Ozark Hiker

11/23/11

It was full dark by the time we started climbing up to Dockerys Gap.  7:00 was on us and there was no joy in this excursion.  We sat around long enough to get cold, so I was bundled up when I began hiking.  Kat’s trick is to maintain a steady, mountain grinding pace all the way up.   Mine is to stop and pant angrily at every other switchback, staring accusingly in the general direction of the summit where Kat’s headlamp bobs and fades away like a will-o-wisp impossibly far ahead of me.

In five or six years of hiking together, I’ve never heard him complain once.  Me, I consider it a sacred form of poetry to be savored and shared.  Maybe he took a vow of conditional silence back at that monastery.  I knew it was rough, then, when I heard, “Does this climb ever stop?” drift down out of the darkness.  I about fell off the trail.

Up and over, down and through.  There’s another established camp site near the creek just at the bottom of the hill.  (What is up with the fire rings all stacked into knee-high cairns?)  We were between mile 9 & 10, I think, and entirely too exhausted to build a fire.  It was pure bliss once the hammocks were strung and the boots off.   It was already colder than the night before, and I was glad for the extra fleece blanket I threw into my pack at the last minute.  I didn’t bother with the rain fly, considering how clear the skies were, and zipped into my mummy bag.  I was asleep before the Tylenol could kick in, curled fetal in the middle of my bag and huffing my own stench.

Woke up freezing four hours later around midnight.  Pulled my knit cap off of my head and used it to cover my feet.  I tied the drip ring too close to the tree and when the temperature dropped, a damp fog rolled in.  My hammock was soaked enough to damp the shell of my sleeping bag.  Woke up every hour between crazy dreams to change position and try to warm a different part of my body.

Kat’s alarm went off around 4:00 a.m., I thought I heard him call out “Crap!” around 4:20 but I think he was just calling my name.   I think.

11/23/11

I’m no good at inclines.  Give me a decent straight trail with gradual changes in elevation and I’ll march all day long, but when it comes to climbing I’m about as fast as a stump.  Kat is a mountain goat.  Each step of those tireless stilts he calls legs vaults him effortlessly across the landscape.  I am Gimli plodding along behind Legolas, Walter waddling behind the Dude.

The climb up from Hurricane Creek is a relentless slope until about mile thirteen when it levels out a little.  Your burning thighs are given just a bit of respite as the trail crosses a few forest roads and the top of a knobby hill.   I could hear my pulse hammering in my throat.  Now and again, Kat would stop and stare at me but I finally grunted him onward to hike his own hike.   We’d arrive at the same spot eventually.  Always do.

I’d love to tell you how beautiful it was, especially when we rounded the trail and could see the pavilion atop White Rock Mountain just across the valley.  The sky had finally opened up blue, the air crisp with the promise of winter.  Around mile fifteen, though, I decided it was time to die.  Just sprawl out on the trail and give it up.  The more I walked, the more my knees began to bicker with each other.  The further that damned pavilion seemed to be.  We were making great time, though.  Kat announced each mile marker with our time.  20 minutes, 30, 25.  We were making between 2.5 and 3 miles per hour.

When mile 17 came up, I gritted my teeth around “0.7” and kept going.  But then. . . then the trail curved around the mountain.  All of a sudden, Kat looked behind us and cursed.  We had passed the pavilion.   With that, my energy bottomed out.   The cheese stick & pepperoni wrap I ate at Hurricane Creek sputtered out and I couldn’t move a step.   Sat down on a log and dug through my food sack.   Munching on another cheese stick, I decided three or four different ways not to have to:  finish the hike, climb up to White Rock, or make the full 17.7 miles back to my truck.

But, man, we were so close.   Decided to follow it until Section 1 ended at Shores Lake.  Sat down at the end of Section 1 and ate second lunch.   It was 3:00 p.m.

The point of must return.

Neither one of us knew how far we were to the White Rock spur, or how long it would take us to climb up to the pavilion.  Since we were already at 3:00, and our goal was to finish this section, the conversation went like this:

“You wanna climb up to the pavilion?”
“Seen it.”
“Me, too.”
“A’right, back to camp.”

With my stomach full of food and nothing between me and Tylenol PM but a 7.7 mile descent, I took the lead and we made our way back to Hurricane Creek.  The bickering in my knees had turned into dueling arias of pain.  One of my knee braces was doing a better job than the other, so I began alternating them every other mile or so.   It seemed to be helping, but downhills are a misery.  The slope was gradual enough, though, that we were still making amazing time chasing the sun down.  In only 6 hours, we managed to finish 15.4 miles from Hurricane Creek to the Shores Lake intersection and back.

Hurricane was just high enough for another cold, wet crossing.  It felt great on the feet, though, and we were able to get the packs moments before dusk and the temperature both fell.

I taped up a blister and we ate dinner by headlamp.  It was a great place to camp, but we were at mile 11 after hiking a 20-mile day.  No way would we be able to climb Dockerys Gap in the morning and still make it out on time.  There was nothing to do but strap on the packs, turn on the headlamps, and start climbing.

11/23/11

Woke up around 7 a.m. to hear Kat shuffling about getting water going.  It was cold enough to have wanted a fire, but no point in making one just for breakfast.  Kat, being the great hiking buddy that he is, put enough water on for both of us to have coffee – but it didn’t take long sitting on a cold rock for me to get impatient with that pellet stove and fire up the pocket rocket.   Etiquette is one thing, cold is another.   (Though, I should be careful about that. . . he may not be so thoughtful next time.)

For breakfast, I tried a couple of new trail fare items.  I mixed in a packet of Carnation Instant Breakfast with my Via coffee for what I hoped would be a more sustained boost of morning energy.  (Next time, I’ll remember the powdered milk.)  I also wolfed down a Little Debbie Swiss Roll – something that, like the McRib, is a weakness of mine that I won’t indulge off trail.  Hopped up on sugar and caffeine, we packed up and hit the trail.

Bear Branch area

The last time we hit this trail, it was a meandering exploration with no real goal in mind.  We didn’t really plan this one out, either, but over the next few miles Kat would break his usually stoic silence to ask questions like, “So. . . what’s the plan?” or “Hmm. . . do you think we’ll have time to make it all the way?”  I brushed them off with vague replies about taking it one mile at a time.  Couldn’t be sure if he was concerned with my overall health or if he was just testing the waters for what would be our most brutal case of self-inflicted stupid to date.

My sugar rush lasted only a few miles when I sat down at the boulder around mile 8.6 and wolfed down a Cliff bar.   Kat again commented on my fluctuating energy level in what, from retrospect, was clearly an assessment of my ability to keep up.

[Let me step aside here and talk some about my close friend and partner-in-crime.  I can’t keep up with him.  Not only am I comparatively a stump, but the guy has hiked trails and miles I’ll never see.  It ain’t a contest, I think he was seriously concerned.  Not only would my wife be put out if I died out on the trail, but he’d have to deal with Bear Bait alone.  That’s enough to strike fear into the strongest heart.]

Sign at Dockerys Gap complaining about trash. With trash in the background.

Energized, we moved along without exploring much.  Climbed up to Dockerys Gap and found the sign above.  I do appreciate the work the OHT Volunteers have done to keep the trail clean.  By comparison, the Butterfield just a few miles up the road is a municipal dump.  Still, that sign isn’t very welcoming and didn’t seem to make much of an impression on whoever left that jug behind.  If you’re going to leave a snarky sign, at least have someone proofread it before you laminate it and staple it to the trail.  We intended to grab that jug on the way back down, but walked past it in the dark later that night and didn’t remember it until we were almost home.   I feel bad about that, but then again the most trash we found on the trail was there in the picture.

Stopped for lunch at Hurricane Creek about 11:30.

Resting packs at Hurricane Creek

This was our crossroads.   We could have just hung out here, wasted away the afternoon.  I tend to do all my talking in the first couple miles of the trail.  Kat don’t talk much at all – even when he does manage to edge a word into my rambling monologue.  So if we stopped now, we’d have nothing to do but stare at each other for the next six hours and that just isn’t much fun.  The last time we camped here, we talked big talk about how easy it would be to just stash the packs behind a tree and hustle-butt up to White Rock.

“Seven miles.”
“Man, seven miles ain’t nothing.”
“Yeah, but then we’ll have to do seven back to camp.”
“Downhill!”

Doesn’t matter who said what.  I think we both tried to back out at least once, and at least once tried to keep the other one from backing out.  Plan was to hike as far as we could by 3:00 p.m. and then turn around no matter where we were.  That would get us back to Hurricane Creek by around darkfall.

Of course, that assumed we’d make the same time going up the mountain as we would coming down.   Kat brought a day-pack that we stuffed with our food sacks, a bottle of PolarPure, and his water bottle.   I carried a quart and my camera case.  Wore the hunter’s orange cap (complete with text in case I came across any color blind hunters) and hid the packs behind the tree.

And you just thought the stupid was all used up at Frog Bayou . . .

(Next: There and back again)