5/30/00
ROUGHING IT
3 PAGES

So I redefined "roughing it" for myself this weekend. I actually went up to Lake Piru myself this weekend. If you didn't go, be thankful. It was crowded as all shit this weekend. Luckily, where I go hiking up there, I'm the only one. I planned on backpacking into the trail I'd done back in November and camping out overnight and then coming back the next day. Well, I realized that it was way too damn fuckin hot to be hauling 50-70 pounds of pack on my back. Especially this hike because it was all up up up. And I had plenty of water. I had 3 gallons to last me for two days. But the thing was, by 1pm, the air was so hot that the water was heated to just as hot or hotter. So it did nothing to cool my thirst. So here I am thinking I'm drinking plenty and avoiding dehydration but I was probably making it worse on myself. After 2 grueling hours of up up up up, I was getting so exhausted, that I would literally walk for 50 steps and then have to sit down for 3 minutes.

Of course, it's spring now. The last time I went was the end of fall so there was much more vegatation on the ground, scraping at my legs. And the whole ground was coated with these prickly birdox things that stuck into my ass everytime I sat down. But I just kept climbing and climbing but it just never seemed like I was getting any closer to the top. Each time I thought I was at the crest, I looked and there was another one to climb. By now it was getting onto 4pm and I wasn't even to the top yet, and I still had to go down the other side into the valley to the river and find the campsite.

And right at this time I realized, "You know what, it's not fun anymore." I just wasn't enjoying myself. I really didn't want to spend the night out here. I just wanted to sleep in my bed eating real food. For some reason when I'm hiking I always get the craving for meat. All I want is a good burger. Carl's Jr and a coke. And while I'm in that state, bagels and beef jerky and water just don't cut it. And by this point I'd been hiking for 5 hours and I really was just miserable, so I said, screw it and started back towards the car.

Well, on the way back down, I'm trying to follow the really badly maintain trail which is being intermingled with old cow paths, and I ended up in one of those sections where two hills or mountains kind of slope down into each other and create a channel down to the next lower level. These are always very rocky and very choked with vegeatation because this is where all the water is channelled down into. Well, by the time I realized I was here, it was too late. The pack on my pack made it a fucking pain to navigate the boudlers and lowering myself down. At one point I fell and probably would've broken my back except for the irony that I was wearing the pack. I landed on a rock on my back and was cushioned by the back so that I just rolled off. It was at this point that I realized just how dehydrated I was. I tried to take a drink but the hot water just made my stomach turn. It turned a little too far. Because as I was sitting there, I just leaned over and dry-heaved and eventually puked into the grass next to me.

I felt a little better because I had felt like throwing up for a couple hours, but I still was dehydrated and most of my energy was just spent. I really couldn't even balance let alone walk or climb with that thing on my back. Looking ahead of me, I saw the underbrush just kept getting thicker and thicker as the channel went down. And I was really too spent to try and climb up out of the channel to more level ground. The more I tried to walked with the pack, the more exhausted I got. I'd take 10 steps then have to rest for a few minutes and regain my equillibrium. So I got the bright idea that maybe to facilitate my navigating these rocks, I should take my pack off and throw it ahead of me, walk that far, pick it up again and throw it again and just keep doing that until I got to a point where I could get out of the channel.

Well, the plan backfired on me instantly. I threw the pack and it landed in a thicket. I went down to where it landed and it was stuck, just plain stuck amongst the underbrush. And by now, I was really just too fatigued to even think about pulling it out of there. I was dehydrated and I couldn't drink any of this water because it was still too hot. By now, it was probably about 5pm and I decided, okay, I need to rest up and rehydrate if I'm going to get out of here. I toyed with the idea very briefly of leaving the pack behind but instantly knew this wasn't an option. That was over 500 dollars worth of gear. So my option now was to spend the night in the thicket and once the water cooled down just drink and drink and drink and then at first light, pull the pack out of the thicket and climb out of the channel and walk down.

So I tried to sleep and I suppose I did sleep fitfully. I woke up probably 20-30 times during the night. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable place to sleep. There were rocks poking into my back. My head was leaning against thin tree branches. My feet were resting on other branches as though I were in a really uncomfortable hammock. My puke-stained bandana served as a cushion between rock and dirt. At times I used my water bottle as a pillow. A couple times I woke up and heard something walking around in the brush near me. Some kind of animal, I don't know what. I opened up the pack and pulled out my flashlight and shined it all around me and didn't see any eyes light up. I made loud noises but nothing ran away. Man it sounded close though. Within 20 feet definitely. In the distance, I could hear cows mooing.

After the stars came out, I had no idead what time it was at this point, it started to get chilly so I dug my clothing stuff sack out of the main pack and put on a couple extra layers. I had had nothing to eat except a power bar and a few pieces of jerky but my stomach was still turning and I couldn't stomach anything other than water which was finally cooling down. I kept dreaming the same things over an over again. Not really dreams so much as images. I kept hearing scenes from "Friends" and that song "Heads Carolina Tails California" repeating over and over in my head. I never really got scared. Even when I realized I was going to have to spend the night outside, in a thicket, no tent, no sleeping bag, not really sure if I was even going to be able to get out of here in the morning once I was rested. It was all just a very calmly made decision. I was just like "Okay, I need to rest and try again in the morning." And I accepted it instantly.

I could see the sky start to brighten and heard the birds starting to wake a good 2 hours before the sun actually crested over the mountains. I stood up, stretched, drank more water, shoved everything I had pulled out during the course of the night back into the pack, zipped it up, and then with all my strenght pulled that fucking thing out of the thicket, swung it onto my back and started to find my way out. I hadn't noticed this the day before, but I was actually right at a level where I wouldn't have to climb out of the channel. It was more or less parrellel to the level I was at. I just needed to shimmey along a steep section of hill to a point where I could meet up again with the easily traverseable hill. I had been really worried all night that even after resting up, it still wouldn't be enough and I would still be too weak to clambor my way out of the channel with my pack on. But it looked as though it was going to be a relatively easy task. I side-stepped along the ground when all of a sudden, I slipped and fell into another thicket. The ground that I had been walking on was now at face level which mean that I had to climb up again.

After I groaned good and loud, I grabbed ahold of some branches and hauled my ass up pack and all and in a matter of 15 seconds managed to scramble all the way up out of the thicket and the channel and up onto level ground at which point I started the easy hike back down the hill to the road. It was another hour and a half walk to my car. I kept hoping that a car would come by and I could hitch a ride, but I was only about 6:30 in the morning. Even though it was light out, the sun hadn't even risen over the lake yet. So I schlepped it all the way back, at which point I changed clothes and threw my dirty stinky ones from the hike into the trunk.

Remember how I said I love the way I look when I finish a hike, how it makes me look rugged. Well, this was that, multiplied by 10. I was covered head to toe in dirt. My face, my shirt, my shorts, my legs. I was a little bit sunburned, so I was red. My legs and arms were cut to shit from walking through all the underbrush, and when I changed my shirt and saw my reflection in the window, I was fuckin' ripped. Basically because I had sweat so much and hadn't eaten anything over the last 24 hours, I had probably lost 5 pounds, so there was virtually no body fat showing, only muscle. I was like, holy shit, I wouldn't mess with me if I saw me looking like this.

I drove out of there at 7:30 in the morning. It was a good relaxing drive home. No cars on the freeway, good music on the radio. I got home and made a HUGE breakfast. Eggs, home fries, toast and milk. Oh it felt so good. Then I took a shower, a cool shower and washed all that shit off of me. Then I pulled my mattress off the futon so that I could be right at fan level because it was already starting to get hot again. Eventually I ended up turning on the A/C which I haven't had to do since last August. I was so fucking hot in that apartment. I slept until three, got up ate, watched movies, ate, watched movies, ate and ate. I went out and got my Carl's Jr. burger. And I finally passed out later that night, completely spent but recovered.