I hiked the Ouachita (“Wash-i-tah”) Trail on what might be called a whim. I’d wanted a week to myself and didn’t want to do much planning. I’d never been to Oklahoma or Arkansas and the weather looked better there than in Anchorage in the fall (the going wisdom in Anchorage is that if you went on vacation from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s day, you wouldn’t miss much). I was hoping to catch some fall colors as I’d been recovering from illness while colors changed at home. While pleasant and possessed at times of a calming beauty, my rushed walk lacked views and was beset with minor drama including the failure of most record keeping devices. I even left the maps which I’d been annotating with experiences and events on the airplane home. What’s left here is hastily reconstructed from memory and decorated with the few pictures from the cheap replacement phone I was able to pick up with help from a Lori, the angel in the tiny town of Story, two whom I’m deeply grateful.

I’d first heard about the Ouachita Trail on an episode of Backpacker Radio which I don’t really remember but rediscovered it when scanning Wikipedia’s list of long trails in the US, looking for something which would take about a week. For navigation, I printed ouachitamaps.com for topo maps on standard 8.5’x11′ instead of the recommended 11’x17′ and brought Bill Mooney’s data book for water and mileage markers. I didn’t read much about the trail besides this Treeline Review article. For resupply and logistics, I reached out to to Michael and Lori on FoOT’s Shuttle List (isn’t “FoOT” the best name for a trail related organization?). I checked the average weather for October and November and the 10 day forecast when that became available to decide how little gear I could bring (sunny & dry + trees + shelters –> poncho tarp!). More and better research wouldn’t have hurt but wasn’t necessary either. It’s fun to leave some things up for discovery.

Saturday, October 14, 2023

• Passed the rock garden shelter. “Rock garden” is an appropriate name. A light pack helped.
• Lost the trail a few times and had to search for up to ~3min, typically in places where it crossed a rock field or drainage and natural formations in the terrain mislead me on the other side. Blazes were very helpful but not always where I needed them most.
• Slept at Holson Vista shelter
  • Vista was blocked by trees
  • A tarp was conveniently placed over the open side of the shelter to block the continuous wind.

Sunday, October 15, 2023

• Water from Horse Thief Spring. Lower basin was clear. Upper basin was disgusting.
• Lots of ankle rippers. These are thin, low vines full of thorns which like to throw a branch out over the trail like a snare about ankle height. The worst is when vines from opposite sides cross because they catch on each other as you push through, dig in deeper, and try to trip you. My ankles are highly lacerated. Conditions improved a few miles before Winding Staircase Campground.
• Accidentally, went in to Winding Staircase CG. Asked for directions from a camper who recommended the Ozark Highlands Trail in the spring.
• No view from the top of the “mountain”, just a pile of rocks in the trees.
• Big Cedar had large pools. Tan and blue rock in the river bed contrasted nicely with the bright green foliage, speckled with red. It’s a curiousity of this trail that the most beautiful portions were where I collected water, not the hilltops or ridge walks.
• A little rain in the afternoon.
• Back side of Mt Wilmont needs some maintenance. It’s not hard to see that it would be less used since access from that side is more difficult. Surprisingly this wasn’t the case on the previous mountains
• Kiamichi river valley was the first cruisy walking of the whole trip. Until now, trail tread hasn’t been consistent.
  • Couldn’t see the exit for the stream cross at mile 43 and a fallen tree made me think I was supposed to continue on the near bank to find the trail on the other side of it. Cue several minutes of searching. I actually walked the river bed looking for the crossing. This would have been tricky if there’d been water in it.
• Climb up to highway during sunset was beautiful. The mossy and lichen “popped”. The trail bed wasn’t always very visible so the rocks lining the way created something like a fairy path to guide me.
• There was an entry in the State Line Shelter guest book about a 15 year old hiking with their family and loosing grandma in the overgrown trail. They were also looking for bigfoot.

Monday, October 16, 2023

• Woke late because phone was in jacket pocket which was under quilt. Couldn’t hear alarm.
• There’s a graveyard for early American settlers shortly over the Arkansas border. Its tidy and names are on a kiosk even if you can’t read them on the headstones. It’s a nice connection to the people who started developing the area and which eventually lead to the creation of this trail. On the trip, I didn’t see much interpretive signage about native peoples where were here even earlier.
• Queen Wilhelmina lodge was underwhelming. The “queen’s plate” at the restaurant mostly came from a Sysco truck.
  • My resupply box hadn’t arrived yet. Michael, who’d shuttled me from the Fort Smith airport, was very responsive in bringing it to me. I’d marked my ETA as a day later than planned because he told me about rocks in this section with the implication that my high mileage plans might not hold and I hadn’t wanted to look like I was ignoring him.
  • The Lover’s Leap Overlook is the first real vista of the trail. It was pleasant but the low hills are mostly green still so it mostly looks like a green carpet.
• I’d hoped that the trail would improve in Arkansas or in Queen Wilhelmina State park. It didn’t. I didn’t want to stop since the 1hr resupply and 2hrs late start were going to put me behind on mileage for the day so at one point I found myself rock hopping with trekking poles in one hand and phone in the other while talking with Lydia.
• Eagle Gap was listed as a reliable water source. The stream was dry. I got lucky and spotted a small pool of water about 100yds upstream from the trail crossing. There were light game trails which I only spotted after the glint from the water caught my eye. Took 6L for the 36 miles until Big Brushy. This wound up being a very good decision but was very fortunate since I’d decided to try my luck at the next potential water source instead of going backwards ~5mi to where I’d last seen water.
• Late afternoon and early evening seemed to be traversing former forest roads (the trail corridor was wide enough, that seems the best explanation), connected by sections of single track and current forest road. I like the variety. The exit from the forest roads tends to be well marked which I appreciate since, lacking a GPX track, it would be easy to overshoot. While only a little overgrown, there are sections which seem to be returning to their natural state. It’s a pity because I get the sense that some of the single track had really nice rock work at one point.
• Slept around mile 74 just off a forest road. Soft ground and warm temps made for a pleasant night.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

• Started before sunrise. Headlamp blinked out (it’s either all on or all off, no slow dimming as the battery dies) with just barely enough light to continue.
• Passed Lori’s creek in the dark. There might have been a slight shimmer of water. Glad I tanked up a Eagle Gap.
• Dropped my phone while getting a picture of some nice stonework in the trail. Two breaks in the front screen. Inside, the phone seems to still be working, but the screen is a bunch of green lines which don’t react to touch. I send an inReach message from Turner Gap so folks back home won’t expect as much contact.
• Lots of walking wide, forested ridges with views that you couldn’t really see through all the trees. The ankle rippers were particularly bad. The trail design still feels better than I’d thought from looking at the map, but it feels like we’re losing the trail. Things improve significantly around mile 80 and I can finally walk easily and let me mind wander for extended periods.
• The water at Turner Gap shelter was sludge slowly drying in an old tire track. Glad I’d tanked up at Eagle gap. The environment since had begun to feel drier in the past some miles. The trees are different, spaced a little farther apart, with less undergrowth.
• Took a Dr Pepper (which wasn’t warm!) and 3 small candy bars from an ammo box labeled Trail Magic near FR 48. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced completely unexpected trail magic like that. Huge energy boost.
• Swam in a large pool just after the bridge across Big Brushy. The water wasn’t convenient to get to from the bridge and the campground was marked as closed so I didn’t want to waste time seeing if the pump still worked. Conveniently, the trail doubles back about a half mile after crossing and you just have to sneak though the brush for ~15 yards.
  • Cooling provided an energy boost, though I was a bit chilled while filtering water afterwards. Sent an inReach message to Lydia then plugged the inReach into my power bank to top off its battery which was about half empty. The inReach’s screen turns off and won’t turn back on again. The emergency plan involves calling search and rescue the noon after a day on which I’ve not made contact. I’m resupplying tomorrow and the inReach had said the message was sent (I’d had to reposition it to get the message out), so it shouldn’t be a big problem as long as I can charge the inReach properly at the Bluebell Cafe.
• Met Jeff, and older fellow who is through-hiking in the opposite direction. We meet at a short section where the trail disappears and we’re both kinda guessing our way along. He says that the trail is good after the next ~100 yards and that water will be good at least as far as the resupply in Story, AR and that Lori at Bluebell is provides hikers a warm welcome. I tell him I wish I could say the same, show him my lacerated ankles, and tell him about the 36 mile water carry. He says he has those too and shows me his ankles. I think that trail ahead just can’t be as bad as it’s been previously but am concerned (this proves unfounded). He says he’s not sure what to do about water and that Michael might be able to help if he can’t figure something else out. Amiable parting followed by me immediately thinking of a bunch of other beta I wished I’d offered and questions I wanted to ask.
• Slept at Suck Mountain Shelter. It was surprisingly warm, must have been that cooler air sinks. The climb up to it is all forest road. In the dark, I was worried about missing a turn. I counted footsteps between blazes to avoid unfounded feelings of fear that I’d overshot something. Most blazes were <200 steps apart. I never got over 300 steps between seeing one.
• With no phone, I start writing memories from the day on my used maps in approximately the area where they happened. I like this more than typing up a list on my phone and I can do it with gloves on which keeps the fingers warm.

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

• Up just a little before sunrise. This morning is all about getting to Highway 27 to resupply. With no comms, I can’t arrange a ride and have to plan for walking 5mi to town. I’m concerned about making enough on-trail miles for the day but tell myself that as long as I get back on trail before night, I’ll be able to make them up later. Mostly I zone out and enjoy walking quickly through the dried leaves and pine needles.
• Almost no shoulder on highway. Not sure how many cars will come and not room to see me or stop. Decide to jog in to town. Downhill makes the start easy.
• Johnny Smith gives me a ride when I reach his place shortly after he passes me going much more slowly than the several Mack trucks which didn’t respond to my thumb.
  • He lets me borrow his phone and I call Dad and then Lydia. Apparently the inReach messages never got out so they’d been worried. I tell them the plan is to charge the inReach, confirm it works, then get back on trail, but that I won’t get back on trail until making contact.
• In the Bluebell Cafe, my inReach doesn’t charge from the wall. After a meal, Lori (Bluebell’s proprietor) asks what my plan is. I tell her I’m hoping to get back on trail today, but need a phone. She asks if I need a fancy phone or a Dollar Store phone. She ends up driving me a town over where I get a cheap phone which takes a SIM card from my carrier. She’s patient while I get it set up and make contact with folks back home, then she takes me back to the trail. It was just after 2pm and I had plenty of time to make miles. This made the rest of the trip much, much more pleasant.
  • I ask Lori about the history of the Bluebell cafe and connection to hikers. Apparently several previous owners had gone bankrupt. She took the place over from her mother who stopped wanting to operate it shortly after buying it. Lori left a good situation in Washington DC and it took a long time to be accepted by the locals. Initially employees would steal gas after hours so she doesn’t carry gas anymore. One day, temps were about freezing, and someone in shorts walked up to the cafe, ordered a burger, wouldn’t shut up about how good it was, and explained that they were hiking a trail just north of town. After that hiker finished the trail, they must have told others since someone called her to arrange a supply. That hiker explained that she could help out her business by offering shuttle and lodging services. She decided that not to charge as long as hikers eat at her cafe. It was a new revenue sources, came during the slow season (the Ouachita can be hiked through the winter), and wound up helping her save the business. Hikers get the word out and she’s never had a bad experience with one.
• Now that I had a camera on the phone, I could start taking pictures.

• Slept in the Big Branch shelter. It’s probably half a mile steeply down below the trail, accessed by some switch backs, a former forest road, and some single track which crosses a stream bed which was disconcertingly dry. I’d picked Big Branch shelter as the day’s destination for the reliable water source. Exploring a little by headlamp (as a guestbook entry from Friday, October 13, noted, the place is “spooky”), I did find some pools of water in the streambed nearby. The land was flat and so easy to get lost. Despite having gone less than 50 yards from the shelter, I had left several markers to find my way back and was well served by them. On the way back, I couldn’t see the shelter until I was about 10 yards away. Night changes so much.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

• Had a little trouble finding the trail from the shelter in the morning. Wandered around very slowly by headlamp in approximately the correct direction until I found a blaze. The Big Branch shelter is a little spooky.
• This was a hard day to get motivated since I didn’t have an immediately pressing objective. By 10:30am, I was behind schedule and it seemed unlikely I’d make my mileage goal for the day. I stopped at the Blue Mountain shelter, looked at goals for the day and tried to get myself motivated. It kinda worked.
• Ouachita Pinnacle is an industrial site with two radio towers and a gravesite with a wood headboard tacked to a tree. The only view is from where the power or phone lines come up through a cut in the trees.

• I saw a tarantula on the trail. I’ve never seen one in the wild before so that was exciting. Even the normal spiders out here seem to be pretty large. It’s pretty common that I’ll be walking along and suddenly realize there’s a spider the size of a quarter is sitting at eye level in the middle of a web it’s spun across the trail.

• On a descending, abandoned forest road, met an West-bound through-hiker named Keenan. He gave me a whale sticker for my water bottle saying it was negative weight for all the joy it’d bring me. He’d had some water scares and was choosing to always keep all of his bottles loaded at every source. I chose to carry an extra liter for a while, but there seemed to be so much water that eventually I decided to stop this. It almost caused a problem at Highway 7 where I was expecting water, and like Eagle Gap, after some walking along a dry streambed, found a small pool almost by accident. There was a frog in it and some minnows, probably trapped as the stream dried up, but after filtering, it was clear and tasty.

• I’d been talking with Lydia by phone before the descent to Highway 7. Service was spotty and I told her I’d call back from the highway. There’s been service everywhere so I didn’t think that there might not be at the road until it was clear that there wasn’t. Given the comms issues I’d had earlier in the trail, I wanted to not leave her wondering what happened, and so charged up hill for the next several miles, finally finding the motivation which had been so lacking in the morning. Sugar creek was a beautiful rocky drainage which the trail winds its way along in that section. In the fading light, the small pools of water in the rock cisterns might have made for one of the prettiest bits of a trail which so rarely uses single-track to explore unique features for the sake of variety. I didn’t linger and wound up hiking the last mile and a half to the Oak Mountain Shelter in the dark after seeing three white tailed deer at a forest road crossing. This wound up being the easiest night hike of the trip. There was cell service at the shelter.

Friday, October 20, 2023

• I started out from the shelter with a quarter liter of water and was expecting to fill up just two miles into the day when I ran across Bill, westbound, who is hiking a flip-flop. His car is in Story, AR and Lori is shuttling him to each end of the trail at which point he hikes back to the middle. He had pictures of all the water sources until the west end of the trail annotated with their mileage numbers. I never did see Green Thumb spring which is where I was intending to fill up but instead of panicking, I knew I could just keep walking and found a cow pond shortly thereafter.

• The North Fork Pinnacle was a half-mile round-trip out of the way. I don’t like non-trail miles but this pinnacle actually had a view.

• Met Rob and Andy at a the last east-bound shelter. They had genius way of hanging their hammocks from the beams. They’ve been section hiking the Ouachita for about two weekends each year as a way of staying in touch. Inspirational. They’re almost done and I wonder where they’ll go next.

• There’s a section on private property. The trail easement must follow cardinal directions because it tends to move that way, going up and down hills as they happen to be in the way instead of flowing with the terrain. Given that I entered the property in the late afternoon, I was going to be sleeping there and wasn’t sure if that was allowed. I decided I could sleep next to the trail and probably be OK, or at least it was be easy to move on if rousted, but this was the one place where I wish I’d done more research.

• On the private property, I took two wrong turns looking for the exit from a gas pipeline cut. Blazes were on rocks in the double-track which followed the pipeline and were a little sparse. The road turned right after crossing a stream bed (my first guess) but cut also continued straight (my second guess). It wasn’t until I turned around and hiked back a ways to find the last blaze I’d seen that I saw an obvious turn-off with trees on each side of the trail blazed. The blazes were just facing such they couldn’t be seen in the direction I’d originally been hiking but were hard to miss when coming from the wrong direction. Dusk had been falling so I’d gotten in a little panic. The trail corridor thereafter was quite reassuring. There were even 3 colors of blazes: blue, yellow, and purple.

• Camped just before the Maumelle river near the last blue blaze I could find. Flooded areas near rivers can make the trail hard to follow because the trail bed gets washed out and brush gets rearranged. Despite returning to the last known blaze and setting out along several directions, it wasn’t until light the next morning that I could see the way – at which point it was almost obvious.

Saturday, October 21, 2023

• I waited for light despite wanting to finish early today. An early finish would make it easier to find a hotel room with a shower and laundry facilities. Not finishing today would mean trying to clean off in the Maumelle Reservoir before spending a day on airplanes. The advantage of light is that I didn’t spend time lost where the trail was faint in the river valley. Fortunately, this was one of the more heavily blazed sections.

• For a mile or so, I walked within sight of the Maumelle river. Birds were signing. Some ducks were flying along with their feet in the water, not quite taking off. It was idyllic except that there was a lot of road noise from a highway just out of sight on the far bank. At this point I wished for a canoe that I could put in and paddle down to the reservoir which ends a few miles short of the trail’s eastern terminus.

• Had trouble crossing a power line cut. The trail seemed to disappear when entering the cut, but actually went right for ~10ft then entered the dense brush. There wasn’t an obvious exit or blaze on the far side. I followed a game trail across and got scratched up, then searched for a blaze, finding one in a few minutes. I walked the trail back under the power lines to see what I’d missed, it was very easy to follow – I’d just need to take a few steps to the right. It’s incredible how such small misses can have such large impacts.
• Met an older couple who lived in the area. They told me an aggressive dog had been reported near Lunchford’s corner. I wasn’t sure where that was, but I was glad to hear that the sign saying Pinnacle Mt State Park was 12 miles away was actually about 10 miles. They’d measured it.
• Crossed the dam which creates Maumelle Reservior. No shoulder but fortunately light traffic.

• The western part of the trail over the north side of Maumelle Reservoir crosses many (dry) streams and would be very difficult to follow if it weren’t heavily blazed. The trail feels like it wanders enough as to be a little disorienting. There’ a slight slope towards the lake and sometimes you can see lake water sparkling in the distance through the trees. It felt a little chaotic and I wonder how the route was initially chosen. Why not just walk the shore of the reservoir and enjoy the view?
• The eastern section of trail which passes over north of Maumelle Reservoir rolls, has few views and the blazes are fresh. I was getting very attached to counting down the miles at this point.
• The end of the trail is actually a little complicated. There’s a road walk. You enter Pinnacle Mountain State Park through a corner of woods at a traffic intersection then walk past the base of Pinnacle Mountain before exiting through an archway which I thought was the terminus of the trail before seeing another blue blaze across the parking lot. The trail continues to the other side of the park on what feels like a decommissioned railroad bed. After the steepest climb of the entire trail, you come out at the lower parking lot of the visitor center where there’s a large mural titled Ouchita Trail. Nothing actually states that this is the eastern terminus, so I wandered up to the visitor center proper just to be sure I’d finished.

This is a trip about which I wax philosophical. I’m sorry. It moved me.

Saturday, August 5

This adventure started with a U-turn. On my way to the trailhead, I was struck with a terrible sense that I’d left the garage door open. I’d also forgotten my ice axe and head net but who needs safety or comfort? Not getting killed by my girlfriend (now wife), who was out of town for the week, because the fish had been stolen out of our chest freezer was the deciding point. I was even able to water the garden so it wouldn’t dry out while we were away.

I typically have very little patience for eating when there’s hiking to do. The best breakfast is one you can eat on your feet. Tomorrow, I would pick my way down a social trail with an expensive, bright yellow package of bland, rehydrated trail breakfast in one hand, a spoon in the other because I lacked the patience to stop for longer than was required to boil water. Only Andrew Skurka seems to be able to make oatmeal delicious in the back country, and as I understand it, he had to pay a professional chef to figure out how. All this is to say that, despite my natural tendencies, I ate lunch at the trailhead instead of on my feet while they carried me down the valley. Not having to carry the empty packaging preserved the feeling of a clean start.

The path out of the Gold Mint trailhead is flat, wide, packed, and grainy as though made from a yellow sand while not being soft like a dry oceanside beach. The most common animal at this point was the domestic canine, though several wild cyclists passed me heading in the opposite direction. People sometimes ask about danger from animals in the back country. I’ve never encountered an unreasonable bear. I have encountered unreasonable humans. I saw several humans openly carrying guns and wondered what I should do. Bear protocol seemed to work: make sound so you don’t surprise them.

The river in the middle of the glacial valley would visit briefly with the trail at silty openings in the brush where children, dogs, and one smoker enjoyed the water. I think the trail builders forgot about the mile 2 marker, otherwise I was walking at 10min/mi after 3 miles. Eventually, the trail turned boggy, then bushy, then bouldery and back again to bushy and boggy. It became more of a “social” trail with elements of bushwhacking than a “trail” trail. Apparently my bear protocol wasn’t so good. I surprised a pair of heavily laden backpackers wallowing their way along, doing combat with small branches.

This hike would make we wonder about the qualifiers we give to trails. When is a “trail” a “route”? When is a “social trail” more of a “game trail”? If there’s a boulder field and it’s obvious where to go but there’s no canonical way to get there, is it still a trail? If you happen to get the same place everyone else did by following broken vegetation, scuffed lichen, and sometimes your own nose, is that a trail, a route, a way, a ‘shwack, or just an adventure?

Those questions wouldn’t be raised until after the Gold Mint Hut, towards which, the Gold Mint trail now began to climb. I passed a red faced, sweaty fellow in a cowboy hat and holster, belly sagging over his belt as he sat on grass with his legs over a mud puddle. Children played around him in a small clearing. It was hard not to judge him as in over his head. A short while later, I stopped to get beta from a lean, tan climber who’d casually stepped aside to let me pass. He’d been out for a few days, summited a nearby peak in the morning and was heading out for a town day. He’d referred to the peak by name, assuming my familiarity with the area. I thought Montana was a state. My nervous, repeated questions about snow and trail conditions contrasted with his easy manner and must have left him with the same thoughts I’d just had about the seated man. Apparently the high snow year had left a hard snowpack and it was good that I was going over Backdoor Gap later in the day so the snowfield would be softer. It wouldn’t be a problem if I was good on my feet, he said. The way to Snowbird Hut was like this, he’d said waving his hand broadly at the steep, brushy, mountainside but without a trail. “Like this but no trail” I said. I’d just been appreciating how the social trail left just enough weakness in the bushes for my small pack to sneak through.

Glaciers, hidden at the back of hanging valleys began to appear. The view expanded to have a below and not just an above. The sun was bright. The sky was blue. The ridges were ragged, the valley bottom green. The trail was a fall line picked carefully to avoid ravines and sheer rock faces. A stout young man, stepping confidently on the steep tundra-covered rocks commented on the quality of the day. In a brief exchange, he mentioned making a living off social media. The drone in his pack was for work. He hadn’t gone over the pass and I wondered if it was because he had to get the footage edited and published to maintain engagement with his audience. Why not do a longer trip, perhaps the entire traverse instead of just going to the first pass? The view was good, but the experience of hiking up to a beautiful view is never as rich as walking through a beautiful view. He asked me if I was out for a day hike. Something about the small pack.

The Gold Mint Hut is red. Classic barn red and just as faded. The contrast with everything surrounding it fits perfectly with the feeling of arrival when my slow, upward pace made it suddenly rise out of the bowl on whose lip it rests.

There was a pair of hikers enjoying the view. In contrast with the loquacious, if brief, encounters with other hikers, these were kind enough to direct me to water before moving regain some semblance of solitude. It was a nice reminder that good etiquette out here is centered on giving everyone as much of the wilderness to themselves, not connecting with others through shared enjoyment of the outdoors, even if I’m prone to do the latter.

From the small stream behind hut, the trail washes out somewhat. Simply identify the correct pass, and walk up the gravel. There is a social trail on the south side which looked to me to be more difficult than hopping from stone to stone because at such a steep angle, any dirt under the foot would want to become dry lubricant. A fellow was descending that way carrying two packs. His companion was unburdened but moving slower and I intended to inquire if all was well. He beat me to it with a cheery salutation.

Just short of the pass a helicopter flew overhead. The sound came suddenly, perhaps blocked by the ridge until it was overhead. Low flying helicopters appeared several times while I was at Backdoor Gap. I assumed that some were for search and rescue but others had a more military look and I wondered if the used the area for practice.

I stopped frequently on the climb as I haven’t kept up with the sorts of efforts which occupied me for the last several years. The view was progressively more engaging so photography was my cover story. At each stop the view inspired awe and so I have a collection of images which were all breathtaking in the moment (though my breath may have also been taken on account of exertion), but capture views lesser than the one from Backdoor Gap itself. I usually try to skip taking a photograph if I know I’m about to get a better view but just couldn’t help myself.

The view to west of the gap was no less exciting. I felt as though in several hours I’d gone from home to the best of what I’ve experienced in the Sierra Nevada. Passing to the interior side of Backdoor Gap, I suddenly felt a significant distance from people even though several I’d met had come this way earlier in the day.

The mid-afternoon started by descending a rope about 15 feet to the snowfield. I had the bowl to myself and reveled in it. My route would trace the path of water, starting at the top of a snowfield, descending to where the snow was melted and ice remained, descending to where the ice melted into desolate field of rock and silt, descending still to where trickles coalesced into streams and the pioneers of the plant world began to put down roots. The plants formed a gradient in their density and size, reaching a full ground cover where the lip of the hanging valley diverted the gathering stream to one side, denying it the most direct route to the valley floor.

In passing this way, I deigned to wear traction devices until I found myself on the glacial ice where the snow had melted away. It felt like a rare honor to witness this process of glacial retraction. Glaciers had once covered all of these valleys. It seems that soon plants will replace them. There is a seasonal process as I’m sure the snow is somewhat deeper in the winter and some of the frontier plants freeze to death but over years the line of vegetation has chased the ice up the valley, reached the lip of this hanging valley, and is continuing its pursuit. I felt blessed to be witnessing the beautiful mixing of the two on this trip and felt sad at what my surroundings made so obvious – that the green from below will rise like a tide until all the ice disappears under it.

Elegiac feelings aside, I now had to find my way to the Bomber Hut. No trail had emerged, but the map had indicated it was on the north side of the river, somewhere after the river formed. Precision didn’t matter, accuracy did. So I found my way across rocks here and low bushes there. Springing over a brook and tip toeing along a hill side of large rocks. This is the freedom of off-trail travel in good terrain. Such is the pain of off-trail travel in poor terrain. That would be tomorrows problem. Today, I only felt the freedom.

Wanting to keep my feet as dry as possible, I found my way around the head of the river. It came down from another hanging valley under a tumble of large, weathered, lichenous rocks. I could hear the river beneath the rocks while I hop-scotched my way across, thankful that a light pack made fancy footwork fun. Clouds were beginning to gather and rain had been forecast, though not much. Not much might mean anything, of course. I wanted to find the hut so as to be secure in my position (precision, not accuracy). This is an odd thing as I could align every valley in view with the map and so there was no question of getting lost in the big picture. Yet, when I wandered in to the warm, green building crowded around with tents and crowded inside with people, I felt a security which provided a satisfying counter-balance to the brief absence of human company that afternoon.

The company in the Bomber hut was welcoming and conversation pleasant. I learned that there an excellent map set of the area is freely available so that I needn’t have drawn my own line or been so deprived of information about conditions. This area is well traveled yet retains an intoxicating, primitive feel. I took a picture of someone’s GPS with routes down the valley. I planned to exit quickly over Bomber Pass if the rain came early tomorrow, but attempt to find my way to Snowbird if I thought I could get a dry start. A woman who had come that way said it had taken the better part of a very foggy day despite having a GPS to come this way from Snowbird. I bid them goodnight and camped a short distance down the trail leading west from the hut.

Sunday, August 6

I woke, broke camp quickly, boiled water for oatmeal, then soaked and ate it while walking down the trail which descends from the Bomber hut to Wintergreen Creek. I hadn’t known about this trail and it greatly expedited my morning while also answering the key question of where to make the first of the two water crossings I was expecting today. The oatmeal was expensive and bland but the packaging was bright yellow on an otherwise overcast day.

The social trail seemed to come and go on the far side of Wintergreen Creek. I quickly lost it in a rock slide where I thought I saw evidence of footprints above me, only to see a brown scratch in the green foliage next to the river. The brush was now dense enough that missteps had consequences. I had a constant fear of floundering through alders for hours because I couldn’t see the proper path just a few feet away. My guiding principle was now to follow the path of least resistance. This principle hinges on the fact (or hope?) that no animal wants to flounder through alders and so bears, moose, humans, goats, etc… will all be funneled to the weakest point in the bushes. By individually rejecting the less pleasant options, they collectively maintain a passable route through what would otherwise be overwhelming plantlife. My second principle for the day was not be an idiot. This is a somewhat more subtle principle as it relies on common sense and common sense takes a good deal of practice to develop at an intuitive level. Until that is achieved, I, in particular, am prone to overthinking.

Knowing that I wanted to follow the river to the next valley then turn up that valley before crossing the river, I went whichever way was easiest as long as it kept me near the sight or sound of water. This path of least resistance soon began to conflict with the principle of not being an idiot. I found myself about to descend about 10 or 20 feet into deeper brush which appeared to start to form a cut which would carry the stream down the valley and past my turn. My goal was to diverge from Wintergreen Creek, travel up Barthof Creek, and so, while I wasn’t sure quite where to go, it seemed important to turn around and begin my turn up the valley forming on my left. This was a lot of thought for what might have been summarized as, “turn left at the next valley”.

And so I wandered with a loose aim, making slow progress and finding hints of others’ passage like this:

Short sections of trail would sometimes emerge. It seems that where the plants are slow to grow, the path holds well, but there isn’t enough foot traffic to keep the more aggressive plants at bay. I felt I was rediscovering some lost civilization, not simply walk a popular hiking route.

The next big movement was to cross Barthof Creek somewhere before Snowbird Lake, but I wasn’t sure where. When looking at topo maps before the trip, the terrain hadn’t struck me as particularly difficult and so I figured, I’d cross wherever it made sense. When looking at those maps, I’d interpolated a smooth gradient between the topographic lines and imagined them covered in low, tundra-like vegation. Reality was somewhat more like a series of step functions with bushes which could defend themselves. I walked the line between least resistance and idiocy a few times. For example, even if its easy to get to the waters edge, there needs to be an exit on the far side to complete a crossing. If there’s a weakness in the wall of bushes on the far side, you can’t cross in the middle of a water fall, though that idea would be tested later.

At one point, I couldn’t decide whether to cross or not, and broke the tie by looking the picture I’d taken of the route the night before. While I wasn’t particularly sure where along the valley I was, the crossing was slight above 3200ft. My elevation was 2800ft. I wasn’t there yet. I had learned about using an altimeter to locate oneself on a map during a wilderness navigation course several years ago but this was my first time using the technique.

The path of least resistance eventually resolved into a trail which lead to a well tread ford. It continued on the other side and was steep in places. I wound up scrambling boulders up a rocky ravine only to spot a social trail on the far side of the knoll at the top. It had looked so much simpler on a map, but maps don’t show the drop offs, large boulders, and small gulleys which don’t go where you think they would. Perhaps a more experienced backcountry traveler would be able to keep the big picture in mind and see through the obstacles, but I felt very much alive finding my way in places. At one point, I could find no way up other than a hand-over-hand scramble for a short distance with a hundred foot fall into Snowbird Lake if I had slipped. Yet, there was scuffed groundcover to follow and other rock faces seemed even more intimidating.

I was still below Snowbird Lake when the forecast rain started. I had thought that reaching Snowbird Lake would put me within easy travel of Snowbird Glacier but this proved not to be the case. Since I was stopping anyways to put on rain layers, I took a picture. Since I had my phone out anyways for pictures, I looked at the map stored there and discovered that the Snowbird Hut was on the south side of Snowbird Glacier. My current intention was to ascend the ridge to the north. Oops. I was well positioned to get back on course by crossing a stream descending from the glacier’s outlet lake. This looked like a simple task until I got close enough to realize that all of the shallower places lead to frothing pools where the turbulent water would press hard to sweep me away while I was feeling around to place my foot among rocks hidden at unknown depth by the torrent. In some places, I might have risked a long jump but the possibility of beings carried over a ledge if I were to fumble the landing on a smooth rock made slippery by rain kept me from making the leap. After several exploratory attempts to cross, I pulled out the hiking poles which had remained stashed in my pack the entire trip, sometimes catching on branches in taller bushes. These helped buttress the few steps it took to cross a deep, raging pool to a shallow, rushing pool and continue up the ridge of boulders that fell away steeply to Snowbird Lake.

Snowbird Hut was marked on my GPS but I was enjoying the game of using the GPS as rarely and as minimally as possible. At first I continued following the outlet stream, staying on the boulders a little above. I passed tents which so far on the trip indicated that a hut was nearby. Someone the night before had told me Snowbird Hut was hidden until one was almost upon it, but I found more time passing and the ridge varying more than I expected. Eventually, I succumbed to the desire for certainty as to my position and the fear that I’d missed the hut and looked at the GPS. It was still ahead. The ridge was simply more difficult than I’d expected.

I ate lunch on the porch of Snowbird Hut but for some reason never thought to go inside. The company on the porch was good – a pair of wilderness therapists spending their vacation in the wilderness. I idealize work in the outdoors industry as vacation trips like this feed my soul. While the pair clearly found joy and meaning in their work, it didn’t take much reading between the lines to see why they weren’t expecting long careers in the field.

Moving on from Snowbird Hut, I naively assumed that I could continue walking the ridge. Apparently I hadn’t yet learned my lesson that boulder hopping in the rain just grinds me down rather much more than walking a sunny, maintained trail. After a hundred yards or so, I realized that I could make my way around some drop-offs to Snowbird Glacier and walk up its smooth, perfectly graded surface with traction devices making for effortless footing. This freed my mind from the details of micronavigation to experience the awe such surroundings naturally bring to someone who experiences them infrequently. I walked up to Snowbird pass fascinated by the way streams of glacial melt form small and large crevices, some deep and sinuous. It was quite literally like getting to see a giant ice cube melt.

Across Snowbird Pass, the landscape remained inspiringly rugged, but changed from a grey ice-scape to an increasingly luscious mountain valley. A trail was easy to follow and only disappeared twice, the first time near a delightfully long boot-ski opportunity and the second near some old mining equipment.

The descent was steep enough that where red dirt was exposed, it was convenient to have an old cable, perhaps from a mining tram, available as a hand-hold. In other places, the cables crossed the trail about ankle level and were the perfect tripping hazard. The miners employing them presumably had a gritty, hard won life on such steep slopes. A pleasure trip isn’t fair comparison to daily life, but I felt a greater connection to the miners by encountering their abandoned, rusting infrastructure in such a physically demanding experience than if I had encountered it a polite museum exhibit. At the base of the descent, the trail merges with the valley’s main thoroughfare to Reed Lakes. The path whence I came is unnamed on the signpost at the fork. If you don’t know, I guess you shouldn’t go?

The trail was now flat, wide, packed dirt and ran along a stream. This felt like the home stretch in that it carried me as fast as I could walk past day hikers and was a return to the conditions from which I’d departed a little less than 24 hours before. At the trailhead, there was a map with a large “You Are Here” highlighted. It was perhaps the only time I already knew where I was before looking at a map.

The Reed Lakes Trailhead, however, was not the trailhead from which I’d departed and so I walked for several more hours. First on a dirt road. Then on a paved road. Then on a highway. Clouds rolled in and it began to rain but I was walking at my utmost and the warmth of my body evaporated the light rain, keeping my stretchy, synthetic sun shirt surprisingly dry. I’d had no worries about danger from wildlife so far on this trip. Approaching the end, I now regularly had to step aside to avoid rushing metal beasts which passed so close they perturbed the air around me. It was a final, dramatic variation in a trip so filled with variety.

All Photos

This trip was supposed to be an outing across Eklutna Lake on a sunny day. While driving there, we noticed dark clouds over Eklutna. This has happened before. Sunny in the city, raining in the one mountain valley we want to explore. Fool me one shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I secured consensus on redirect to Nancy Lakes from Lydia with the promise that I would carry the canoe on all portages. This wound up being worthwhile this once, but lead to me selling the canoe. I’ve have the outline of the 8ish mile Lynx Lake Loop almost memorized, but Lydia is smart enough to take a screenshot of the DNR map before we lose cell service.

Saturday, June 17

We arrived mid-afternoon and commenced the undertaking of getting the canoe off the car and to the water. This is a process involving releasing four ratchet straps, sliding the canoe off the fence posts I use a as carrying rack because the canoe is too wide for the rack which came with our car, and re-rigging two of the ratchet straps in an X across the center of the canoe to form “portage straps” (more on that later). More than half an hour and lot of heaving passes. The boat is 94lb scanoe made of thick ABS and galvanized steel. The upside is that it cost $300, came with portage wheels (not usable on this trip), paddles, and doesn’t need to be treated gently. That last point is important because it’s too heavy and unwieldy to treat it anything other than roughly. At ~40″ wide (“beam” in nautical terms) and no center thwart, I haven’t been able to do a proper canoe lift (instructional video using a narrow, 50lb canoe, with a portage yolk in the center) so it gets dragged for anything which isn’t a proper portage.

We set off around the loop counter-clockwise to get the long portages out of the way early in the trip.

We’d been on Tanaina Lake once before and were excited to actually walk the portage at the south end to see where it went. The lakes aren’t that large so it didn’t take long to cross. We beached the canoe in the mud next to the boards in the end of the portage trail. Then we repacked everything which wasn’t in our giant drybag packs into said packs so walking would be easier. Off came the life vests. Shoes were changed for rainboots in case of mud. Water bottles, snacks, and camp chairs we’d had out in the canoe went in as well. The repacking took a bit, but gave us time for a snack, and we were taking a break anyways as Lydia’s stomach hadn’t been feeling well since the morning. We carried the bags over the longest portage of the trip, past a pond, along swampy boards to Little Noluck Lake. Then I want back for the canoe. Lydia got tired of waiting in a swarm of mosquitoes and met me part way back (video).

While crossing Little No Luck lake, we made a plan to be a little quicker on the next portage by not taking off our life vests. We saw a mother loon sleeping next to the water with a chick under her wing.

A short portage took us to Big Noluck lake. I get the canoe on my shoulders be dragging it out of the water, flipping it over, then hoisting the front while flat back where a motor might be mounted stabilizes it against falling sideways. I walk backwards under the canoe until my shoulders meet the X-shaped straps across the canoes center. This involves progressively crouching and rounding my back before standing up with my back still rounded since the center of gravity isn’t quite where the X is. Practice made the process quicker but it never got comfortable.

On Big Noluck Lake we had no luck finding the portage and had to pull out the GPS on the phone which didn’t have the portage trails and tried to line it up with our map, which did. I’d never used a GPS on water before and hadn’t realized how connected my conception of GPS usage is to “tracks” and “routes” – lines you’re supposed to follow. On a lake, there’s no line to follow. “On trail” doesn’t really mean anything. The questions are about what you’re looking at, not where you are. Was that little bay in front of us the one with the portage? Or was that spit of land hiding it? This has the effect of playing “hot and cold”. The answers require a little thinking and get clearer as you get closer.

The portage from Big Noluck to a lake whose name wasn’t on our screen-shot map was short and steep. We crossed a double-track which was overgrown but only with one season’s overgrowth. It was getting late enough that we searched a short distance in each direction for a campsite, but finding nothing flat, much less open, chose to continue. The next put in was to a lake whose name was cut off on our map and so we referred to as No Name Lake but is apparent called Chicken Lake. The sun was beginning to get low but summer evenings here are long and end late. It was a beautiful paddle during golden hour.

On the short portage between Chicken Lake and James Lake there were several campsites, all occupied. I envied their lighter, smaller canoes. We began to worry about where we would sleep.

To escape the mosquitoes we tried boiling water for our freeze dried meals during the paddle across James Lake. We did manage to escape the mosquitoes, though we had to drift some as paddling rocked the boat, and the stove with pot atop. The small dock at the start of the portage to Owl Lake didn’t require head nets so we sat in our camp chairs and at dinner as the sun dipped below the tree line. Fortunately, a small, primitive campsite was available near the trail. Unfortunately, it was infested with mosquitoes. I survived relatively unscathed, but given Lydia’s experience, we might bring a net tent for latrine trips next time.

Sunday, June 18

Our first discussion of the day was a debate on the risks of cooking in the tent vs the risk of cooking in the mosquitoes outside the tent. We opted to attempt to make breakfast in the canoe as we’d done with dinner the night before and were breaking camp when a couple passed on the trail. They stopped to say chat and the fellow turns out to have previously been a guide in the Boundary Waters. He didn’t bother taking the canoe off his shoulders for the several minutes we talked. We managed breakfast while crossing Owl Lake, but need to find a better way of cooking in a canoe than putting a tall pot of water on a small burner. Despite being quite stable as far as canoes go, it can be hard to not rock the boat when you’re also trying to not drift into a rock.

The portage from Owl to Charr Lake is longer than it appears on the map. Our portage process was more efficient than the day before and we could avoid unpacking for the the first walk to the next lake carrying our dry bags. Lydia would then rearrange gear, prepare snacks, filter water, etc… to prepare for the next paddle while I went back for the canoe. The “portage straps” had left bruises on my shoulders and my neck. My back muscles hadn’t recovered completely from the awkward carries the day before. Despite the process improvements, portages became a race to see whether I could put up with the discomfort long enough to get to the next lake without yielding to the need for respite.

Charr Lake had several Loons which we spent some time watching. It was a nice rest after the portage. We felt quite limited by the lack of zoom lenses and burst mode on our phones. Canoeing and wildlife photography are different from the hiking and landscape photography I usually find myself doing. Wildlife tends to run away, which landscapes don’t. Hikers can carry their own cameras and position themselves perfectly whereas canoeists rely on a partner to steer and stabilize their vehicle while trying to frame a shot.

After a short while, we saw a pair of canoeists descending the portage trail, talking loudly. A burly, sunburnt, shirtless young man was dragging their watercraft unceremoniously over roots and rocks him using a chest harness. I had thought that my careless flipping of our canoe when lifting it and sliding it short distances on beaches, was rough treatment. Their canoe looked a similar color to the faded red rental canoes at the put-in of Tanaina Lake. Maybe you party harder on rentals? The portage to Lynx Lake was down a long, swampy neck and our pursuers continued down a small stream instead of taking out at the portage. This would have been our first instance of having to pass on a portage trail which seems tricky as canoes maybe be graceful on the water but are unwieldy on land so we were glad they diverted.

Lynx Lake is the largest body of water on the circuit, but the route just cuts through the northwest tip. There are also cabins and a camp, but there seems to be enough space for everyone. The portage trail to Little Frazer Lake was the best maintained so far. Clearly the east side of the loop sees more traffic. The portage from Little Frazer Lake to Frazer Lake crosses the same trail which we’d seen between Big Noluck and Chicken Lakes but was better maintained here. A sign even told us we were on the Lynx Lake Loop.

Frazer Lake was the highlight of the trip. Conditions were so placid that stand-up-paddle-boarders were lunching casually while floating past. As much as loons are Lydia’s favorite bird, trumpeter swans are pretty cool too (video) and it was my first time seeing them in the wild since being at Red Rock Lake in Montana on a family trip to see Uncle Donald who introduced me to canoeing. After the swans floated away, we took a snack in the canoe resting against the bank. It was kinda strange to be next to land but not actually step on it. I like the idea of developing the skills to never have to leave the canoe. Then a narrow, still, water way snakes up to Jacknife Lake which kept seeming like it would dry up or turn into a bog and become unpassable, but never quite did.

The portage from Jacknife to Ardaw Lake was the first time I had to rest on a portage. Our water filter had broken yesterday and despite some fiddling, we weren’t able to push water into the filter element. We’d been trying to finish the loop with what water was already in our bottles, but when Lydia saw my condition at the end of the portage, she offered me the rest of our filtered water without me even asking for it.

Ardaw lake was pleasantly cool with a slight breeze to ripple the water. That made for a small headwind, but the variety on an otherwise calm, warm was pleasant. The ripples darken the surface of the water and hides the dust which becomes noticeable only in such static conditions as we’d had. There’s a spit of land which almost closes off the “bay” where you put in on the south side of Ardaw and it felt adventurous exploring from one part of the lake into another. The take out for the portage to Milo was a large, shallow gravel beach with a floating dock which seemed the most developed of any on the loop.

On Milo Lake we had to wait to take out as several day tripper were putting in. Someone asked us about our canoe, saying they were looking to get a new boat, wanted to know what everyone was using, and that we looked like we knew what we were doing with it. I took it as a compliment and then discouraged them from buying a scanoe.

And then were back at Tanaina Lake. There’s a large sign which is not the take-out but is near enough the beach to be more helpful than confusing in navigation. I went to the car and got the portage wheels. The canoe fell off them. I hefted it back on. In the parking lot, several people with two dogs and enough cameras that they could only be documenting their experience for social media were assembling a folding canoe. I made inquiries.

Epilogue

Once home, I left our canoe in the front yard instead of squeezing it through the side yard to store it properly. A neighbor asked if it was for sale and I managed not to give it away for free in my haste to make the disposition. Lydia intervened in time to prevent me from also giving away the portage wheels and paddles. While that canoe has enabled my dreams for the last two years, it’s also responsible for facial scars (a story which preludes our use of fence posts as a carrying rack) and bruises which took the better part of a week to heal. It’s with mixed emotions that I now watch our old ’84 scanoe being buried under the snow in my neighbors yard.

All Photos