldn’t wait to get to the Gobi. I, on the other hand, would have been quite happy to park myself in a ger out on the steppe and never leave, riding my horse off into the soft, green hills. I’ve never been drawn to arid landscapes and don’t naturally like places that are dry, brown, or barren. But just as I did at Zion National Park in the U.S., Wadi Rum in Jordan, and other famous desert destinations, I put aside my distaste for desiccation in order to see one of the world’s famous deserts.

I traded a shiny-coated horse for a mangy camel, elevation for endless flatness, and verdant hills for rust-colored cliffs, but the Gobi’s sere, simple beauty grabbed me after all and seems to have stubbornly parked itself in my memories.

Sunset happens precipitously here; one minute there is searing heat and glare and the next, the sun has sunk below the horizon in the blink of a squinting eye. Mornings are equally hasty in arriving, with the deep blackness of desert night quickly shattered by sunlight that has no natural barriers. I am missing that unimpeded view of the sun each morning and night here in my city home.

The Gobi has a few salmon-colored, ridged sand dunes, but on the whole it is a land of reddish dirt patterned with olive-green scrub grass. Four of the usual Mongolian suspects ply the paths; that is, the sheep and the goats, the horses and the camels, always in those pairs.

Vehicles are few and far between, and with no marked roads, routes, or landmarks, I have no idea how they find their way around. There were long periods of time on our drives when we saw no other vehicles and when faced with a choice of three identical dirt paths at just slightly different angles, our driver always seemed to know exactly which one to take. (I normally have a very good sense of direction, and I occasionally had the feeling that we were doubling back after making a wrong turn, but that was just a hunch. We did always end up where we wanted to go!)

One exception to the stubbly green topography was the Flaming Cliffs, a series of sandstone formations that are most famous as the site of Roy Chapman Andrew’s expeditions in the early 1920s that led to the discovery of the first dinosaur eggs, as well as thousands of dinosaur bones, all of which were packaged up and carted away on the backs of camels to their new home in the American Museum of Natural History. After a hike of only several hours on the parched cliffs, I found the notion of mounting such an extensive expedition in this harsh and remote environment – nearly a century ago, no less – to be truly staggering.

A final stop in the Gobi provided a brief respite from the heat and sun as we hiked deep into Yolyn Am, a narrow canyon in the Gurvan Saikhan mountains that is home to an ice field that often lingers the whole way through the summer months. We stream-hopped back and forth until we could go no farther into the gorge, but try as we might, we did not glimpse any lammergeiers, the large birds after which the canyon is named.

The Gobi was the last stop on a wide-ranging trip around Mongolia, chronicled in the posts below, and the final travel spree of my summer break. Soon it will be time to stop looking back in longing and start contemplating the next memory-making escape.

Want more Mongolia?

Danshig Naadam: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/danshig-naadam/

Framing a House Mongolian Style: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/framing-a-house-mongolian-style/

A Steppe Out of Time: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/a-steppe-out-of-time/

Ulaanbaatar’s Contrasts and Surprises: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/ulaanbaatars-contrasts-and-surprises/

Nothing Narrow Here: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/nothing-narrow-here/

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees (and other little things)

Tags

details, forests, hiking, Laurel Highlands, outdoors, Pennsylvania, trees

On our last two weekend escapes from the hot and humid city, we’ve hiked some very small sections of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in western Pennsylvania.

It is a woodsy walk, overall a 70-mile traipse through more than 20,000 acres of dense trees, cold streams, ferns, wildflowers, and prodigious clumps of rhododendron. The LHHT starts in Ohiopyle State Park and ends near Johnstown; along the way, there are shelters every 8-10 miles and enough varied terrain to keep hikers happy for days. There are great views from the higher ridges, and the entire trail sits at about 2500’ of elevation, so even on a sweltering day like one we had this weekend, the air is cool and the path largely shaded.

But that’s an overview of this trail I want to thru-hike some day. Yesterday what I focused on were the details, those little features that make every walk in the woods a mini treasure hunt.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Cinque) Terre

Tags

Cinque Terre, day hikes, hiking, Italy, Liguria, numbers

Day hikes are the appetizers and desserts of trekking aficionados. When I can’t get away for a week or more, the next best thing is a jaunt that still requires a backpack and provisions, a destination, and some great scenery. And the Cinque Terre, literally ‘Five Lands,’ is the perfect place to spend a day on foot and rack up some numbers, traversing the five small towns that form a colorful string along the rugged Ligurian coast of western Italy. We did just that to top off our Tour du Mont Blanc circuit hike one summer.

Uno: We based ourselves and started our walk in the busiest and northernmost of the Cinque Terre towns – Monterosso al Mare. Here there are many accommodations, restaurants, and even a beach, all set in irregular stone streets that surround the seashore and harbor. The town is famous for pesto, anchovies, and lemons, and we loaded up on pizza, pasta, and limoncello as a well-earned reward for our long Alpine hike and, in my case, the rigors of driving a little stick-shift car on the outrageously steep and twisted roads into the region.

Due: After a hearty breakfast the next day, we set off for town number two: Vernazza. This fishing village is the most picturesque of the group, and we were very lucky to get a beautiful approach shot before a morning rain shower swept us into the harbor and onto the main plaza. Fishing boats bobbed in the curved waterfront (and rested in the village streets), an old castle loomed in the background, pastel-colored buildings haphazardly climbed the hills, and villagers and tourists alike crammed under the few awnings and overhangs in the piazza for protection from the short-lived squall. With the passing of the mini-tempest, the old men went back to untangling their fishing lines, the adolescent boys to ogling the scantily-clad young female visitors, and we to our hike.

Tre: We climbed out of Vernazza on a series of winding stairs and terraces, feeling almost voyeuristic as we passed private patios and stereotypical lines of laundry dangling off skinny houses.

We were now on our way to Corniglia, the only one of the five towns not directly on the water. Perched high on a rocky hill and surrounded by vineyards, Corniglia was the quietest of the villages, and we decided to stop here for a relaxing lunch amid flowering bushes and old stone walls.

These two first sections were the toughest – close to 4 miles overall of steep hills up and down – and we hit the highest point of the day on the way into Corniglia.

Quattro: The smallest enclave, Manarola, was the fourth stop, following a relatively flat and easy route of just over a mile after lunch. Like its big sister, Vernazza, it is a jumble of vibrant facades that spill down the hill into the harbor. It is bright and busy, filled with shops and boats and locals, but has a smaller, more relaxed ambiance – the ideal time and place for an ice cream stop and whiling away some time just people-watching.

Cinque: By late afternoon, we had arrived in Riomaggiore on a cliff-side trail, dubbed Lovers Lane, that overlooked the brilliantly-blue sea.

Farthest to the south and east, Riomaggiore is the largest town of the five and feels more accessible to the outside world than the other villages. Here, those same painted buildings form a V around one final scenic harbor, and the railroad provides an easy return to Monterosso, just in time for more limoncello and pizza.

More Numbers: The Sentiero Azzurro, the Cinque Terre’s most popular walking trail, covers about 7 miles overall and can be walked in either direction. Most people walk south to north, starting flat and easy, but we did it backwards. In recent years, the path has been closed in some sections; heavy rains have washed out parts of the route and rock slides have blocked the path in and out of Corniglia. In addition, the Italian government is limiting the number of hikers to 1.5 million this season (a high of 2.5 million trekked the trail last year) to protect the area, so I’m glad we got there when we did!

Jubilation in the Mountains

Tags

Aspen, aspen trees, Colorado, hiking, jubilant, Maroon Bells, White River National Forest

Is there anything more restorative than a walk in the woods? This past week I was able to hike for a few days in the area around Aspen, Colorado, and I lapped up every minute of it.

From loading my backpack for the day (does anyone else find this an oddly satisfying task?) to spending hours at a time with no other human in sight, I allow time to fade from my consciousness. I’m in a zone I can only find on a woodsy trail, and a Rocky Mountain high is a real thing (even without legal-in-Colorado help). I hike by myself the first two days and feel the deep joy of being out in nature, alone with my thoughts and the sights and smells of the mountains.

The aspen trees sport feathery leaves at an elevation of 8000’ but at 10,000’ they are still naked soldiers lined up in ranks up and down the sides of the mountains. (The aspens intrigued me; please indulge me this gallery of trees!)

Some paths are still blocked with snow, while others are beginning to grow a spring carpet of colorful mosses and tiny wildflowers.

The trails are wonderfully diverse; I start on a shaded path alongside a stream, emerge into some prairie-like flats, then climb on exposed red rock one morning.

A hike at a higher elevation begins at lake’s edge, climbs gently through dense aspen thickets, then rises steeply over rough root systems and rocks until I am forced to stop when the route is fully snowed over.

My obsession for the four days I am there is to get a great shot of the Maroon Bells, (supposedly) the most photographed mountains in North America. I go after breakfast one day, but the three-peaked mass is partially shrouded in cloud cover. They are visible – and impressive – but the color palate is drab and cold, with water, trees, stone, and sky all a similar dark gray-blue-green. I am not completely disappointed (and get in a fantastic hike on the almost-empty Crater Lake Trail), but I do have that familiar feeling of seeing my target mountain in less-than-perfect conditions.

I return that afternoon to find even thicker clouds, but the peaks and the swoop are in slightly sharper relief. I snap away, hoping the wind will die down enough to allow the iconic reflection of the massif in the lake. It is not meant to be, and I leave the White River National Forest feeling better about the clarity of my new photos but still not very satisfied.

Unlike my usual self, I decide I simply must have a better photo and set my alarm for 4:15 am to try to catch the sun rising on the face of the Bells. The next morning, four of us bundle up and head to the lake once more. Hopeful and shivering cold, we walk the shore of the lake, pacing up and down the beginnings of several trails, then set up with a few other hardy souls for the spectacle to come. The sky is clear and slowly turning orange behind us and pinkish blue in front.

Ten minutes after official sunrise, the crests ignite! We are all clicking away as the rosy light gradually lights up the whole face. Suddenly … jubilation! The lake grows still and flat, and the fire on the mountain is mirrored in the water. It is this amateur photographer’s dream come true, and I snap away with both Nikon and iPhone until my batteries fail. (I did say amateur.)

If you search for images of the Maroon Bells, you will find photos that blow your mind. Mine are no match for those, but I am happy with them, and happier still that I made the effort to capture to the best of my ability a place I may never get to see again. I was indeed jubilant as the rising sun hit those peaks, but the whole time I spent in the mountains was a source of deep joy that will sustain me until I can escape the flatlands again!

Earth

Tags

Earth, ground, hiking

Earth, capital ‘E’: I immediately picture the planet, that beautiful watery ball floating through space, green and yellow and brown patches dotting the blue, all under a wispy swirl of high-atmosphere clouds. I have no photos of my own (yet!) that depict the Earth, the whole Earth.

Small ‘e’ earth, I am intimately familiar with. My feet know its ground: squishy sand, hard-packed dirt, spongy tufts of mud-grass, stern granite slabs.

My eyes follow its paths, up and down mountains, around trees, alongside streams.

My nose breathes in its fertile scent – decomposed leaves, fresh shoots, the oxygenated freshness right after a rain.

My hands sift sand, move rotted logs, dig deep in boggy peat.

Big Earth is made small for me through the earth it has in common. The rhododendrons I adored as a child in Pennsylvania spring from similar soil in the Himalayan valleys of Nepal. The sand in Delaware buckles into ridges just like those on the Tasman Sea shore.

The grasslands in South Dakota rustle like the savannah in Tanzania, and the scree on a pass in Patagonia slips and slides under my boots just as it did on high slopes in Tibet and the Alps.

I like the abstract idea of Earth, and in my mind’s eye, I see myself, a tiny dot, crisscrossing it with a mission, but what I really love is earth, that organic foundation of it all, the part I get to actually touch, see, and smell as I ramble the globe.

Inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Earth.

Grudgingly (Pretty) Great

Tags

Bryce Canyon, hiking, national parks, Utah, Zion National Park

I was dragged to Utah a few summers ago. Not quite kicking and screaming, but definitely taken against my will to hike in Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, which, from all pre-trip appearances, were a collection of arid, rust-colored landscapes that made me thirsty just looking at them. The two parks and Utah in general, however, had long been at the top of my husband’s wish list for a hiking trip, and since all of our travels for years and years had been my choices, I gave in. (Nice of me, I know.)

I’m always looking to escape from the U.S. at least a few times a year, often, admittedly, to see things that are quite similar to the places I eschew here at home. (I was desperate to see dusty red Jordan, for example, but snorted at the idea of dusty red Utah.) But I knew I needed an attitude adjustment because my own country contains a vast assortment of destinations, and I finally succumbed to my husband’s pleas to see more of our homegrown scenery, particularly the national parks.

I am a big fan of state and national parks. My parents stuffed our family of six in the car for innumerable trips to these treasures in the eastern and southeastern U.S., and I’d adored them. I loved road trips, first of all, and even as a child, I relished being in the untrammeled outdoors, sinking my boots into pine needles in the Appalachians and breathing in the earthy smell of the dark, loamy soil in the Great Smoky Mountains. We clambered over rocky balds in the Shenandoah Valley, swished through dune grasses from Cape Cod to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and explored spooky Mammoth Cave and other caverns and hollows in Kentucky and Tennessee.

But what all those parks had in common was greenery and/or moisture. I loved the mossy clumps along woodsy paths, the smell of mildew in an old cabin, the dripping of leaves on my rain jacket in a forest, even the clamminess of a bathing suit at the shore. The desert had none of that; it was dry and dusty, odorless and often colorless. It made my eyes and nostrils itch, and I hated the grit it deposited on my skin. In short, it left me cold.

But I went. Our first stop, Zion National Park, had more varied terrain than I’d expected, and I started the trip on a surprising high note. We had an invigorating wade through the Narrows (water!),

numerous hikes through treed paths and ravines (green!), and some good steep climbs to various outlooks, including Angel’s Landing.

The scenery was truly majestic, and I ate my negative words about Utah many times in those first few days of hiking.

I adored the little town of Springdale where we based ourselves, and I looked forward to walking into Zion every day for a new and different adventure, even gaining an affection for the (dry, dusty, red) slot canyons.

Bryce Canyon was our next stop. For years, I’d heard people rave about Bryce Canyon and, really, how could I not find the surreal assemblage of hoodoos fascinating? I’m glad I saw them. They made for some great photos.

But we trudged for hours and hours through this baking forest of pale, parched towers and, dare I say, it was pretty boring and exhausting after the first oohs and aahs.

It did redeem itself at sunset, when the shadows and cooler air sharpened my sense of the place, replacing the desiccated blandness at high noon with a pleasing line-up of variegated figures in the evening.

In the end, Zion and Bryce and the land in between were a nice sampler in our quest to see more of our national wonders. I left impressed and grudgingly appreciative of both parks, although Zion was the hands-down winner in my book. The trip served a second purpose – getting us on a mission to see more of the national parks – and we followed it up with a trip the next summer to Glacier National Park, much more my kind of place!

This year is the U.S. National Park Service’s 100^th birthday – get out and see one of these national gems soon!

Frustration at Fitz Roy

Tags

adventure, Argentina, disappointment, El Chaltén, hiking, Laguna de los Tres, Los Glaciares National Park, Mount Fitz Roy, mountains, Patagonia

I am obsessed with mountains. Many of my travels are fueled by a desire to trek or just lay my eyes on a specific mountain, and our first trip to Patagonia was no exception. My goal was simple – to get as close as I could to Mount Fitz Roy in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. I have no technical climbing skills, and it’s too late to start, but my fascination with the world’s most difficult ascents can be satisfied with circuit treks, base camp visits, and partial climbs. I am willing to hike for weeks on end, up and down, through heat and cold, to glimpse the heights that stir men’s souls.

Fitz Roy drew me because it is so extreme. Not the highest of mountains – the Himalayan peaks have double the elevation – Fitz Roy is still considered one of the world’s toughest climbs. The sheer verticality turns away most comers; in some years, more people summit Everest than even attempt Fitz Roy. Fitz Roy also attracted me because it is so fearsome-looking. Its stony gray face looms threateningly over a remote and barren landscape, raising goose bumps on my skin even from a distance – even from a photo! Often sheathed in cloud cover, the pillar pushes dramatically upward, a knife piercing the usually leaden skies above. The mere thought of clinging to its wind- and rain-lashed face brings shivers.

As we approach the small town of El Chaltén for the first time, our driver pulls over and suggests a photo of the spike and its neighbors from afar. In a hurry to get to our lodging and dinner after a long day of travel, I demur at first, saying that we are hiking to a better vantage point the next day. He pulls over anyway, looking at me pityingly, obviously more aware than I that this may be my one and only shot of the unobstructed peak.

We meet briefly with the guide we have hired for the next day and he lays out three hiking options. The longest (estimated at 8-10 hours round trip) is a trek to Laguna de los Tres, a high-altitude glacial lake with the most spectacular view of Fitz Roy. We will not be dissuaded from taking this route, even when he warns us that tomorrow’s weather will be atrocious. We fortify ourselves with the coziest dinner ever – thick local stew and dark home-brewed beer at La Cervecería, a warm cocoon of rustic wood benches and tables crammed together in one snug little room.

Our trek day dawns gray and foggy, as predicted, and we pile on warm and waterproof layers for the hike.

My spirits are already sinking, but we try to stay upbeat and optimistic as we walk, first through gently rising lenga forests, then past ice-cold streams and glacier tongues, and on up to the barren flanks that house two base camps for real climbers.

The closer we get to the lagoon, the denser the fog becomes and the more heavily the rain falls. We are now fully draped in rain ponchos, our hoods and hats and headbands underneath deadening the senses. Our pants are drenched; there is no sheltered place to stop and eat, and our legs and lungs are burning as we near the apex of our climb.

We stumble over slick rocks, seeing nothing but our own boots and the back of our guide. He suddenly halts and points ahead. We are on the shores of the lagoon, a murky pool of dull liquid, topped with a gloomy mist so thick it hovers mere inches from the surface. Behind the lagoon and the damnable vapor lies the best view of Fitz Roy in the world, but it is not for us to see today.

I am not a good sport about this. I have tears in my eyes and sulky words for my family and the guide, who is cranky himself at our insistence on completing the hike. We yank our lunches from our backpacks, eat soggy sandwiches in disagreeable silence, straining for a tiny gap in the murk that never appears, before turning helplessly downhill for the five-hour trek back to El Chaltén. It is the most disappointing day of my travel life, and even my strapping son collapses in exhaustion and frustration at the end of the day.

Like many disappointments, however, the day allows us to focus on smaller scenes of beauty, like the delicate calafate berry below, and serves as motivation to go back to this enigmatic mountain and charming frontier town at the bottom of the world someday.

Happiness is …

Tags

Appalachian Trail, backpacks, Camino de Santiago, happiness, hiking, through-hiking, trekking gear, Via de la Plata

After those last two downer posts, I had to get back on the happiness horse. Luckily, I tend to be a pretty optimistic, easy-to-amuse person, so a very simple activity these last few weeks has significantly boosted my mood. What has brought me to this new state of cheerfulness? Trekking equipment. Thinking about it. Organizing it. Buying more of it. Packing it and unpacking it. (I could continue …)

Recently, I have begun to tentatively plan for a very long hike. There is almost nothing on earth that makes me happier than waking up each morning with nothing on my agenda but lacing up my hiking boots and having a full day of walking ahead of me. (Except maybe doing it the next day and many more after that … or maybe the thought of getting into my tent at the end of a day and organizing my little living quarters before snuggling in for the night.)

Home Sweet Home

But before all that happens, just planning out all the parts gives me great joy. Simply put, I LOVE hiking gear and just taking it out and playing with it can lift my spirits immensely. (I know – you’re getting worried about me now, but I’m pretty normal – honest!)

What has gotten me back on this equipment kick in the middle of winter? Tonight, I will attend a meeting on through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2000+-mile trek from Georgia to Maine. I really doubt this particular hike will turn out to be my first attempt at an epic trek because it takes a good six months and I still have a job (and all that equipment funding!) to think about. While this one is likely to be in the more distant future, I am reading up on the Camino de Santiago (only 30 days or so), the Via de la Plata (6 weeks), and other protracted hikes that can still fit into my summer break from teaching. (Feel free to pass along ideas!)

Many of the longer treks I’ve done to date have been supported by horses, yaks, and other beasts of burden, so I could pack just my medium duffel and a decent-sized daypack with all my goodies.

But now I’m excited about my new, bigger pack – the repository for everything I’ll need for a multi-week or –month hike. Weird as it may seem, I find myself smiling just loading it up, experimenting with compartments and gear and trying to get everything down to the lightest weight I can since every bit of it will travel on my back and shoulders.

All packed up and nowhere to go

When I think about those contents and go shopping, I am similarly delighted, but I’m not always a buyer. I’m a sometime-sucker for the coolest, lightest, smallest, most waterproof, warmest hiking and travel equipment I can find, but I don’t really believe a lot of the product hype. It’s so much fun to look at and consider, but it really doesn’t have to be the strongest, techiest, most perfect product to be of great value to me. For example, I adore my Big Agnes sleeping bag. At three pounds, she’s a hefty gal compared with the ultralights, but I’ll carry those extra two pounds for weeks if it means I’m toasty warm and can move my legs inside the bag every night on the trail. For years, I carried an ancient North Face backpack with minimal features (no pole loops, no chest strap) and I was happy as a clam in my comfortable old friend. On the other hand, I was willing to shell out (no pun intended) for an Arc’teryx rain jacket, and it’s been worth every one of the many dimes I spent on it.

The clothing is less fun than the other gear but still an enjoyable venture. I’ve owned some of the ugliest pairs of hiking pants ever manufactured; only in the last few years have outfitters been trying to slim these pants down and make them a little more stylish and interesting to buy. So yes, I do care about my pants, but trendiness does not factor into many of my other travel clothing choices. My base and mid-layers are frighteningly old and worn, and my baseball cap has seen better days, but sometimes we avid trekkers take perverse pride in our aged gear, glancing a bit condescendingly at the perfectly-attired hikers we encounter on the trail in their color-coordinated outfits and shiny new watches with a million functions.

And what seems cool in the store may not pass the test on the trail anyway. REI, EMS, Backcountry (and the mother-of-all-gear-shops in Namche Bazaar on the trail to Everest, if you’re ever in the neighborhood) can put me in a state of almost drug-induced euphoria, but I’ve purchased my share of “waterproof” gloves that were sopping wet in 15 minutes, a handy little compass-thermometer-carabiner combo that was wildly inaccurate, leg gaiters that leaked, and “quick-dry” clothes that never dried for days on end.

Then again, sometimes a product is so perfect that I’m terrified I won’t be able to replace it. Years ago, I found some Keen hiking boots that were so comfortable and hardy that I’ve now stockpiled multiple boxes of them in my size and favorite colors. I only hope I can keep trekking as long as the supply lasts.

Good for another 2000 miles?

Meanwhile, I am spending these gloomy winter days happily sorting my stash of gear and roaming around the internet in search of some lengthy rambles and, suddenly, I am sunny and smiling again!