Ranger Talk is not written in any official capacity relating to my employment. The ideas, beliefs, and opinions expressed here are my own as a private citizen and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Park Service or Department of Interior.
Hi friends,
I recently wrote an evening program about art and artists of Kings Canyon. As I was researching I flipped through our office library copy of Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, a collection of Ansel Adams photographs that played a significant role in President Roosevelt’s lobbying for the eventual establishment of the national park in 1940.
I was struck by a photo of the Kearsarge Pinnacles, a string of jagged peaks I hadn’t seen before, towering over a still alpine lake. I pulled out my park map and found Kearsarge Lakes, a handful of blue dots at the far east end of the park boundary. If I came from the eastern side of the Sierra through Inyo National Forest it was only a 5 mile hike over Kearsarge Pass to the lakes, a relatively easy effort for a night of high alpine camping. Sure, I’d have to drive six hours around the southern end of the range first, but that was an incidental detail as far as I was concerned.
Whenever I leave for a backpacking trip I’m reminded of the scene from Into The Wild when Chris McCandless and Wayne Westerberg repeatedly yell “society!” back and forth to each other from their barstools. Maybe it’s a stretch to call one night in the backcountry separation from real life, but I was feeling impatient for time in the wild no matter how short. Plus, I need to remember how to carry the weight of a bear canister before my Rae Lakes trip, something I haven’t done since my NOLS semester on the Olympic Peninsula over five years ago.
It was clearly my first backpacking trip in a while, because I realized half a mile up the trail that I forgot my sleeping pad in my car. I briefly considered going back to get it, but on such a short trip it didn’t seem worth it. I’ve slept on solid ground before; one night wouldn’t kill me. I didn’t know at the time it was more than just the sleeping pad, but as I set up camp later that morning I realized I didn’t have my headlamp either. I’d been using it as I packed up my things at the trailhead, and it disappeared somewhere in the transfer from car to backpack. A week and a half later I still haven’t found it.
Mostly unconcerned with my missing gear thanks to the excitement of a big, mangy bear lumbering across the lakeshore, I pitched my tent and went out to explore the backcountry. Another 3.5 miles of hiking brought me to Charlotte Lake where a remote cabin houses one of the park’s backcountry rangers who lives in the wilderness all summer (a job I’ve flirted with on occasion, but one I keep deciding isn’t quite right for me).
I stopped at a small stream to refill my water on the way back, but when I squeezed the bag of alpine runoff through my filter nothing happened. Not a single drop of water ran through it. The filter was completely clogged. With what, I can’t say, and I admittedly didn’t try very hard to find out. I hadn’t used it since my Patagonia trip in January. It does occasionally need to be back-flushed to maintain its flow, but it was brand new before that trip, so I figured it would be fine for one night without testing it beforehand. I figured wrong. Now on my third gear failure in almost as many hours, I could only laugh at myself for what was becoming a masterclass in rookie mistakes.
I spent the next hour boiling water back at camp, thankful I decided to bring my camp stove and fuel canister. My dinner could be eaten cold, so I considered leaving the stove behind but changed my mind only to add pack weight for the sake of training. Without it my overnight escape may well have turned into an epic day hike to get back to town for water before I was miserably dehydrated.
With the water crisis averted, I brought my boiling Nalgene to a grassy spot by the lake to sit for a while. I lost concept of time as I read, wrote, and sipped on the last glass of wine in the bag I pulled from the Bota Box on my counter before leaving Pine Camp. Hours passed between my book, my journal, and my aimless staring at the reflection of the pinnacles on the water. The wine, unfortunately, was gone in twenty minutes.
I was reading Challenge of the Big Trees, a comprehensive book on the resource history of Sequoia and Kings Canyon I’d been slowly working through since May. I learned that night there was once a proposal for a trans-Sierra road to connect Road’s End at the floor of the canyon with Kearsarge Pass. The road would have split straight through the high alpine wilderness at the center of the park, ultimately connecting to the mountain road at the Kearsarge Pass trailhead that runs to the town of Independence on the eastern side of the range.
As I sat there trying to imagine a major roadway blasted through the mountains at 11,000 feet, I was immensely grateful the Kearsarge-Independence Highway died on proposal. I fell asleep acutely aware of the crisp air, the gurgling stream, the stars surrounding the crescent moon. I noticed it all a little more intently in the absence of the revving engines, light pollution, and auto exhaust that could have been. The next morning I woke up crunchy all over but happy. Despite all that went wrong I got exactly what I came for. Sometimes one night out is all you need, so long as you know just how good it is.
Be well, Morgan
As you play outside this summer, please remember to recreate responsibly and leave no trace.
GET THIS ON OUTSIDE MAG PLEASE