The first night in a tent is the absolute worst. If one is not accustomed to sleeping in a tent, there is no way to focus on anything other than how inadequate your sleeping pad is, how clammy your feet feel, and all the noises the definitely-a-bear is making. Is it raining? Is a marmot stealing my boots? No really, what IS that bear doing??
I stared at the top of the tent for hours. I had turned off my watch to save the battery, so I couldn’t even compulsively check the time to help the time pass. Eventually I must have dozed off, because somehow the sky started to lighten and birds started to sing.
My need to check the time became irresistible at exactly 5:29am. At 5:34 I was still not sleeping. I listened to the birds. I counted the bugs crawling on the outside of the tent (six, give or take, which is fine because nothing will ever match the horror of that time we woke up in Badlands NP with the entire mosquito population of western South Dakota waiting on the outside of the tent). If sleep hadn’t come all night, though, it wasn’t coming now, so after ten minutes I got up. I scootched myself into some suitable morning-mountain-air clothing, and unfolded myself from the tent.
The air was crisp and fragrant with pine trees. A haze of smoke from far-off wildfires marred the blue sky, but with Granite Creek rushing by and birds chirping overhead, the scenery was a great improvement over the inside of the tent. I started working on morning tea.
Just as my water began to bubble, I heard someone coming down the path. We had set up our tent well out of sight of the trail, but following good bear etiquette, we had established our “kitchen” a solid distance away, nearer the trail. The person making the noise came around the corner and I noticed they were wearing a huge, hairy hat.
Not a person. A bear?? No, a moose! I scrambled for my phone, and just managed to snap a few profoundly terrible pictures before she ambled out of view.
A morning moose is almost enough to make up for that terrible night’s sleep.
At 7:45 I decided Dustin had rubbed my nose in his happy sleep long enough and went to bother him awake. He was unimpressed with my wakeup call, but joined me for coffee soon enough. I regaled him with stories of mooses and smoke-orange sunrises while we ate our oatmeal.
Despite my early rise, we didn’t get on the trail until 8:30. To be fair, if we’d slept at home or in a hotel, we wouldn’t have made it to the trail until after noon. With the exception of that one 4:45am start in the Grand Canyon, that’s just how we roll.
Today’s hike would have been two miles if we’d done the full seven we’d expected yesterday. I would not have chosen two camps so near each other if the park had been our oyster, but a short second day would have had the advantage of allowing us to set up camp early and do a bit of exploring without our big packs. However, since we’d only done 2.5 miles yesterday, today got to be the seven-mile day instead.
Today’s entire route would be up, up, up. Slow and steady, yo.
Slow and steady. For. Eh. Ver.
Actually, it was only 2,000 feet over seven miles, and that’s really not terrible, but it would be a challenge after that terrible night of not-sleep.
As we made our way through the five miles of last-night’s camping zone, we examined the other camp sites we might have had with great satisfaction. We may have gotten last dibs on a site, but we’re pretty sure we accidentally got the most beautiful one. Every other site was too near the trail for any privacy, and we had had a waterfall. Neener neener.
The rest of the day’s hike went like this:
Even starting at 8:30, I was convinced we could make the next campsite by lunchtime. Remember that thing I said about a 30-minute-uphill-mile being a rather generous estimate for me? Go ahead, take a sec, do the math. (No? Story problems aren’t a thing you do for fun? It’s okay, the answer would be noon.) The thing is, though, being in a better mood cannot actually make me hike faster.
I actually managed a mile every 37 minutes, which is not terrible – we would still get there by 1:30 at that rate – but I always forget to account for all the breaks we take. I only pause my tracker when we take off the backpacks; the many, many stops when I simply stop walking in order to allow my hummingbird heart to come back to a reasonable rate are included in the 37-minutes. But still… so many breaks.
A little after 1:00 we reached the beginning of our camping zone, but I wanted to press on to the very last available campsite in order to minimize our mileage for tomorrow, our biggest day. The camping zone should have been two miles long, but there was some kind of temporal/spatial distortion out there, because we hiked at least a hundred miles and it just kept going. By 2:00 I was hiking hangry, trying to move faster to get to the end sooner, but moving my feet less competently with every passing moment. My hiking poles saved my life at least six times in this window as I stumbled along like an overloaded drunk.
“Can’t…” I finally mumbled, collapsing onto a log. “Must eat…”
Dustin, who thoughtfully but probably foolishly allows me to be the boss of all such decisions while we’re hiking, set down his bag with what I have to imagine was a measure of relief as well. I didn’t mean to death-march us, but smart choices are not really my strong suit when I’m hungry.
Let’s talk about the food we brought along on this hike. On previous backpacking trips, we’ve taken pouch meals for dinner and breakfast, a compliment of sandwiches for lunches, plus snacks. For a five-day trip, lunch got completely left off. “Snacks will be enough,” I’d told myself as I tried (unsuccessfully) to squeeze all my dinners and breakfasts into the bear cannister. “We have beef jerky.”
Today was only day two, and I wanted nothing to do with those snacks as I sat panting under a tree. “I need real food. Let’s make ramen,” I said. Dustin did me the kindness of not laughing at the claim that Top Ramen is real food.
And so we busted out our stove and pot there on the side of the trail and made the most delicious pot of ramen I’ve ever eaten in my life. Also we ate some snacks.
Would you like to guess how close we were to the end of the camping zone when we made that stop? Nothing as ironic as “it was just around the next corner!”, but we were only about half an hour short.
The campsite nearest the end of the zone was right next to the trail with zero privacy, but this trail was not exactly a hiker super-highway, and so we pitched our tent.
The hour was now only 3:00, and the day was still young. Unburdened by our massive packs, we decided to go on a scouting mission to see how far up the next trail junction was, and also to roll around in some wildflowers.
After twenty minutes of straggling along behind Dustin, I decided going uphill for fun wasn’t actually on my to-do list, so I sat down by a little stream and zoned out while he continued to explore.
Back at camp, 4:30 suddenly didn’t seem too early to start making dinner. Tonight’s feast was Three Sisters Stew (in a pouch), and it tasted quite delicious. Also, we ate the last of the two bananies (bar cookies made with bananas and chocolate chips and caramel icing which are irresistible but also heavy) that came along in the backpack, and bananies make any meal delightful. The scenery didn’t hurt either.
I realized, as I nestled into my sleeping bag two hours before darkness (which is not as ridiculous as it seems – the Tetons are on the far western side of the timezone, so the sky doesn’t get fully dark until after 10pm) that tents are not designed to give normal people – people used to comfy beds and cozy blankets – a good night’s sleep. Tents are for exhausted hikers who want to smell the pine trees as they drift off. I would have no trouble sleeping tonight.
Thither & Yon 