The
summer that I turned twenty I was very excited for, in addition to our yearly
family camping trip, my Dad was taking my sister and I backpacking in the
Cascades. As a kid, I had listened wide eyed to my Dad’s stories of his
younger, more adventurous days, when he did things like backpacking,
motorcycling, and that one time he smoked his school out with “essence of
banana” in chemistry class. Such stories were usually told against the backdrop
of Chinook or Snoqualmie pass when we went to go visit the folks in Eastern
Washington. Even the things that went bad sounded kind of fun; like the time
their camp was swarmed by a gang of starving chipmunks which bored holes into
their packs in an attempt to get their food, or the time one of Dad’s buddies
ended up with hundreds of mosquito bites on one arm and counted them, or when
they had to split two packages of ramen amongst eight young men. But there was
cool stuff too, like Jade Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area, which nestled
in a hollow and was a pale jade green color, and when the sun rose in the
morning the wind whipped red-orange clouds above it so they looked like licks
of fire. Or at night, when the alpine waters would be still, and reflect the
myriad of stars, freed from city lights, that were bursting out of the sky.
I
was entranced. I wanted to try it. And besides, how may stories involve the
intrepid hero setting off into the unknown, facing the wilderness with nothing
but their wits and what they carry on their back?
So
it was with an immense feeling of satisfaction that I viewed our table in the
garage, laden with our supplies and backpacks one Friday evening in August.
I
had carefully selected the trail after researching online short, easy hikes in
the nearby area that led to a campsite. Dad had stipulated that the trail must
be near water (there was a story there, no doubt) and not too difficult for us.
I, while not exactly the pinnacle of human fitness, was most definitely not out
of shape, and pretty confident in my abilities to simply walk for miles. I
didn’t worry about Dad. While not exactly a thin man, his weight was never for
lack of exercise, and I knew his job kept him in good walking shape. My sister,
Cazi, seven years my junior, was in the same boat as me, and well, young. So
when I found a place called Cougar Lake that was a five-ish mile trail to a
pretty lake and rated “easy,” I was pretty sure I’d found the right one. I
walked three miles up and down hills pretty regularly just to get to the
library and back, and we had all day to cover five. No big.
There
are many things in life which can only be learned through experience, and one
of them is that hiking reviews are always made by people who do far more hiking
than you. Always.
At
any rate, this revelation was far away when Saturday dawned calm and clear, and
after loading the car and taking the ubiquitous photo for our
relieved-to-not-be-going mother, three intrepid members of the Eiser family set
off for their Grand Adventure.
Just
finding the trailhead itself proved to be a mini-adventure; it
involved fourbying the maze of forest service roads that criss-cross the
Cascades and driving past a perfectly functional campground at Bumping Lake.
But that was pedestrian, urban. You could drive up to it. We were here for an
experience.
But
eventually we found the trailhead and parked the car. I noticed, with some
concern, that there were perhaps a half dozen other cars already parked there.
But hey- it’s a big forest. We’d probably find some solitude regardless. So we
unloaded the car, adjusted our packs, checked our equipment, and filled out the
paperwork.*
Walking
sticks in hand, we set out. The first jaunt consisted of a half-mile downhill
walk to a small river which we would then have to ford on foot. It seemed like
an awfully long half mile as we walked and chatted, but the sound of running
water kept getting closer and we eventually spilled out onto the river bank.
Thankfully,
the Bumping River was tame that day, shallow and broad, and we’d come prepared
with our sandals affixed to the outside of our pack. Dad went first, picking
his way across, and we girls followed, all three sticking pretty close together
in case one of us slipped.
For
some reason, instead of bringing my Velcro athletic sandals I had elected to
pack my bargain bucket one buck flip-flops which I usually only wore in
campground showers. The river kept annoyingly and persistently trying to drag
them off my feet and I kept having to twist myself and squeeze my toes together
to keep from losing them in the current. It was slow going, and in this
strange, shambling fashion I eventually reached the other side with dry shoes
in hand.
All
good? Not quite. My socks were dry, yes, but my feet were wet, and I had no
towel, and well, we weren’t able to sit around and wait for my feet to air dry.
There were bugs this close to the water. So I did the best I could to get my
feet clean and dry and put my shoes back on.
The
first hurdle cleared, we continued on, enthusiasm and feet only slightly
dampened.
Honestly,
I don’t remember much of the next leg. It was a very pretty woods, and we took
our time, stopping to rest every now and then, and I very quickly worked my way
through my easily accessible snacks and water. And still, the trail wound on.
We
were huffing our way uphill at this point, and nobody had any extra breath to
speak with, for which I was grateful. I had been dropping little nuggets of
encouragement for the last couple of hours, pulling out my map, estimating distances,
pointing out differences in the vegetation and landscape. “Just a little
further! We’ll be reaching Swamp Lake soon! That hill! That bend!” (And yes, our
next landmark on the way to Cougar Lake was a body of water aptly named ‘Swamp
Lake,’ about a mile out from our final destination. A portent of things to
come.) Eventually, I stopped speaking altogether, mumbling into silence and
trying to remember just where I’d packed my inhaler. I could feel my sister
drilling holes into the back of my head with her eyes. I had touted this hike
to them with words like ‘easy’ and ‘beginner,’ words I’d been told and
foolishly believed. During one of our many rests (at this point we were
stopping whenever we found something roughly horizontal we could sit on) I
pulled out my map again and looked at it with a slightly more critical eye.
Don’t
ever download free maps on the internet. Pony up the ten bucks and buy a real
one. Mine was grainy, inaccurate, and worse yet, I only now realized part of
the trail was cut off by the edge of the paper. For all I knew it could have
looped on out to Seattle before coming back.
“Soon…”
I panted. Cazi groaned. Dad didn’t comment. I didn’t even believe myself
anymore.
Worse
yet, we kept getting passed by people in both directions. They were all
insufferably chipper, not at all taxed or sweaty. There was a family who walked
past us with children, all backs gloriously unburdened, and a group going
opposite, travelling downhill and all smiles and poorly concealed sympathy.
“Soon…”
they said, and I didn’t believe them.
There
was nothing but the weight of the pack and my feet, dragging one after another.
Finally,
there was a flash of blue in the trees, and I never thought I’d be so relieved
to reach a place called Swamp Lake. It was indeed, buggy and a little marshy,
but we stopped for a bit and took our packs off. After resting for a moment, we
were forced to move around and explore by the swarms of mosquitoes and our own
curiosity. And lo and behold! We found evidence of a campsite. So a question
was raised: should we stop here, or press on?
Everybody
huddled around my insufficient, shoddy little map and squinted at it.
“It’s
only a mile more,” I pointed out, racking my brain to remember what the website
had said. “And this is Swamp Lake. Maybe
Cougar Lake won’t be quite as buggy,” I said, waving my hand in front of my face.
“Do we really want to quit now?”
We
didn’t want to quit. We were fools, proud, stubborn, glorious fools. We were
finishing this and going home to Mom with heads held high. With renewed
determination, we put the dreaded packs back on and continued forward.
Apparently,
not a lot of people did. The trail became rutted, flooded, and difficult. In a
few meadows, we were forced to break one of the cardinal rules of hiking and
walked alongside the trail. In our defense though, the trail had sunk into the
ground about six inches and filled with water. I remember looking at that
meadow with fascination. It was undoubtedly pretty, but at this point I was
fatigued and my mind was starting to drift. I imagined some large, furry
creature bursting through the treeline, a moose or perhaps even a bear, and
wondered what I should do in such a situation. Make for the other trees? Stay
still? There was a sense in the air that at any moment anything could happen,
though really, the most wildlife we saw was two shirtless young “bucks” come
bounding down the trail, in full health and in disgustingly good shape.
Mercifully, other than them, we hadn’t seen a soul in a while, which was good,
because we were in a pitiable condition by then.
Somehow,
impossibly, the trail had started going uphill again, and we were having to
pick our way through loose rocks and roots to find good footing. We were
stopping every ten or twenty feet to rest now, driven on only by the horseflies
which had followed us up from Swamp Lake. I remember looking out at the view
and dimly thinking “Wow, what a view! You had to work so hard to see this.” But
of course I was too tired to appreciate it.
Until
at last, with trembling legs and aching lungs we crested the ridge and looked
down at Cougar Lake, a pretty if ordinary and unenchanting body of water,
definitely not worth this toil, but I didn’t care. At that moment it could have
been Mosquito Valley (which is a real place, by the way) and I still would have
thought it the most wondrous sight. It was downhill
from here, and more than that, I could take the pack off once we reached the bottom.
We’d
made it.
END PART ONE
*For those unaware of it, exploring Washington forests is a maze of beauracracy and permits, the difficulty compounded by the fact that there are different rules for state and federal forest lands. The rules are constantly shifting and outlined in unhelpful, dense websites. Eventually, I just had to suck it up and call the nearest Ranger Station and talk to a human being. After a confusing fifteen minute phone call (have I mentioned I’m bad on the phone?) we finally figured out that I did not need a special permit to camp overnight on the trail but that I did need a permit to park the car at the trailhead. Also, I really ought to sign the log book at the trailhead with our itinerary so they would know where to look in case a rockslide killed us, or a cougar mauled and ate us, or we got hopelessly lost, or a hundred other things which could result in three morons entering the woods and never coming out. At any rate, we got the paperwork right. I hope.