Your guide for the day
I am awakened in the pre-dawn hours by Erik's voice in my ear. "Dad, I smell smoke!"
I bolt from bed and quickly check the house, but it takes only seconds to confirm what I'd guessed as soon as the adrenaline rush subsided enough to let me think. It is woodsmoke we are smelling, and it is thicker outside the house. The forest service's "controlled burn" has gotten out of hand.
I'd seen a small article in Monday's paper announcing that the forest service was planning a 600-acre burn in Wasatch county on Tuesday to clear underbrush and diminish the threat of a larger fire. It sounded kind of dumb to me. After all we are in year 5 of a drought, and citizens couldn't strike so much as a cigarette lighter in the mountains without facing fines and possible imprisonment. But of course no one asked me. I was just hoping that the fire would burn as planned and then go out, leaving me a clear midweek day for a long-anticipated hike. The fall weather has been ideal; clear cool days and crisp starry nights have been the recent norm and the weatherman predicts more of the same as far as he can see. I am hungry for an escape from routine and have been quietly planning a Wednesday hike up Timpanogos for more than a week.
But now the air tastes like a dying campfire and I can't see the foothills of Timpanogos through a thick haze. What should I do? All through the early morning pre-school routine I debate. I know what I "should" do, of course. Cancel my hike. It is only reasonable.
But then it's always reasonable to cancel a hike. Hiking by its nature is an unreasonable activity. What reasonable person would voluntarily choose to rip up his or her body, subjecting it to stresses that will abuse even well-trained muscles? Who would willingly toil a whole day, knowing that much of it will be in pain, for no visible return at all? In his book Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer describes climbers laboring up Mount Everest's endless slopes as penitents seeking enlightenment through suffering. I'm not particularly in the mood to suffer. I'm not seeking enlightenment. But I don't want to be reasonable. I just want to take a nice long walk.
And so I temporize. Rather than canceling the hike out of hand, I'll prepare myself and then just go and see what things looked like at Aspen Grove. After all, the fire might be burning on some range far to the south or east of my intended hiking area. If things look bad I'll scrub the hike and spend the day catching up on office work. But it won't hurt to at least go see how things look on the mountain, will it?
I quickly gather my hiking gear. Then I have to do a serious second sort. The first time I ever climbed Timpanogos was Labor Day in 1974. I'd come to BYU for freshman orientation a week before classes started. Orientation was over, and classes wouldn't begin until Tuesday. On that Monday morning a few new friends told me they planned to climb Timp. None of them had ever hiked the mountain before. They didn't know how far it was, but thought they'd be back just after noon. I grabbed a sack lunch from the cafeteria and jumped into the car with them. I had no pack, no water, no jacket, no map, no first aid gear. I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt and old sneakers. When the forest service sign at the trailhead said that Emerald Lake was a bit under 7 miles away, I expected to be there in under two hours.
But nowadays I tend to the opposite extreme. My daypack (which I use whenever I walk or bike) has a small first-aid kit, several useful tools (in case I'm ever challenged to rebuild my whole bike without outside assistance), 100' of nylon parachute cord (in case I have to free-rappel over some cliffs to retrieve the bike before rebuilding it), bug spray, lip gloss, sunscreen, toilet paper, 2 cigarette lighters (one might not work), an emergency blanket, 2 energy bars, a signal mirror, a leatherman knife, a bandana, a biking pant clip and miscellaneous screws. And that's just in the small side zip pockets! For today's hike I pack a good supply of food, pick up a weatherproof jacket and pants, add a thick pullover in case I get cold, and grab a headlamp because it's more convenient than carrying a flashlight. I fill my 100-ounce camelback bladder with cold water and add a squirt of lemon. I pick up the camera Terry has generously offered to let me use for the day. Then I try to cram everything into the small camelback backpack I want to carry.
Things just won't fit. It's all the clothes, of course. How much stuff do you really need for a day hike? I have to make a choice. Either I have to ditch a bunch of the stuff, or I have to carry a larger pack.
I weed manfully. As long as I'm at it, I decide to empty all the side pockets as well. I end up with a much slimmer first-aid kit, a very small pocket knife, one cigarette lighter, and about half the toilet paper. I ditch the extra layer of warm clothes but keep the weatherproof outer shell. After a little thought I swap my long-sleeved t-shirt for a light fleece pullover. I've been snowed on unexpectedly while on Timpanogos. That mountain makes its own weather at its own pleasure. I drop the extra flashlight and just keep the headlamp in its stuff sack. I check to see that I have extra batteries; there are a set of AA batteries in the sack, and the test meters on their sides check "good". I toss in a couple more AA batteries for the camera. I don't know how much juice it will chew up, and I want it to last the whole day. I also put in an ankle brace for my left ankle. Since breaking it last January I haven't tried anything as strenuous as this hike will be.
With the extra clothing removed my food slides easily into the pack. The camera nestles nicely on top of the food. All I need is my boots and my staff and I'll be ready to walk.
My boots are on the shelf where I always leave them. I slip my feet into them and lace them up. But after a few steps I sit down and unlace them again. Something is rubbing against my right small toe. Experience tells me that I'll have an ugly blister in no time if I walk with that kind of pressure. A quick check verifies that the problem isn't my socks. An exploratory finger gives me bad news. The seam around the boot's eyelets has worn and separated. These boots have finally worn out. Of course I got them in 1988 when I hiked Yosemite, so they are older than two of my sons. I can't really complain that they haven't lasted well. But what a time to fail! I look at my other shoes and settle on a pair of cross-trainers. They are light, comfortable, and will provide pretty good traction on the rocks. They won't support my ankles like my hiking boots, and they won't protect my feet from stone bruises very well. But they aren't really much different from the shoes I wore that fall day 29 years ago.
My old hiking staff is nowhere to be found. This alone tells me it's been much longer than I realized since I've gone walking the high trails. I have a few other sticks I could use, but nothing that feels both light and comfortable. I finally settle on using some Leki adjustable cross-country poles I bought for winter hiking and snowshoeing. I have some rubber tips that slip over the metal endpicks. Though I have not taken a long hike using walking poles, Dallas Noyes once told me he liked walking with them very much. So I decide to try it. If it doesn't work well I can always collapse the poles and strap them to the outside of my backpack. I know from experience I can easily pick up a walking stick anywhere below Emerald Lake if I want one.
By this time the boys are heading out to school and the sky is light. The dawning day does not make the valley look better. But I am already prepared. Might as well go look at the mountain.