We are at 9,800 feet, but our plans are to go higher. Up one of the many John Muir Wilderness trails to an icy lake in the spring snow. “Can be caused by drinking too much,” Hans says. I look at Alvin. The Night Train.
Rule number two. It’s not just what you pack in your bag, but what you pack in your stomach.
For the next two days, I sit at camp in my tent, and Alvin in his, spinning and miserable. Altitude sickness is a flu and a hangover at the same time.
After a few days of this, Hans comes back to base camp and tells us we should take a quarter mile walk, to the other side of the lake. We oblige, fill our water bottles and begin to walk. It starts out as something dreadful.
Every rock we climb feels like a mountain. Alvin says, “I miss my wife.” He offers his hand to pull me up a rock. Two children on their first escape from the backyard.
Packing rule number three. Pack the right friends.
Travel is rarely, 'the museum was great, the sculptures were fantastic, the food was divine.' More often, it’s a whisper, “Jim was a pain,” or “Janet wanted to do her own thing.” Packing the right company is as important as packing the right pack – best friends don’t always make best travel partners. Alvin is a shoe-in, because although he may have never touched snow before and may be green with the camping stove, his concern is always the well-being of his company. All those bottles of alcohol he intended to haul up into the Sierra Range and cunningly pull them from his pack; 'hey look what I got!' - that was for our group benefit, not his own.
We continued along the lake at an incredibly slow pace. The kind of pace that made me ask - how am I going to get off this mountain if I can't even walk around this lake?
The next morning, our ills had nearly subsided, and I was packing my belongings into my pack with considerable malaise. My pack was probably just under forty pounds, including food and water. "How do you manage to fit all that stuff in your pack?" I asked Hans, who carried a much smaller sixty pound pack that seemed a magic lantern of gear - a saw, a GPS unit, field guides, a fly fishing pole, an assortment of homemade flys, books, a pair of sandals. He said, "you have to push everything in as hard as you can." He said to push the clothes and sleeping bag in "almost until the skin above your fingernails peels off."
He demonstrates filling every inch of the pack so that it appears neat, without folds and creases. "When backpacking, you have to think military style."
I did this, thinking, they don't tell you this stuff in the books. Ascending the trail, I ask Hans why he bothers carrying so much stuff. He says that normally he was used to carrying a lighter pack, but under the circumstances, he's willing to forego some comfort in order to bring some extra things for the group. He says he has been learning more about the ultra-light approach - a radical packing concept that applies equally to day hiking, short trips like this, and extended backcountry trips such as along the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trails.
Andre, who is simultaneously cooking our freshly caught trout and discarding the breakfast waste – the fish guts - into a plastic bag, has been teaching us the standards of backcountry cleanliness the whole time. You catch a fish, you pack the guts and scales in your pack and don’t discard it until your back in town.
What strikes me about being up here on the mountain, for being a well-travelled route, there is no garbage, no litter, bare evidence of humanity. Imagine, I wrote in my notebook, if hikers could impart their style on golfers and beachgoers and business travelers.
Rule number four. Travel like a hiker.
All the while Hans is talking, I am staring up at Vance's pack. Through the course of our days in the woods, the pack's awkwardness has given way to neatly strapped gear. Vance’s pack now fits closely on his back and everything has gone 'military style.'
Hans later encouraged me to read Ray Jardine's 'Beyond Backpacking', in which the author begins with the premise of 'Grandma.’ Grandma hiked the American Appalachian trail with a pair of sneakers and a laundry bag draped over her shoulder. In today's world of foot travel theory, she did everything wrong. But look at that picture of her! She looks happy after a thousand miles.
