Kyoo 180 - Backpacking Tales

Four months since my last post. New record?

My house has come a long ways since that last post. But not as far as I thought it would. When I closed on it at the end of May, I thought I'd be pretty settled by the end of July at the latest. Ha! So naive. It's mid-October and I just barely bought a dining room table. I still have a couple projects to finish (building shelves in my storage shed, painting a bathroom, hanging pictures, etc) but my condo's starting to look like a little home. I love it.

As for my summer adventures, I kept myself pretty busy with friends, some vacations, and lots of overtime at work. Did I mention lots of overtime at work? Last week was the first week since May that I only worked 40 hours. I didn't break my 92-hour week record that I hit last summer but I was consistently in the 60s-70s. One week I had clocked 40 hours by Tuesday morning. It was pretty sickening. Crazy projects! I have decided that my company cares more about scope and timeline than cost this year. Which means I get to make the "big bucks" clocking in all that overtime...

I'm ready to have some of my time back.

And now for another "Such is the life of Kyooyoo" story!

This one takes place on a 5-day backpacking trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness Area with Sidekick. We had a beautiful first 2 days. Weather was absolutely gorgeous the second day and we set up camp and went to bed with really high spirits that night. Enter snow. We woke up to it blanketing everything in a 4-inch coat and growing.

Remember that this is August. And I would like to point out that we did our homework and no where did it mention snow. Or much precipitation for that matter.

Not having much of a choice, we ate a warm breakfast, put all the clothes we brought on (yes, we looked pretty ridiculous), and started trudging along the trail. My UV water purifier decided to stop working then too but that's not a part of this story.

It keeps snowing and we keep hiking along next to a creek. We crossed the creek several times before we reached an especially big, final crossing. There was a log stretching across this part that spanned about 20 feet. The water was moving pretty swiftly and was at least 3 feet deep. Sidekick was leading and as she stepped onto the log I remember jokingly dropping the comment "Haha, don't fall in. That would really suck."

I can now testify that it does suck.

Sidekick trepidly made her way across and safely to the other side. I honestly don't know what I was thinking at this point. Maybe I thought a snow-covered log would be no match for the Vibram soles of my hiking boots. Maybe I thought I'd be able to effectively use my trekking poles to steady me on a surface not much wider than a car tire. Maybe I thought that falling into a creek in such a situation would be something that could only happen in a movie.

It was probably the latter.

Whatever it was, I was definitely not thinking how it would be refreshing to go swimming. I started out on the log, at a pretty rapid pace, and only reached the middle of the log. Prime space for taking a plunge! It was here that I paid for my casual, quick approach to this situation. I can't remember what happened but short story is something slipped, arms and trekking poles flailed, and Kyooyoo soon found herself submerged in a frigid mountain creek. In the middle of a snowstorm. In the middle of no where. Wearing all of her available clothes.

Still reading?

It didn't take me long to gain control in the current and right myself. It did take me a while to realize that what had just happened had actually just happened. I made my way to the other side of the creek, climbed onto the bank, and just stood there.

Ok, maybe I wasn't just standing. I might have been dropping a few colorful sentences out of complete disbelief. Sidekick couldn't believe it either. We quickly decided that the best thing to do was to just keep hiking so we trudged on. I did stop a bit later to dump water out of my boots and wring some clothes out hoping they would dry faster. They didn't.

It kept snowing throughout the day and we pretty much felt like we were mountaineering instead of backpacking. Definitely hit our lowest lows that day. Especially later that night when we were setting up camp. My sleeping bag and all of our clothes were completely soaked and we had to go into survival mode. Not even joking, had we not been able to start a fire, we probably would have died from hypothermia that night. It took over an hour but we did get a fire started and spent a couple hours roasting socks, hats, pants, boots, and sleeping bags over it.

Quite the experience. And again, I can testify "Haha, don't fall in. It really does suck."

Have a great day :)