Red’s Meadow to Thousand Islands Lake
We’re up at 6:30am, which isn’t early by hiker standards – or even my normal standards – but I feel like I’m finally starting to mellow to the fact that we’re just not in that big of a rush. We emerge from our tent to find the backpackers campground is buzzing with activity. Everyone seems to know each other and I feel a little like an outsider. Are we just terrible at making friends?
But no, the majority of our compatriots are hiking 8 miles down to Rosalee lake, while we’ll be knocking out 15 today. They’ve been hiking 6-10 miles a day and we’re just now passing them. People comment that we’re moving “light and fast” or “going really far” and I can never discern from their tone if they’re impressed or judgmental, or simply feel the need to comment as a means to validate their own pace.
We make and eat breakfast, and rummage through the hiker box filled with miscellaneous dried items vacuum sealed into plastic bags. Mmm mm sketchy food! I score some candy bars and oatmeal from a SoBo hiker who so massively over-estimated his food needs that he’s giving away most of his resupply box. Keith supplements his dwindling Snickers stash “two a day until the end of the trail!” he gleefully proclaims. We say farewell to Phil and then finally finally we’re on the trail by 8am, hiking out past Devil’s Post Pile.
Despite all the calories we ate yesterday Keith and I are both dragging ourselves up the trail today, grateful for the fact that it’s cool and overcast, both listening to podcasts to distract from the tiredness and when we stop for a break I take on the roll of enthusiastic cheer leader – when you’re a hiking party of two only one person at a time is allowed to be in a funk or else you never get anywhere.
But get somewhere we must and so we move on towards our second snack break of the day. After all, backpacking is just walking through the mountains with snacks.
At the bottom of a steep, tightly switch backed descent we stop at a glittering blue lake and watch a bird snatch a fish right out of the water and fly off overhead. The fish still wriggling in the birds talons. “Oh sibling of Trevor” I think “you are certainly about to become lunch.”
Making our way along the edge of the lake after our snack I stumble, whack my trekking pole on a tree and it breaks. I then proceed to totally lose it in a really unflattering way. I cry. No, I ugly cry and hard. Succumbing to a tidal wave of emotions, made all the worse for the fact that I can’t really figure out why I’m so upset. While I ugly cry Keith kicks into Engineering Problem Solver Mode (his favorite mode, I think) and begins to splint my broken pole with tent stakes and athletic tape. He’s so sweet and patient during the whole operation and I’m still unable to control myself. I like to think I’m not a materialistic person, I’ve been known to clean out my closet to the point where I have almost nothing to wear, and would be perfectly happy to don the same outfit every day were it socially acceptable. And yet, breaking my trekking pole feels like letting down a close friend. A friend whose been on countless exciting adventures with me. A friend who Keith helped me to pick out because he knew they’d help tremendously with my hiking. And now my poor friend is broken, and I’ll simply have to throw them in the garbage and replace them after the trip. And for whatever reason this breaks my heart.
I’m morose for the next hour as we hike along this gorgeous lake, on soft downy dirt trail, covered by the good good trees so strong and silent above us. All afternoon we climb past lakes, with the sun playing hide and seek behind high clouds but never fully committing to showing it’s face.
Towards the top of the climb we meet an angry woman who demands that we tell her what the climb up to Rosalee Lake is like. When we tell her that the climb will be steep and full of switch backs she tells us we’re wrong and then stands in the middle of the trail so we can’t go around her. Neither of us know what this woman wants. Though it seems to be perfectly clear that she doesn’t want to yield right of way to us, the uphill hikers. Finally, unable to figure out anything else to tell her we edge around her on the trail with a half hearted “have a good hike.” This too, seems to offend her, and recognizing a lost cause Keith and I push on and out of sight.
The afternoon simply crushes me and the insane vistas, lakes nestled impossibly among granite monoliths, grey skies muffling the sounds of the world outside our little dirt path that will take us north, all of this is somewhat lost on me. When we finally roll into camp I’m almost too tired to eat.
We heap honey BBQ Fritos (which are gods gift to thru hikers btw) onto our dinner soup and this somewhat revives me. The sunset burning pink above us, reflected and refracted like stained glass in the water below us. Second best of the trip.
By 8pm we’re in our tent and it’s lights out. I’m so deeply tired.
