Why am I doing this? There are way too many zeros in my logbook this summer for me even to think about the skirt run. From May through August I averaged 21 mi/wk, and a lot of that was walking or biking. Great base. But one Saturday morning at the bakery and I’m sold. So here it is, 7 am at the Devil’s Lake parking lot, 32 degrees, and I’m stoked.
Tim and Jay and I head out and it’s soooo easy. We jog, we walk, we talk, and after awhile my hands have feeling in them again. Trout are rising in Green Lake as we go by. It still feels good but then it’s time to leave the trail and start scrambling. Why cannot I remember where we went wrong last year? It’s like my mind has erased the bad parts. Tim keeps saying the gps track is down there, but my mental track says up here. We can’t go too far wrong though, with the South Sister up there to the left. Which one is she: Faith, Hope, or Charity? Hope would be the middle, so it’s either Faith or Charity. It she’s Charity she must be sleeping. By the time I get it figured out and find the two lakes where we had lunch last year and where we’re supposed to meet the rest of this year’s troop, here they come. So we all get there together, never mind the fact that they started an hour later than we did. Well, not quite all together, there was the straggling trio of Tom, Terry, and Charlie, arriving a bit later due to Tom’s detour. Words were spoken.
Thank you Tom, for bringing your purifier. I only wish I’d let you fill my water bag clear full. He must’ve been down there at the lake shore for 20 minutes, filling water containers for most of the rest of us.
It was shortly after we left the lakes that I made my big blunder. Rob, Travis, Tom and I went a bit too far up a ridge. They all recognized their mistake and went back down to the trail. Me? I knew that not far ahead was a spot where we had to leave the trail and go up through a rock field, so I elected to stay up, go across a ridge, and head them off at the pass. What was in that sandwich? I got to the top of the ridge and looked down into a deep ravine, with the trail about a mile off to my right, down a few hundred feet, and barely visible. No, I can’t give in now, so it’s down a scree slope, across the snow, and up ridge number two. Repeat. By now I’m saying to myself, if you mess up now, it may be better if nobody finds you, you dork. Actual wording was somewhat bluer. After a couple more of these I emerged on a ridge, looked down, and saw tiny figures wending their way on the trail where I should have been. I hollered, and they stopped. For a few seconds. By the time I got down nobody was anywhere close. About 30 minutes later I caught up with Tim and Jay, who said it was nice of me to join them.
This group needs some sensitivity training. Seriously.
After the short break at Red Bull Meadow, where I fed Tom a big, smelly sardine to try to slow him down, we all headed off, more or less together. It went pretty well, surprisingly, up until the Wickiup Plain. It should have a name more indicative of the heartbreak it engenders in all who cross it. Charlie had followed me up the long hill before, so I charitably gave him the lead as we began. His lead went from 10 to 200 yards in about 400 yards. He and Travis were up there, way behind Tom and Bill, who had saved themselves for a mile-long dash across this miasmatic mess. I was laboring: running on the flat, walking up the hills that kept appearing, trying to keep them in sight. Finally I was by myself, nobody in sight in front or behind. Why not walk? No, can’t do that, would be cheating. Cheating whom? Amazing, the conversations one hears at such times. At some point I came on the four of them, standing by a rock, evidently having a jolly good time. I started to stop, but that didn’t feel good at all and I knew it was only two or three miles to the end, so I just kept going. Pretty soon the trail leveled out, then sloped downhill, and my legs liked that a lot better than that long uphill through the sand on the Wickiup Plain. So I just sort of rolled on home, taking the last swallow of water in my bag when I hit the parking lot. No bandages needed this year. I need professional help to figure out why this is so much fun.
From the mind of John C.
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