“Saints are sinners who never gave up. No matter what your difficulties, if you do not give up, you are making progress in your struggle against the stream. To struggle is to win the favor of God.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
Even though I was happily married and had domestic obligations, I remained close with my friends Chris and Greg, with whom I had shared a house in Bolinas for an epic year of parties and adventure back in 1982. That was also the date of their last trip to Little Bear Lake, and after more than a dozen years away from the wilderness, both of them had serious green monkeys on their backs. Chris had moved north to Portland and wound up with a wife and family, a mortgage, and a Master’s in history. His younger brother, Greg, had remained in Bolinas, becoming one of the most revered and important members of that community (by tending bar at Smiley’s).
We communicated by phone, or that newfangled thing called email, and tried to find a mutual time to put together a trip. All the big weekends were impossible – Bolinas always had a legendary party on July 4, Chris had family plans for Memorial Day, and I had to work all the time. I had developed a troubling affliction of responsibility: taking on two challenging jobs in medical offices after getting a vocational degree in medical assisting. I was also taking night classes to get a Bachelor’s in Health Administration… mostly so I could stop having to draw blood, rinse out ear wax, and clean up after colonoscopies!
Email was supposed to revolutionize communication, but all it seemed to do was make it more complicated. I emailed Chris, and waited for an answer on my old home computer, which took about 15 minutes to start up and get connected to the Internet. I emailed Greg, too, but his chosen profession discombobulated his schedule. It soon became clear that the only window in which we could get just two of the three of us together at one time was late September (again). I wanted the longer days of midsummer, but the fewer mosquitoes and cooler weather in the fall was also appealing. Greg and I got busy making plans to go – or rather, I made plans, and Greg waited until the last minute to throw a hodgepodge of food and gear together, as usual. We would be accompanied on this trip by Leroy Brown, a magnificently amiable and abnormally large Rhodesian Ridgeback who weighed more than I did at the time. I had been riding my bike as a primary means of transportation around Marin, and was down to 138 lbs. Leroy Brown was a lion hunter by ancestry, and would fight savagely with two classes of mortal enemies: other male dogs, and anything larger than him with four legs. Both Greg and I doubted we would have any trouble with bears.
As a result of my bike riding, I was in the best shape of my life, but didn’t want to carry more than a third of my body weight. Greg’s chosen profession was decidedly less healthy, and he was in the worst shape of his life, so the recommended pack weight of a third of his body weight would have been sixty pounds. However, he far exceeded that by bringing canned food, two bottles of wine, a huge slab of coppa mista, a brick of cheddar, raw potatoes & onions, and a heavy, clanging menagerie of ancient gypsy gear that weighed twice as much as it should. His pack wound up closer to 70 pounds with the water bottles full, and mine was under 45 pounds. Leroy Brown probably could have carried both of us and our gear, but at least he had saddlebags to carry his own kibble, water, food bowl, and toys. When all the gear was loaded in the back of Greg’s beat-up pickup, along with the overnight camping gear, it looked more like we were going to climb Mt. Everest than the Bear Lakes Trail.
By the time we left, we wound up with a full 6 or 7 days for this trip, owing to a break in my schedule and the ease with which Greg was able to find eager volunteers to cover his bartending shifts. This allowed us to attempt a leisurely pace up the trail for a change, with the intent of staying overnight at Big Bear, before repacking and heading up to Little Bear the next day. In reality, our older, softer bodies had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the unfamiliar difference in altitude, and before we even got to the bridge we were blowing hard, dizzy, and sweating like hogs at a barbecue. I already had heat rash (in the worst possible anatomical location), and steam was rising ominously from Greg’s head and shoulders. We were less than a mile from the truck. This didn’t look good, and required desperate measures. Greg cached the wine and sundry implements under the bridge, to retrieve on the way back. He complained about his knee, and cast a baleful eye at the remains of his pack, as if it was trying to kill him. Leroy Brown panted loudly in the shade, and waited happily for us to get going. He was completely in his element; not caring one bit that his saddlebags were lopsided and falling under his belly. My own pack, and the trim, slight body transporting it, were holding up pretty well, so I kindly took off his saggy bundles and lashed them to my frame. Leroy Brown smiled with his whole face, as if he might kiss me, and danced in happy dog circles with the temporary feeling of lightness.
It was getting very hot here, deep in the canyon, crossing the creek that flowed from the Three Bear Lakes, and the sun had climbed high above us, in a brassy yellow sky, glaring down angrily through a thin layer of high September clouds. We still had the worst part of the trail ahead of us, and our ill-advised sense of leisure had delayed us to the point where we would be ascending the dusty, hellish switchbacks during the most broiling part of the day. I delicately tried to reposition my pack away from the sore spots, and pirouetted to slip my arms through the sweaty straps. Greg grunted and strained as he spun in a circle; losing a wrestling match with a deranged pile of debris. It had him pinned against the bridge and on the ropes, and his arms flailed wildly to gain leverage.
“Ack! Ack!” Strangled curses spluttered from his face like a talking doll possessed by the devil, and I could hardly reach over to help him for laughing too much. Happy Leroy Brown ran ahead and came back, barking at Greg to hurry up. Greg growled fiercely, twisted out of the half Nelson in which his pack had tried to pin him down, and with my giddy help, was able to somehow point his momentum uphill. He staggered away from the relative coolness of the creek, and we were off into the slashing rays of the sun.
We lurched up the trail like stiff, overloaded zombies on a gruesome picnic. I soon regretted taking on the extra weight of Leroy Brown’s food, and wondered if he might survive on a diet of trout and chipmunk for a week. We were already dead to the pain, the dirt, the heat, and the gravity. We trudged and shuffled upwards, ever upwards, cursing every switchback and longingly scanning every new boulder for a potential place to lean or sit for a few minutes to catch our breath. I was in the best shape of my life, but was helplessly caught in a downward spiral of heat prostration and dehydration from forgetting to drink lots of water. Greg was simply overburdened and overweight. We had traveled only about 20 percent of our route at that point. The hike really wasn’t that hard – Leroy Brown kept coming back to urge us on, trotting gaily and panting with excitement. We simply hadn’t given the mountains the respect they deserved, and we were paying the price. With interest, of course.
At this point, one might wonder: why we didn’t just go back to the truck and have a good ol’ American camping trip with booze and burnt hot dogs for a week? Why did we push ourselves past the limits of sensibility? Neither of us would subject ourselves to this sort of extreme exertion at home, so why here? Why now? There was a penitent zeal to our self-flagellation, as we sought to purge our souls of the tarnished patina of easy living. To test our mettle in a world where everything was not given to us or near at hand, but had to be earned with every aching step. It was a trial of manhood every bit as cathartic for us as hunting a Grizzly bear must have been to the native Wintun or Shasta Indians of a bygone era – that is, if any of them were stupid enough to do it during the hottest part of the day, and carry their teepee on their back!
In effect, we were acting as our own pack mules. Most assuredly, there were real mules for hire throughout the Trinity Alps (or goats!), which clever people hired, to carry all their stuff up to the remote lakes. (Some of the most scenic places in the central Trinity Wilderness are 15 or 20 miles from the trailhead, and require more vigorous hiking than this.) But we were not that clever – or that rich – and we disdained those who hired a beast of burden to transport their outdoor paraphernalia. Certainly, the pioneers could not have come west without mules, horses, or oxen, but nomadic tribes throughout human history have had to carry their own belongings. In fact, the local Indians used their own women as pack animals: some squaws were observed to be carrying up to 200 pounds in the load baskets they used when moving from camp to camp with the seasons! We were carrying far less than that, but it was our own stuff, and there was something vital and necessary about being the agents of its conveyance. The irony of carrying everything we needed, just to “get away from it all,” was completely lost on us at the time.
After struggling through the hottest part of the trail, we stopped for a long rest at a spot where Bear Creek departed for a while. This shady, inviting glade we dubbed “The Women’s Lounge.” We spread out on the ground as if we and our backpacks had fallen out of the back of a truck, splayed out on long, brown pine needles amongst rough boulders and scrub manzanita. Leroy Brown panted patiently in the deepest shadows within the bushes. Greg lay flat on his back with his pack underneath him, displaying the helpless torpor of a desert tortoise dying in the sun. My shirt was soaked and freezing with sweat as I hobbled and stumbled fifty yards down a gentle slope to where Bear Creek was gushing loudly in its haste to get down to the Trinity River. Small waterfalls and rapids danced to and fro, past attractive tan boulders that baked in the sun like enormous dinner rolls. At a shaded, slow moving pool, I rinsed my salty shirt and filled our water bottles. I couldn’t hear anything but the roar of the water above and below, but I had a strong sense that I was being watched. I scanned the open spots with the corners of my eyes, which are more sensitive to movement than looking directly. Nothing was there but a small ouzel poking around for water insects. Looking deeper into the thick undergrowth a few yards across the creek, I sensed a presence – unlike man or animal – observing me without eyes. It was as if the forest itself was examining me for a purpose beyond my ability to understand. I felt suddenly inadequate, out of place, and chastised by the chill of a breeze on my drying back. I did a quick about-face and hastened up the bank to the trail. The noise and tumult receded behind me, and the mysterious scrutiny was gone. The sun felt good on my abused shoulders, and eased my fears.
Back at the Women’s Lounge, it appeared as though a yard sale had broken out. Greg had wriggled free from his straps and spread out the astonishing variety of contents that made up his small, canvas pack. He was attempting to repack this menagerie into a space about two thirds too small. “Put the heaviest stuff on top,” I advised, “And it will lean forward up the trail.” A grunt of taciturn agreement was all he could muster. After everything was back in place or lashed on top of other stuff, and we had rested and rehydrated as well as we could, we helped each other to our feet and teetered uncertainly on reluctant legs that creaked and moaned like the rigging of old ships.
“OK, here we go,” were the last coherent words I heard for several hours, although much was hence communicated with exasperated looks and frustrated shakes of the head.
Leroy Brown had taken to carrying a large, stout stick in his mouth about two feet long. Greg had made the mistake of removing it from the trail, and the huge dog pounced on it as if it was the start of a game. Whether he was hoping someone would throw it for him, or perhaps simply out of habit, he laid it down next to him when we rested, and picked it back up again when we resumed hiking. Often it would get tangled in the thick bushes close to the trail, due to his method of carrying the heavy stick by its end so that it stuck out sideways and tilted his head. “Crazy dog,” Greg said finally, after a long silence while we rested in the relative coolness of the beautiful forested parts of the trail. He tossed the stick aside a few times, but Leroy Brown retrieved it immediately, determined to carry it to the ends of the earth. So, we let him do what he wanted, as it required our precious energy to do anything else.
Greg’s ungainly backpack and his awkward stick-carrying dog continued to get snarled in the heavy tangles of ferns, alder, and ceanothus that riddled the trail as it twisted and scrambled through the horribly overgrown avalanche section. The plants that grew in its wake were quick to seize upon the newly created space. The uphill sides of brush-choked gullies were especially difficult, and Greg became more vocal and animated with exasperation, as Leroy Brown’s stick got caught repeatedly, and he would not let go of it to extricate himself. At one point, Greg had to haul the huge dog out by his hind legs, still gripping the stick resolutely as it broke free from the bushes like a ship’s anchor tangled in seaweed; dragging a clump of branches and leaves. Copious amounts of energy were wasted in this section of the trail, expending all of our reserves, until we practically crawled up and over the worst parts in a way that made me recall the loathsome uphill bushwhacking through which Rob, Dave, and I suffered nearly twenty years before. I mentally placed a machete on my backpacking list so I might better prevail against the miserable undergrowth the next time.
At times we seemed to be completely enclosed inside a woven basket of vegetation, so that we had to peer through the branches below our waist to find the trail. I had never experienced such grossly overgrown vegetation before, and when I mentioned this to Greg, he just snarled. A canopy of ferns and bushes towered above our heads and leaned over the trail in a chaos of clutching vines, catching on the tip of Greg’s fishing pole or grabbing my hat. All around us, a mosh pit of leafy thugs jostled and pushed to find sunlight, and the most convenient open space was in the trail itself. Our pace slowed to a crawl. Or rather, it was more like a constant disentanglement, attempting to fold the branches aside long enough to step into the brief space ahead, while detaching those that grasped at our backpacks from behind. My walking stick was at times useful, combing the branches aside, and other times a vexing hindrance, and in places I had to thread it through the tangles horizontally like a shuttlecock.
In the foolhardy manner of Nineteenth Century explorers hacking through the jungles in the dark heart of Africa, it took us more than seven hours to reach Big Bear Lake. That was surely one of the longest hikes ever… on a moderately difficult trail of just 3 ½ miles. The blasting heat of late afternoon was dissolving into the more uniform warmth of evening, and bluish-purple shadows filled the crevices and canyons around us as we finally broke free from the undergrowth and hobbled into the expanse of white granite where Bear Creek slides flatly over bare rock. A ragged cheer was sent up by the troops, and Leroy Brown even let go of his stick long enough to bathe his hot tongue in the cool water, making staccato lapping sounds that echoed off the canyon walls. The last few hundred yards was like riding an escalator, compared to the struggles in the brush, and we glided up to the lakeside to see if we had any company. Thankfully, we had the place to ourselves (because it was midweek), and we unceremoniously claimed the best campsite by dumping our gear and falling headlong into the chilly lake water. Leroy Brown was too tired to join us, and lay down in the shade of a rock, panting around the sides of the huge stick still wedged in his mouth.
We floated in the numbingly frigid water and exulted with great gasps of satisfaction for about twenty minutes, or until we started to lose the sense of our arms and legs. But oh, it felt so good to be cold! Greg was resolutely picking flakes of skin off his feet, forming a disgusting flotilla of discarded flesh all around him. I got out before the fleet could advance on my position, and with great difficulty stripped the salty, twisted clothes off my unfeeling body. The sun was just setting, and the clothes wouldn’t dry in time for the next leg of our excursion to Little Bear Lake, but I didn’t care. At this point, the idea of grinding uphill over jumbled boulders with over 40 pounds on my back was a hideous proposition. All I wanted was food, rest, and something to bring good cheer, like a campfire. I vaguely remembered we needed wood for that, and the task fell on me simply because I was the only one who could move. I was reminded that if I wanted anything in this life, I had to work for it.
I started poking stiffly around the bushes near camp, hoping for easy pickings, because if I couldn’t find any wood close to camp there would be no fire at all. My eye was drawn by a glimmer of gold under the small manzanita bushes at the base of a tree right next to the water. There, partially obscured by fallen leaves and needles, was an absurdly opulent gift from the gods: a whole side of smoked salmon, completely intact in its thick, golden foil packaging! Before I could celebrate my find, my foot rolled over something hard, and a familiar “clink” set my heart thumping. There, in the cool shade of a crevice, where the water seeped in from the lake, was a cache of bottled beer! “Whoop! Whoop!” I exulted, and held two bottles aloft for Greg to see.
“Are you shitting me?” was all he could say. He stopped picking his feet and rose out of the water, mouth agape, like a huge, red-and-white Godzilla. Small waterfalls gushed out from his shorts. He staggered to find his footing under the water. The hapless residents of Tokyo screamed and ran away in terror.
“There’s a whole side of smoked salmon here!” I lifted the gold package up for him to see, and stepped on more wet bottles. “And there’s five… no, six cold beers!”
“Are you fucking shitting me?” Greg laboriously waded over to where I was, still spouting streams of water.
Searching earnestly in utter disbelief, I kept finding more bottles. “No, there’s eight… count ‘em: nine bottles of beer! Looks like they’ve been here a while,” I said with justification for our plunder, “There’s dirt and stuff all over them, but they’re cold!”
“Are you totally fucking shitting me?!” Greg kept repeating his crude rhetorical question over and over, as an incredulous way of exclaiming, “My goodness – aren’t we ever so fortunate to find cold refreshments waiting for us after such a long and hot journey!” Except that his version would never be part of a Disney movie.
“And that’s not all?” I questioned, my hand closing on a familiar metal shaft. The vines and bushes had grown over it (this stuff had been there quite a while), so I had to slide it out, but sure enough it was a golf club. “A fucking two iron!” I roared, and yanked a ragged Ziploc bag from the leaves, “And a bag of golf balls!”
This was too bizarre for words, so only epithets were meaningful. “What the fuck?” Greg articulated profoundly.
“Holy shit!” I agreed with erudite enthusiasm.
This manner of eloquent discourse continued for about five minutes of joyous wonderment, as we giddily assembled the spoils back at camp and made a thorough search for more. Only a small bottle of bug juice was added to our haul, but we had more than enough for a festive evening. We had no qualms about consuming the cache ourselves: finder’s keepers was the supreme law of the jungle. I would have had qualms if the cache had been left that year, out of respect for those who expected to find nine cold beers waiting for them after a long hike. But these had surely been undisturbed at least through the winter, as they were crusted with dirt and pine needles from the spring snow melt, and their labels had been partially eaten off by slugs. They cleaned up nice and sparkling fresh in the lake, and we toasted our good fortune with a happy, popping fire, gorging on salmon with our fingers and washing it down with frosty Sierra Nevada pale ale.
“Besides,” I reasoned to Greg, as I fingered the three remaining golf balls in a large gallon bag, “These assholes were obviously hitting golf balls into the lake, so they deserve to have someone drink all their beer.”
“No shit,” agreed Greg enthusiastically, as the soothing logic of rationalization settled in. “They probably had mules carry the stuff up here anyway. I mean, who would be stupid enough to carry bottles up that trail?”
“I can think of one idiot who was gonna bring two wine bottles!” I jeered sarcastically with an expansive, ironic shrug.
“But that Pinot would have gone well with the salmon,” said Greg ruefully; then winked. “But I’ve got a surprise for later.”
After such an epic feast, if there were any bears in the vicinity they would have surely smelled the salmon once it was out of its nitrogen-sealed foil pouch. If I’d had the sense to think about it, I probably couldn’t have come up with a more alluring fragrance to attract any random bruin within forty square miles. Blissful in our ignorance, all three of us recklessly adorned our bodies, clothes, fur, and campsite with eau du salmon all night. Fortunately, there weren’t any bears around, or they would have been dispatched to our camp with great alacrity. Once there, they may have been puzzled to find an incredible disaster scene in the middle of a forest: salmon fragments scattered everywhere, nine empty bottles tossed in the dirt, a seemingly dead dog with a large stick in its mouth, and two drunken, rancid smelling backpackers snoring lustily like female grizzlies in heat. It was that last part that should have worried us, but our brains and bodies had completely shut down.
