Day 14: Early start, cereal
for breakfast, today hike with instructors. Go over continental divide through Angel Pass. This mountain pass is incredible,
between two peaks. Tomorrow we
make peak ascent to the highest-Angel Peak. Going up tiring.
A lot of walking on big boulders.
Tricky with such heavy packs.
However, it was cool to hike in something different. Getting to the top of the pass was
incredible. Beautiful view, lots
of pictures. A lake with ice
floating in it looked so cool.
Found a container with papers that people leave behind. Lots from NOLS. I left one. Then down the other side, got to camp quick.
Nate, Reese, and I the first thing we do is take out
the Crazy Creeks and food, and eat.
Good chillin’ group. Then
set up tent and head on to Self Arrest Class.[9] BEST THING EVER. Made this long steep slide and practice
there. Sitting up. Head first on stomach. Head first on back. So cool. With all the raingear on, getting wet, throwing snowballs,
lots of FUN. We also practiced
with Ice Axe and in the end went down on Crazy Creeks. Lots of fun.
Then went to make Calzones. This time I let Nate do it and it came
out delicious. Then made cookies
and hot drink Full Buttered up. I
ended up stuffed. I think it’s
INCREDIBLE how well we eat here in the middle of nowhere. Great. We spent about 3 hours in the kitchen, isolated from the
rest of the group. Nice. Sometimes chatting, sometimes
silent. We have a good group. Chilling, knowing when to talk and
laugh and when to just relax a bit.
I’m stoked about next 3 layover days and rock climbing. I’m off to sleep because I need Energy
to climb up Angel Peak tomorrow.
Peace. By the way, from
here on out it’s going to be great.
Had two good days right now, I know more are to come.
Day 15: Woke up around 9, Peak ascent
postponed. Quick hash brown
breakfast, set off to Angel Peak.
Way up great on steep snow slopes, used 1 of the ice axes. Very cool. Got up here around 12:45pm or something. Incredible view. Again lots of pictures. Right now supposedly doing Reflection
time writing. We go down later.
Going down was lots of fun. Slid down on our butts steering with
ice axe. Glissading. Very cool. Slides down with bends and everything. Got back to camp. Just sat around and ate. We do that a lot. Chocolate, grape nuts with PB[10],
dried fruit with PB, PB on a rock, etc.
Chillin. Also yesterday
Anna pointed out I had sun rash on my arms. Turned out not be mosquito bites after all. Now I wear the long underwear
shirt. Bad thing is it retains body
odor much more, but I’m getting used to it. Still, I really need to swim soon. And my t-shirt is bleached because of sweat.
Anyway packed up camp & moved 2 miles to another
site. Walked on lots of snow,
sliding and everything.
Tight. Got to new camp,
made like 2½ lbs of pasta. So
freakin’ good. Rained a little,
cooked in the rain, no big deal.
Then we had a leadership class looking at masculine/feminine leadership
and then classify ourselves by hot tamale/cool cucumber and strong
wind/flexible H2O. It didn’t
really work for me. Whatever. Class ended and went to tent around
9pm. Earliest so far. We pulled a semi illegal move by eating
chocolate in the tent. Great.
Day 16: Today is Nate’s
birthday. For breakfast we made
pancakes with lots of chocolate.
Really good. Yesterday the
I-Team[11]
gave away a lot of food so we are loaded with chocolate, flour, &
cornmeal. Good cooking coming up
tonight and next days. We sang to
Nate and they gave him Fruit Rollup.
Lucky Bastard. All morning long
we had a class with Kat about knots and equipment. Then we practiced traversing in rock climbing with a spotter
behind us. Ate cereal for lunch. Then Tracy and Anna showed up and said
the climbing site is about ½ mile away so we move camp.
Lately in reunions you get 1 point for every 1 min
you’re late. Winners get to clean
the Semester Course Shitters.
Yay! Anyways we got here
like in 20 minutes and set up camps and we came to the climbing site. They got 3 ropes, one climber one
belayer on each so that leaves 3 of us doing nothing. It’s cool, got to write for a while. Later I get to climb and belay then I
can leave. Anna gave us a class on
belaying. We saw Tracy clearing
rocks and throwing ‘em down. Very
badass. Tomorrow I have my Nature Nugget:
information report on some animal or plant. I think it’s my turn to climb now.
I went to the climb site
and belayed Kendall in the easiest climb. Belaying is cool. I felt like a pro. Then I climbed in the middle one which was the hardest. Kendall belayed me and she was awful
because she always gave me too much tension so I had to yell SLACK!!! all the
time. Climbing very systematic
starting with ON BELAY, CLIMBING, CLIMB.
Then commands like Tension!, Slack!, Rocks!, or Lower Me! The belayer has to answer Thank
You! Anyway the climbing was
really cool. Pretty tough but
great using mini hand-holds or jam your fingers into cracks. Or using the palm was pretty cool
too. The only bad thing was there
were lots of great footholds but it was difficult to use them in my camp
shoes. Too big and bulky. After reaching almost the top and
finishing we’d get into rappelling position with your ass leveled to your feet
& the belayer would lower us down.
It was cool. When I lowered
Kendall I had to anchor down by sitting because she weighed too much. She’s bigger than me.
After finishing climbing I went back to camp and
with Nate we went to find a great cooksite. We were camping on top of some rocks and below was the river
and this trippy meadow and on the other side a cool forest. It was raining so that’s why we split
off from the rest of the group and went to the forest where we were dry. Again we had a multi-course meal
starting with Falafels as appetizer and then Rice with Chicken Base, lots of
cheese & spices which came out delicious. That night I did almost all the cooking. When it got dark the whole situation
got kind of spooky. There was a
Habituated[12]
Deer that would get close to us all the time. All possessed and psycho. And I had my jacket hanging from a tree and in the dark it
looked spooky too. And with full
darkness around us & sitting with our back towards it. Fully spooked. To make things worse we started talking
about Mothman. Then Nate and Reese
heard metal clink with metal.
Absolutely spooked at this point.
I was kind of enjoying it in a way. Then we had to go do the bear hang. One of us would walk looking at the
front and the other two covered the sides. Kind of ridiculous.
Almost got lost on the way back to the kitchen. We returned to the tent and did another
illegal cookie baking that night.
Delicious. And telling more
spooky stories too. It was cool.
Day 17: In the morning we
moved our kitchen to the general group area. We had enough of that site for one night. Had a quick breakfast of hash
browns. I’m already sick of
them. Prepared my Nugget last-minute
during meal. Typical. When we all met I just decided to do it
later since I wasn’t very prepared.
Went over to climb site, this time took boots so I wouldn’t get camp
shoes wet. Had quick reflection
thing with Kat talking about why we were here. Alright. Then
ropes were ready and I went to climb the far left wall. Reese belayed me. Climb was cool, it was kind of easy
with lots of holds. Got to the top
and then he lowered me, moving to the right to try a harder route on the same
wall. This one was really cool
with cracks and kind of an overhang.
Awesome. Then Reese did the
same one and I belayed him. Then
we did rappelling with an ATC instead of a Figure 8. Kind of cool It
was short but fun.
Then went back to camp with Reese and decided to go
fishing. We always carry out
Possible Bags and since it seemed like it was gonna rain I just put it on my
back and put my rain jacket on top so it looked like I had a hunchback. We fished in the river connecting
Golden Lake and Lake Louise. Wide,
calm, good deep pools. Went all
the way to Lake Louise and started fishing there. On the way over kinda slipped on the rocks and got my shoes
all wet. Later I stopped
caring about keeping them dry and I went walking in the actual river instead of
trying to jump from rock to rock.
When we were fishing at the end of the river it started to rain full
force. Like a proper
rainstorm. It was cool cause it
wasn’t like “Aaah rain, lets seek cover.”
We stayed there fishing in the middle of the rain. And nothing was getting wet because I
had my super rain jacket on and my Possibles Bag under it and I rolled up my
wind pants above my knees. My
shoes were already wet so the rain didn’t matter there. Not much luck fishing. They weren’t biting at all with the
Spinner. Reese caught one with the
fly rod around the time the rain stopped.
He was an idiot and left it alive in the bag so I had to deliver the Fatality
(to the fish, not to him). Started
to move up again, going on the boulders to cast into the deep pools. Then Reese took out the biggest fly
from the box and I was like you’re not going to catch anything with that
monster but the bastard caught a huge fish on the first casting. Really cool. We thought it was a Golden[13]
but not really. Again I had to
deliver the fatality.
We had to return shortly after that because we had
class. Kat gave us another First
Aid of Heat Injury and Anna talked to us a bit about Rattlesnakes. She told us this story about this dad
and son Boy Scout trip where the dads stayed in a cave in the Grand Canyon and
sent the kids to get water. One
kid died. Pretty heavy. Tracy also told us the other day about
a guy who broke his back falling from a cliff and crawled six days to
safety. Incredible.
Anyway after the class we made WIGs which later on proved
to be a waste of time since we had chosen a route about 4 miles longer than the
right one. After WIGs went to have
dinner. By the way, before the
class we had time to cook cornbread with the twiggy fire. It came out horrible, but eatable. I think we added too much cheese. Anyways for dinner we had Fish Chowder
with the potato pearls and cheese and veggies base. It was OK. I
burnt my tongue because it was boiling.
After the chowder we made another cookie batch and Nate made bread dough
to sleep with it, and let it rise plenty.
Went to sleep pretty late.
Had to go do bear hang in the “Forbidden Forest” again at night. Freaky. This time only Reese and I went because Nate was taking a
dump. Sleep.
Day 18: Woke up late cause
I didn’t hear alarm. Breakfast and
packing was a stress because we had little time. Made Cinnamon rolls.
Nate did them. Reese fried
them. They were pretty good. I tried to do some syrup like the type
Dan G made when we first had pancakes.
Big Mistake. I added too
much sugar and little butter and it all burnt and tasted disgusting. A total fiasco. And to make things worse I left the pot
incredibly disgusting and it was impossible to clean it. And then I was running really late
packing and I earned about 10 shit points. Yipee-ki-yay.
I’m in 2nd place and Kat is in 1st place. Marvelous. By the way the day before the First Aid class I did my
Nature Nugget about the cougar.
Really cool. They can hug
trees and kill deer and killed a 10 year old in 1997. And they follow your footsteps. Killer.
NOLS has turned us into incredible hobos/scavengers
fighting for food and always making sure we’re not being cheated and eating off
the floor or eating peanut butter on a rock or licking pots and pans. It’s crazy. Anyway back to the day I got late to the meeting… later on
we did camp sweeps and I found lots of almonds on the floor of one camp so I
ate them. Naturally.[14]
I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned it but the
day we went up Angel Pass Anna looked at the back of my arms that I had covered
with sort of blisters and told me it was Sun Rash so now I always hike with my
long sleeves. And also during the
first 70 min of hiking that day I felt like I had a tropical rainforest/sauna
inside my wind pants. So at the
first stop I went behind a rock to change into shorts. What a relief. Full ventilation, felt great. And then I gave myself a sort of upper
body wash next to a lake.
Refreshing. So now I hike
with long stuff on top and short stuff below and not the other way around.
The rest of the hike that day was alright. I was going with Reese, Scott, and
Rachel. Again we passed over the
Continental Divide but this time it was much easier. It was practically just a hill and not mountains. From there we followed a couple lakes
and drainages to Timico Lake.
There we set up tent, started to rain, got inside and wrote in my
journal. Same as Nate. Reese came back from his Midterm
Evaluation and we played Black Jack betting ½ tacos[15]. Up to today I owe Nate and Reese one
taco each. Later the rain left and
we let the day get a bit warmer and went to swim. The water in Timico Lake has been the coldest so far. Probably because it’s so close to the
divide. You’d get in and your feet
hurt from the cold. But
either way it felt great to clean up a little bit. I just swam for a bit because I had my
Midterm Evaluation where they tell you what you’ve been doing well, what you
need to improve, etc. I had to do
it with Kat and the meeting was kind of silly. I would do almost all the talking, she’d be like “What else,
what else?” She didn’t know what
else she had to ask. The only
thing she brought up is that Nate does most of the cooking.
Anyway after that we had a Stove Repair +
Maintenance class with Tracy.
These stoves seriously are the bomb. Lightweight, compactable, runs on any gas. Useful class. Then we were dismissed for dinner. Being the last meal before our last reration, we decided to
eat everything we could. We made a
lot of mashed potatoes with almost the same amount of cheese. I cooked the potatoes because of the
feedback of the Midterm Eval. It
was intense. The mashed potatoes
were bubbling and spurting like they thought they were a lava caldera. I burned my arms and near my eye. Nothing too serious. Then we made scrambled gingerbread
which turned out incredible.
Everyone came by to try a bit.
By the way today in the morning during the hike I was ROTTING[16]
inside. I think it was the
chowder. Who knows.
Anyway after dinner we did the whole boiling water
sterilize process[17] and then
consolidated everything in the food bags, preparing for reration. Also went through all the hiking gear,
I mean climbing gear. Once that
was done we went to do the group bear hang. Tracy, lucky bastard, has gone to Nepal, New Zealand, SE
Asia. All the places I want to go
to. She was telling us all her
stories. Then we got our new tent
groups. I’m with Dan G again and
Dan C. Dan C is still in his
depressive mood but he’s cool sometimes.
The guy is like a Webster’s Dictionary and Encyclopedia Britannica all
rolled into one. Cool to be with
Dan G again. He’s hilarious…
seriously I have not laughed this much before. Always coming up with songs and raps and what not. Cool. That night we did a Star Bivy[18]. We all slept outside in a circle with
our heads in the middle. Tracy
made some really good popcorn with parmesan cheese. I didn’t get much cause I went down to the lake to get some
water. It’s quite a way down and
even longer up, but being there filling up with water when it was already
darkening and being alone and everything quiet was pretty nice. Now I’ve stopped treating water, I just
drink it straight, only if it’s clean of course. Stationary and/or murky water I will treat. Giardia takes 10 days to develop so I’d
get it back home anyways.
Anyway went back to bivy site and we all laid there
looking at constellations, satellites, and the occasional shooting star. We saw two huge ones. But like huge. Really really cool. It was hard to find the
constellations. I only saw the Big
Dipper, Little Dipper, Corona Borealis and I kind of saw Cegnas[19],
something like that, which was a swan.
I called it Sickness the decapitated swan because it didn’t really have
a head. It’s right in the middle
of the Milky Way. A while later
sleep rolled in or at least the others fell asleep because I couldn’t. Full mosquito swarm attacking nonstop
and I couldn’t seek cover in the sleeping bag because I’d start
suffocating. Woke up lots of times
during night, once at 2am to take a piss.
Moon super bright casting shadows.
Footnotes
[9] Learning how
to stop yourself if you’re falling/sliding down a snow slope.
[10] Peanut
Butter
[11] Instructor
Team
[12] Habituated…
animal is used to / not scared by people.
[13] Golden
Trout
[14] I don’t
think we had almonds in our food supply, so they must have been from previous
campers. Who knows how long they’d
been lying there.
[15] ½ tacos
from Taco Bell, supposedly to be paid upon arrival back in Lander.
[16] Not sure
how well this translates into English.
In Spanish if you’re rotting inside, your intestines are filled with the
most vile of gases.
[17] We’d boil
water in all the pots and pans and throw all the kitchen utensils in the
boiling water before switching cooking gear with another group.
[18] Bivy, or
Bivouac… when you sleep outside without a tent.
[19] Had to look
this up…. the constellation’s actual name is Cygnet.
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