I believe there has always been a part of me that craved an adventure. That wanted to experience a personal epic.
When I was a teenager I rode a bicycle a lot. After my first trip to Philmont with my Scouting family I spent many hours planning another trip to Philmont in which I could go by myself and take the long 12-day trek in the mountains instead of the 5 day family week hike. I determined I would ride my bike the 1750 miles from Milwaukee to New Mexico. I don't remember now how I was to get the bike back – probably ship it back while I took a bus.
Well, it never happened. My longest bike trip was a 4 day trip from our scout camp in the North Kettle Moraine over to Terry Andrae park on Lake Michigan and then down to Milwaukee and then on to Highland Park, Illinois, before turning back north to Muskego. After my Junior year of high school my family returned to Philmont and I did take the 5-day trek in the Rayado Creek area.
After my divorce, in Buffalo, I bought my Raleigh Record touring bike and, with some camping gear protected in the property settlement, I planned a tour around southern Ontario. I would cross the Peace Bridge and follow the north shore of Lake Erie until near Windsor and then cut across to Lake St. Claire and the Lake Huron/Georgian Bay shoreline. At some appropriate point I would turn south and leave shoreline as I cut across to Hamilton and back along Lake Ontario to the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls.
If I remember correctly, I took off very close to Independence Day and had a lovely ride against some wind to a Provincial Park on the Lake Erie shore. I had a problem buying food because I had not changed money and the small stores would not take my credit cards. I found that currency was a much larger problem off the beaten path than in Toronto or Hamilton. I then proceeded to get almost no sleep that night as a steady and cold wind blew off the water all night long and my small and lightweight blanket roll was not up to keeping me warm. I owned a huge sleeping bag that had protected me well into the single digits in Yellowstone Park, but it was so heavy and bulky that I did not dare carry it on a bike trip. I took instead an old navy blanket that I had inherited from my parents. It did not cover me and it did not keep out the wind. It was July!
The next morning I sadly retraced my path to home.
Many years later, when that other adventure, called life, led me to Tucson, I almost immediately began taking day hikes in the mountains that surround our high valley. I hiked almost every other weekend for nine years (excluding, for the most part, July and August) and became a reasonably competent hiker. In all that time I did only one overnight – a brief sortie into the Wilderness of Rocks with George Prentice from work.
It is funny how the memory selects what it will hold and what it will discard. It seems I must have entertained some thoughts of camping during this “day hike period“ because I did buy a beautiful Ultra-Light down sleeping bag, which I know cost more than $200 at a time when I barely had $200. I never used the bag until the overnight with Mr. Prentice. I also know that I used my Quest Starlight on that first overnight. I may have bought it for that trip, I don't remember. I do know that I had already bought a very light weight Walrus tent several years earlier which I did not use because I got claustrophobia upon entering it. Ultimately my neighbor, Delane Bell, used it on our trips together. It was a good tent for someone of more nearly average height, being just over 3 pounds carry weight.
So, while I may have harbored thoughts of camping during those nine years, I did not act upon them beyond the expenditure of funds. I believe that concerns about bears and cooking were high on my list of excuses.
Then, as the century wound to its close, Polly Waites, a dear friend of my wife, lent me a book written by a New York journalist about his experiences hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I found myself very frustrated by his unconscionable practice of skipping over sections of the trail he found uninteresting (or perhaps unnecessary to selling a book), yet something in the book must have revived my ambitions for an adventure.
I am confident there were three events that led to my determination to hike the Arizona Trail – Polly's book, learning of the existence of the AZT, and my discovery of Ray Jardine and his approach to long distance hiking. I cannot now reconstruct the exact sequence of events. My wife is quite sure I knew of the AZT before reading the book, and that hiking the AZT was always the goal. I cannot now recall when or how I first heard about the AZT.
In any event, having set this goal, I explored the literature for help in solving my problems regarding long distance hiking. I know from the start that the hiking was the goal, and the camping was a necessary evil. I know I was concerned about bears more than anything else. I also was quite concerned about food. Although I had acquired my cooking merit badge in Boy Scouts, I had not enjoyed it, and I had never had to pack multiple days of food. (At Philmont, the food was delivered to the campsites by truck and we just carried our personal gear over the mountain between the campsites.)
In exploring the resources available on Amazon.com one day I came upon a book called “The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook“ by Ray Jardine. I knew the Pacific Crest Trail wound 2750 miles along the Sierra crest from Mexico to Canada. The book purported to include tips on hiking in addition to being a trail guide. In fact, the trail information was almost incidental and the book was in fact the original treatise that introduced and defined the genre of “ultra-lite hiking“. (Jardine subsequently dispensed with the trail guide façade and re-issued the book as “Beyond Backpacking“, eliminating all specific references to the PCT and using the space to amplify and elucidate his theories and equipment designs.)
[Before conquering long distance hiking, Jardine had already made significant contributions to the sport of rock climbing, including the invention of a piece of gear which has become a staple of all climbers, and had also circumnavigated the world in a sailboat. By the time I discovered him he had exhausted hiking and was exploring new designs for kayaks to be used in his long distance Arctic kayak tours.]
Anyway, I took immediately to Jardine's theories of ultra-lite trekking. While I found that I could not adopt all of his techniques verbatim to my AZT ambitions, his ideas became the points of departure for all my thinking regarding the AZT. His style of thought and analysis, which came through in his writing, spoke directly to me and required no translation or accommodation before I could accept it. It shot directly into my heart and mind and gave me a rush that has yet to wear off.
In the first spring of the new century I determined to hike my first section of the AZT. I would start at the Mexican border and hike back to my home in Tucson. I calculated the distance to be about 225 miles and I took two weeks of vacation time in late March to accomplish the feat. Perhaps recognizing that this was ambitious for a first overnight, I determined to leave my car at Oak Tree Canyon, which was about the midpoint of the distance. I would cache some water in the trunk and give myself the opportunity to truncate the hike at this point if I had slipped behind schedule.
I conducted just one tune-up campout to prove in my equipment. In early March, Delane and I hiked up Miller Creek to Happy Valley Saddle. We camped at the campsite there and tested my new stove, but the trail to Rincon Peak appeared too icy and we dropped back to the truck the next morning. I also did a day hike in late February with Delane in which we hiked a loop out of Ramsey Canyon, past the old Hamburg town site and up Wisconsin Canyon to Bear Saddle on the Huachuca Crest Trail – which at that point is part of the AZT. We then followed the crest past Sunnyside Canyon, where the AZT drops off toward Parker Canyon Lake, and turned down Pat Scott Canyon back to the Hamburg site. The choice of this location for a tune-up hike was to prove fortuitous.
On the Friday before the hike Elaine followed me to Oak Tree Canyon, where I left the Taurus. Next morning, before 4am, the two of us were on our way to Sierra Vista, where guilt led my to buy a compensatory breakfast for Elaine. After breakfast we completed the final miles south to the border and the Coronado National Monument where, at the top of Montezuma Pass, there is a trail head parking lot from which I had chosen to begin the AZT. (The trail actually begins about 3.5 miles south of this point, but I had determined to skip this section so that I could improve my chances of not having to camp on the Huachuca crest where the nights could still be quite cold and the snow had probably not fully melted. The AZT is tough to schedule. It is high at both ends and low in the middle. If you start too early in spring you risk snow at the beginning, too late in fall and the snow may be at the end. Error in the other direction and you fry in the middle.)
Our timing was almost perfect, reaching the Monument at first light. Much to my embarrassment and Elaine's chagrin the last few miles winding up to the pass was dirt road. For some reason I had convinced myself that it had been paved. While not happy about this turn of events, Elaine was a good sport and did not force me to abort my mission so close to its departure point. I could see much of the road from the initial portion of the trail and, for some reason, seeing Elaine cautiously negotiating the switchbacks in her precious low-riding Buick gave me a sense of contentment that pushed any trepidation which I might have felt about my impending adventure out of my mind. Life was good!
As I am actually writing this account out of sequence, I have already discussed gear in The Tangle with the Angle. My gear for this first leg of my AZT odyssey did not differ greatly from this later list, having all derived as they did from my application of Jardine's theories to Arizona's peculiar environment. However, a few deviations are worth mention. I was still using the Gregory Wind River pack. Even if I had discovered the Kelty at this time, it would not have accommodated the volumes of fresh foods with which I began this hike. I estimate my starting pack weight to have been about 65 pounds with a volume that almost completely filled the 7000+ Cc's of the Wind River.
I had not yet discovered the Dromedary hydration pouch at this time and I supplemented my gallon of Nalgene bottles with two 2-quart Gatorade bottles – probably initially filled with Gatorade. I did NOT carry a sleeping pad and I was still using my Ultra-Lite down bag. I carried a space blanket that I hoped would insulate me from the cold ground. I was also carrying an Optimus Explorer multi-fuel stove which I initially chose over the butane stove, upon which I later settled, because for long distance trekking, butane canisters cannot be mailed and are unlikely to be available along the route. The multi-fuel stove could burn almost anything, including gasoline, and I figured it was more likely I could find fuel for it along the way.
As regards food, I was still subscribing to Jardine's dictums regarding gorging on fresh foods after each encounter with civilization. I had fresh apples, oranges, and potatoes in tow. I had at least one sandwich and some hard-boiled eggs aboard. In hiking long distances you eventually deplete any reserves you may have built up in your body. From that point on, you must supply new fuel to your body or it will begin to cannibalize useful parts of your anatomy. Later on, when I decided that I would only do 1-week sections, I could change my strategies on food because I actually wanted to consume my reserves as a weight loss technique. Freeze dried foods are enough to supplement my natural reserves as long as I limit myself to one week excursions.
The final significant difference in my kit on this hike was in my shoes. This was the last gasp of my Raichle boots. This hike stressed them enough to begin to break down the tread and stitching. At the completion of the hike I determined to retire them and began my experiments with lightweight shoes as recommended by Jardine. However, I was not so foolish as to begin a hike of this ambition with new shoes!
As I slowly mounted the ascending arc of trail from parking lot to Forest boundary, after seeing the last of Elaine's Buick slide under the forest canopy, I became increasingly aware that my sense of contentment was losing ground to a sense of great pain from my shoulders. This pack was HEAVY!
I had never carried this much weight before. I had hiked this section of trail before – up to the Miller Peak turn-off – but I clearly was not going to be able to keep the same pace on this trip. Fortunately for me, before this could get me down, I realized that I was not on the same schedule this time. I had two weeks to accomplish my goal, and the weight I carried was enabling me to cover that time and distance. I began the hypnotic process of putting one foot in front of the other. The steeper the grade or the greater the load, the smaller the step, but always moving forward. Once I reached the Forest boundary the trail leveled off and followed the crest of the range to Miller Peak.
The Huachuca Mountains start at the Mexican border, coterminous with the AZT. The southern portion of the range is a sharp ridge running almost due north to Miller Peak, the tallest peak in the range. A series of perpendicular canyons rise up from the east and west. The AZT follows the Huachuca Crest Trail which in turn stays very close to the crest of this ridge. Although the southern section tends to favor the eastern views, there are places where you are walking directly on the knife-edge of the ridge. On a clear day you can see New Mexico to the east while surveying the fullness of the remote San Rafael Valley to the west.
As one's northern progress approaches the massive feature of Miller Peak, the trail slides to the west of the ridge and works its way around some rocky features in a series of switchbacks culminating at the junction of the Miller Peak trail which quickly mounts the 9400 foot summit.
I remember stopping to eat my first orange on this backside segment. I drink the juice regularly but I had never really gotten the hang of eating the things in their natural state. I found them to be quite refreshing and nutritious, but the juice made the handles of my trekking poles sticky and I had to contend with that for the rest of the hike. I still held water too dear to waste it on washing hands, even though I expected to come to a reliable spring this same day. Old habits die hard.
In reasonable time I came to the Miller Peak turn-off and began my first section of “new“ trail. New to me, anyway. Between Miller Peak and Tub Spring you no longer sense being on a ridgeline but rather being in a forest. The trend is downhill a bit and Tub Springs sits in the basin at the top of Miller Canyon. It is a lovely spot made even more delightful by the presence of reliable water. Some miner hauled a cast iron bathtub up the canyon suspended between two mules and the spring water drips cold and clear from the end of a length of pipe into this bathtub now half buried in soil right where the trail dips to cross the canyon creekbed. I stopped here to replenish my water and devour a sandwich. I rested for most of an hour during which time a trail jogger happened by. He asked directions, which I could not provide, and disappeared up the trail I anticipated following soon. A short while later he returned. I don't think I really understood what he was trying to tell me. Apparently he had gotten confused and uncertain where to go and apparently there was a trail sign down. Rather than pressing him until I had learned all I could, I let him go.
As it happened, I had brought topo maps of most of the terrain I expected to traverse, but I had chosen NOT to bring my trail guide to the Huachucas. All I had was the brief written description of the trail that appears in the AZT Guide. I was familiar with the entire crest trail except this one section between Miller Peak and Bear Saddle. It had always been well marked before, and I foresaw no problem staying on track.
Eventually I could no longer justify this idyllic respite and I forced myself to shoulder my pack once again. It had not gotten noticeably lighter. The trail leaves the spring on another ascending arc through a sloping meadow rising to a point directly above and to the west of the spring. A very clear trail then arcs to the north around the rim of a basin. It is not clear to me how the transition is made from the basin of Miller Canyon to the basin of the next canyon north, but it must occur. After a pleasant half-mile or so I arrived at a trail junction. The trail I was on continued to arc down to the right. Another trail forked to the northwest climbing somewhat steeply. One the ground, in the fork of the trail was a signpost. It had one sign on it, indicating “Carr Peak“. The post seemed to be pointing up the trail, but not the sign itself. I was no longer confidant that I knew where the AZT went. I sat down and read the brief description over several times. I tried to review the confused conversation with the jogger. It seemed that down and east were both wrong but that is where the main trail went. It didn't seem like Carr Peak was a promising destination. I would now in an instant have accepted many times the few ounces of weight the Trail Guide represented to my load to now have access to a decent trail map or description. I did not like either of my choices, but I eventually determined to continue on the main trail.
[It was six months later before I finally discovered what had really gone wrong. At the top of the first arc above Tub Springs, where I turned back to the north to follow the well-groomed second arc, there had been a second downed trail sign – perhaps buried in the snow. This sign indicated an intersection with a less well groomed trail which led up over the ridge, crossed to the west slope, and then descended to Bear Saddle. The AZT took this turn; I did not. By the time I reached my downed sign, I was already lost.
It took me six months to make this discovery because even with the aid of the trail guide, the turn falls right in the crack between two maps. One has to read the text and flip between three different maps to understand what is going on in that part of the mountain. I had my Eureka experience in August and took an exploratory hike up Miller Canyon in September to verify my suspicions. The sign was still down at that time and I met two rangers at the trail junction who had just reset the Carr Peak sign and had just discovered that this sign was also down. They were trying to decide whether another trip would be required before they could correct this outage. I left them to their deliberations. I knew I would not make the same mistake a second time – sign or no sign.]
Meanwhile, back at the Carr Peak Trail, I continued down the graceful arc of well-groomed trail to the northeast. The trail re-curved to the left as it continued around Carr Peak. As the trail moved onto the north face of the peak, I could see vistas to the west that were familiar. I thought they looked like the wedding cake cliffs that dominate the Ramsey Canyon area. This would be consistent with where I thought I was on the mountain. I could see what I took to be the Carr Canyon road coming up from the northeast. (Elaine and I had tried driving up Carr Canyon once in the Taurus. Part way up the ruts became too intimidating and we chickened out.)
I was pretty sure I was no longer on the AZT, but I thought that if I could get close to Ramsey Canyon I could regain the trail by going up Pat Scott Canyon. The trail switched down the north face until it got into the trees. I crossed a wash and on the opposite side heard the sound of traffic. I thought I must be near the road. A short while later I passed a sign indicating “Hamburg“ this way. The reference was to “Hamburg Canyon“ or something else slightly unexpected, but it was close enough for me to hope that it was near Ramsey Canyon. I followed the trail in the direction indicated. A bit later I saw some bikers through the brush on the side of the trail. I asked if they had a map or were familiar with the area. They were not able to help. The trail soon began cutting across the grain of the canyons. Several times I climbed out of one canyon to crest the dividing ridge and drop back down into the next canyon. After a couple of these crossings the sun was dropping rapidly behind the mountain range which was now to my west. I began to worry about finding a place to pitch my tent. I was always going either up or down, never on the level. I started to look at very marginal sites on the sides of the ridges and in the washes. It was well after 6pm and the light was fading fast when I determined to pass the marginal site on this slope and push for the next ridge. If there was no level ground there, I would take anything I could make to work. As it turned out, the trail gods took pity on me and the trail quickly crested in a beautiful wooded bower. I set up camp in the dark and fell asleep in moonlight dappled by the leafy canopy above. This was my first night on the Arizona Trail.
It was this very night that I formulated “Pekarske's rule of campsite finding“. One hour before expected darkness you begin looking for campsites. If you find one, you mark it in your mind and continue on. If you have not found another sight in 15 minutes, you return to the noted sight. When there is less than 30 minutes to darkness, you take the next site you find regardless of how likely it is that there is another sight ahead. I believe that the only times I have broken this rule since are when I felt certain that I could get to a safe spot in the dark: going into Parker Canyon Lake on the road, going to the Hotel in Patagonia on the road, and going into Flagstaff (and that was pushing my luck).
My first campsite was a very pleasant experience. Although I was clearly off my course, this detour had taken me to a much lower elevation and, being on the east side of the mountain, was sheltered from most weather. The ground was well cushioned and I had no trouble staying warm.
The next morning I began my way down into the next canyon. At the first opportunity I tried the cell phone and was able to reach Elaine. The phone was not set up for roaming, but I was able to get through with a collect call. I told Elaine I was off course but pretty sure I knew how to get back onto the trail.
At the bottom of the canyon was another sign that confirmed that the Hamburg site was just up the next slope. Not long after this I was back in familiar territory as I approached the Wisconsin Canyon trail on a side trail I think I remembered from our hike a month ago. I turned upstream and shortly met the Pat Scott forking to the west. Water was plentiful in Pat Scott Canyon and I replenished my supply. I was so unused to the availability of water that I had not yet caught on to the habit of hydrating at a watering hole. I should have drunk my fill before restocking but I did not. I suffered a bit for this later in the day.
I calculate my detour to have been about 8 miles in length. That meant it cost me half a day given a target of 15 miles per day. For high mountain travel it might have been more than half a day. I also had to regain a lot of elevation. At Hamburg I was substantially lower than at Montezuma Pass where I began the hike. Although up hill, it was a fine day, and I enjoyed the hike up Pat Scott. At the top I rejoined the Crest Trail and soon came to the Sunnyside Canyon turnoff where the AZT drops down the west side of the Huachucas. This was again new territory for me and the switchbacks were broad and not too steep. It made for a pleasant descent. However, I did not find any water on this slope. In the upper canyon I was too far above the floor, and by the time the trail got near the streambed, the bed was dry. I continued down the canyon bottom, through an old corral site, and on to the Wilderness Boundary.
Feeling pressured for time, I rested briefly outside the gate but did not consult my maps or guides. The trail turns into a road at this point and I struck out down the road generally watching for a trail sign. I knew that at some point I would leave the road to the right/north to cross into the next canyon over. However, after more than half an hour I still had not seen a sign for the turnoff. I did some exploring and minor backtracking and finally decided that the only reasonable course was to return to the Wilderness Boundary and start over. Once back at the boundary I took the time to read the trail description and it indicated that the turn was almost immediate. Knowing this I had no trouble finding the turnoff that I had apparently passed before even beginning my search the first time. Another hour lost.
Another hour lost to what? Where was this schedule coming from? After years of day hikes where I had to reach my destination before water and daylight ran out, I was having trouble adapting my thinking to long-distance hiking. I had food and shelter on my back. I had reasonable expectation of water at Parker Canyon Lake. There was little real advantage to making the Lake today, but I had seized upon the idea of that destination for tonight. I had only been to the Lake once before, and my memory was fuzzy. Elaine's Ex (Dave) had suggested that it was quite civilized. The store would be open into the evening, there would be banks of pay phones from which to call home, and there was a public campsite there. Parker Canyon Lake was the only certain haven before Patagonia, which was days away.
Once back on the trail I pushed for the Lake. I observed that some of the signs down here had been vandalized – often having their pointed ends broken off or blasted by 12-guage shot. Despite this damage, I was able to follow the trail successfully. The tread was fairly well worn and the very fact of a sign at all was a signal to look for a turn or otherwise non-linear event. All one had to do was take notice of the defaced and deformed marker and use it as a signal to study the terrain a bit more carefully than usual and the trails continuation would inevitably reveal itself.
I passed a couple of seriously stagnant pools from which I elected not to drink. It was a lot warmer down in the valleys and I was regularly getting cottonmouth. However I judged that I had enough water to sustain me to Parker Canyon and I was not disposed to spend the time it would have taken to restock. With the prospect of many more miles of hiking at these lower elevations, the concept of a hydration tube from which I could draw water without the need of stopping and removing my pack began to form in my arid temporal lobes.
After segueing to the next canyon the trail followed a road through what appeared to be recently grazed land. A plastic water pipe surfaced periodically along the roadside and eventually the road approached and passed a windmill and storage tank encircled by a barbwire corral. I made a mental note that under more desperate circumstances water might be extracted from such an installation.
Almost immediately after passing the windmill the road entered a fenced meadow. The trail veered left as it skirted this pasture and then proceeded interminably sandwiched narrowly between brush and barbwire until the meadow mercifully ended and the trail negotiated a pair of Forest Service gates before following an erosion ditch down to its junction with the Forest Road.
The proper action at this point was to follow the trail across the road and seek a pleasant campsite from which one could leisurely visit the store at Parker Canyon in the morning. Having by this time fully fixated on assuaging my appetites at the store this evening, I failed to recognize the wisdom of such a course of action and determined steadfastly to follow the road to the store. There would be a full moon tonight and the road would be easy to follow even after dark. Besides, I wasn't sure I could find my way from the trail to the store, and besides, the store probably wouldn't be open at 5am when I like to start a days hiking, so there would be more time lost on the non-existent schedule, and besides, I'm old enough to make up my own mind and you can't make me, so there.
Having resolved that debate in my favor, if not to my benefit, I continued down the road and reached the store at Parker Canyon Lake around 7:30pm. Guess what. The store isn't open past 5pm. Guess what. There are no pay phones there. In fact, the store does not have electricity and the only phone is locked inside the store. Guess what. The campsite is really a mile or two down the road in the wrong direction! (Actually, this last factor was really a minor obstacle. I probably should have walked the additional distance to the campsite, but by this time rational thought was surfacing less and less frequently and I was left to rely upon underdeveloped, if not non-existent, reflexes.)
So, in for a penny, in for a pound. I was here and I had to get through the night. As I took stock and considered my options one of the first things I observed were all the trash containers with their huge and heavy cast iron tops sliding vertically on massive steel posts sunk into massive concrete footings. To me this raised the specter of bears. The Jardine theory that allowed me to deal with my worry of bears invading my campsite was stealth camping. “Don't eat where you camp and don't camp where you eat“. A corollary of this rule is “avoid public campgrounds because the bears know where they are and they know there is food there“. Even in my addled state I could see that I had come seriously a cropper of this rule. Furthermore, all the areas near the store were either paved or steeply slopping. I was not able to find a campsite that wasn't on pavement (and I was not carrying a sleeping pad).
Here, perhaps, occurs the first manifestation of my strange fascination with latrines.
I ultimately observed that there was a large latrine behind the store at the level of the middle parking lot. I was able to take advantage of this structure's primary function and in the process I realized that it was substantially warmer inside. The temperature outside was plummeting and the wind was rising dramatically. The latrine not only sheltered me from the wind, but it was warm beyond that. I assume it was one of those self-composting systems of which the Forest Service has grown fond.
The concrete pad outside the door was large and screened floor-to-ceiling on two sides. I determined to try to sleep on the pad outside the door. There appeared to be enough space between the door and the screen so I would not be blocking access. I did not expect much traffic in any event.
I lay my pack down on the open side of the pad in hopes of breaking whatever wind came from that direction. I extracted all my cold weather gear from the pack and bundled up. I put the space blanket silver side down on the pavement and opened my sleeping bag. I got some sleep in this situation, but I soon realized that I could not zip my mummy bag past my massively masculine shoulders. Apparently I had grown since buying the bag or I had never fully zipped it with me inside. I honestly do not know which is the case. In any case, I could not fully close my sleeping bag and that made a big difference. It had become too cold for the bag to be effective as a cover. I had to be zipped inside to benefit, and I could not do this. I zipped my down jacket to the max and cinched up its hood and turned my back to the open side. I got some sleep this way but it was fitful. The temperature kept dropping, the concrete stayed hard, the space blanket did little good against conduction from the cold slab, and the wind got stronger.
I don't think it was the wind or the air temperature that did me in. I had insulation against that. However, any point of contact with the unyielding concrete would compress any insulation between my weight and the ground. It insulating value would be defeated and the cold and the hard from below had a direct path into my body. A sleeping pad would have provided both cushion and insulation. I made a mental note and it stuck with me like a tongue to a frozen flagpole.
On my best camping days I don't sleep through the night, and this night I quickly moved into my “waiting for daybreak“ phase. Unfortunately, it wasn't even midnight yet, so I had some time to kill. I got up and went into the latrine to try to warm up a little. I wrapped the unzipped sleeping bag and the space blanket around me as best I could and alternated between pacing the floor and sitting in one of the stalls. Time dragged, but it was warmer than on the slab.
No one ever entered the latrine while I was there. I heard one car come into the parking lot and I could see some light from the vehicle's headlights. I never went outside to look and no one bothered me. Eventually the sun did rise.
As the sun rose the temperature relaxed a bit. I left my cave to better examine my surroundings in the light of day. I moved my gear to a concrete bench located to the side of the stairs that went down to the lower level. The gear was spread out a bit as I was still wearing my cold weather kit and had the water bottles out for refilling, etc. The entrance to the store was on the lower level, along with the boat ramp and the water spigot. The store did not open until 9am. The water spigot was working. The lake was very low in its banks. The gangways leading to the floating docks had been locked down because it was too dangerous to walk on them because they were so steeply pitched. We had been suffering through five years of drought and it had taken its toll on the lake. (One year later I found the lake lapping the edge of its shoreline trail – filled to capacity after one wet winter.)
As the early morning wore on, the fishermen began arriving in the parking lot to launch their various boats and canoes or to lock in a prime location along the shoreline. Most were either nominally polite or downright friendly, with one exception. Two rugged looking 30-ish guys could offer no more than a cold stare as they launched their Coleman plastic canoe. I remember thinking they looked like French Canadian lumberjacks on the lookout for the Mounties.
As my luck would have it, the proprietor of the store was late arriving this day. There was no hot food available in the store. I ate some jerky and found a can of sardines on a shelf. I believe there was some V-8 juice. I would buy something, talk to the manager a bit, go outside to eat, then head back in for another round. The wind never let up but it eventually became too warm for the down jacket so I switched to my wind breaker and packed up my pack – leaving it on the bench rather than carrying it down the stairs to the lower level. I was concerned about continuing without a useable sleeping bag. I began to see the trail ahead as very much unknown to me and in that unknown I began seeing problems rather than adventure. The proprietor of the store did not help matters by his talk about problems with illegal aliens in the territory ahead. About 10 or 10:30 I decided to call Elaine and ask her to pick me up. I believe she could not leave immediately, but would be free shortly after noon. That would give me time to hike out several miles to the paved portion of the road.
I made my final pass around the store, assuring myself I had left nothing palatable or potable behind, and went to retrieve my gear. As I climbed the stairs and the concrete bench came into view, it was empty. My pack and my trekking poles were nowhere to be seen. As I stood there looking stupid a man came over from his car in the parking lot and asked what was wrong. I told him and he said two fisherman had taken the gear and thrown it into their truck before leaving. I immediately knew it was the two lumberjacks. “Into a Blazer?“ “Yes, how did you know? I thought it strange that fishermen would have ski poles, but I wasn't about to interfere.“
This man had spent the night at the campsite nearby and thought he recognized the fishermen from the campsite. He drove me over but they were not to be found. I returned to the store and told the proprietor what had happened. He offered to drive me out to the paved part of the road at lunch time and when Elaine first picked me up it did not strike her at first that I was not carrying my backpack and poles. It gave us something to talk about on the way back to the Taurus.
I had to file a police report to collect on my insurance. I never heard anything further from the police. My State Farm agent was extremely helpful and after $250 deductible, everything was covered. Being a pack rat paid off this time because I was able to find enough evidence of my original purchases to satisfy them that I was on the level. After that they trusted me. I had two years to make claims against the loss and I spent most of a month reassembling all my gear. The bill surpassed $2000.
I was able to replace most items with identical gear. A few things couldn't be matched exactly. My glass frames were no longer available and so I picked new frames. Elaine's cell phone model was obsolete, it having been more than one month since we bought it, so we were forced to get a better model. My Quest tent was no longer being manufactured but I found one in inventory on the Internet. I could see no point in replacing the sleeping bag although the model was still in production. I got a very similar model from the same manufacturer that was cut more fully. I made sure I could zip it all the way before buying it! State Farm approved the extra $20 dollars for this more expensive bag.
It was bad enough losing the gear and having to locate replacements. I was very grateful that the insurance company was so cooperative. I actually had more trouble settling on a new pair of hiking shoes to replace my worn out Raichle's. But that is another story.
This was written around 2003 from memory. I did not begin publishing a journal until after the second hike.