Friday Night.

Where is that fucking sock?

I am packing to go a backpacking trip. My dad had called me up and asked me if I wanted to go at the last minute. So here I am packing. And I can’t find this sock. I had worn them for a few hours earlier in the week and had set them aside. One of them was where I had left them. But the other…

Where is that fucking sock?

I have stuff sprawled over the living room floor and am trying to get packed. But it is after midnight and I can’t focus. Maybe I should go to bed and finish in the morning.

Where is that fucking sock?

Saturday.

I finish packing and throw my gear into the car. (I found the sock, in case you were wondering.) I pick up Shutter and we head to my dad’s house. He’s packing his car as we get there. He follows us in his car to the trailhead. Shutter and I have a good time driving there. We joke about work, the Radio Show and the walk we are about to undertake.

We drive to the place we intend to finish the hike. We park my dad’s car and put his pack in mine. We drive back to the starting point and start putting on our gear. It’s flurrying.

“It’s snowing,” I say. For some reason this makes us all happy.

We start walking. Before long the trail begins a long ascent. It doesn’t take long before I realize the two things. First, I should have ate breakfast before we started. Second, maybe I should have made it into the gym a bit more often. A lot more often. This climb is killing me. I’m out of shape and my pack is heavier than usual. All that cold weather gear is heavy. We finally make it to the top.

“It’s snowing,” I say for maybe the fifth time. We all laugh. This joke just doesn’t get old.

The snow picks up it’s intensity and dumps about half an inch in twenty minutes. But then not much else. We stop at the Quarry Gap Shelter and have lunch. I pull out my camp stove to make some soup. Today is definitely a day for hot lunch. I boil ramen noodles and add dehydrated corn, peas, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers. I decide to throw in some cheese too. Note to aspiring backpackers: Cheese is very hard to clean out of a pan in sub-freezing conditions. We eat our lunch and then it’s back on trail.

The cold is intense and it’s getting colder. It doesn’t bother us much if we keep moving. The snow has tapered of and a cold wind is blowing groups of clouds from the north over top of us. When there is sun on us it isn’t too bad. But when the sun is obscured by clouds, the cold starts to creep in us.

We will walk past the cabin we stayed in two years ago. As we we get closer to it, I begin to fantasize that there will people staying there and that they will offer us some nice hot dinner. I can picture it quite clearly. We would get to the bottom of the slope, where the cabin resides, the renters would look out and see us. They would comment on the extreme cold. And invite us in for hot coffee and hot food. Hopefully something including mashed potatoes. The idea of a steaming pile of mashed potatoes with butter and gravy running down the sides like a miniature volcano sounded very good to me as I walked in sub-freezing temperatures with wind cutting at my face.

We finally arrived on the hollow where the cabin is located, nestled beautifully between two ridges, and found that it was indeed occupied. Smoke rolled out of the chimney. As I stood there waiting for my companions to catch up with me, I realized that no one is going to invite a bunch of men who don’t have the good sense not to go out in to this weather in to the cabin they were staying in for the weekend. About the same time that my dad finally arrived at the bottom of the slope, a woman came out of the cabin, she looked over and saw us. She jumped a little bit, I waved to her, and she waved back. She went around the corner of the cabin and out of site. A little kid peered out the door and saw us. She was obviously scared to see three guys standing around in the woods outside of the cabin.

“Mommy.
“Mommy! Mommy where are you?
“Mommy!”

Our chances for mashed potatoes seemed slim, so we hit the trail and proceeded to climb out of the valley.

Part Two