August 3 Parika Lake

Have I left you wondering about the leaky air mattress?  Kathi slept perfectly on it one night.  I slept perfectly on it one night.  I think the leak is at the nozzle.  I hate to deflate it as we get ready to move to our next base camp because we have found the sweet spot, or maybe I should say the just right closure... Messing with it will only lead to leakiness!  I'm pretty sure that backpack hiking with a fully pumped up mattress under my arm is not common practice.

8/3 Parika Lake

Up this morning at 6 am.  We packed up camp and were on the trail by 8.  We made good time getting up to Bowen Pass.  We drop down into a beautiful meadow filled with flowers.  Somewhere up here is Ruby Lake.  We do not even see a glimpse of it, but have a pretty good guess where it might be located.  We also were able to see the ridge we were hiking on yesterday. 

Hiking through the meadow from Bowen Pass to the Continental Divide pass we stop to filter some water.  While we are filtering a gentleman about our age is hiking down from the way we are headed.  We bid him a good day.  He bids us “good luck”....  The six of us just give him the “What did you say look…”  Did he mean, “I don’t think you can make it?”  Did he mean he felt that the six of us “are not capable“ to hike that?  Or did he know something that we did not know about the trail?  Whatever he meant, the tone of his comment only lit the fire under our hearts, and perhaps made our 40 plus pound packs feel more like 30-pound packs.  

We continued on up to the Continental Divide.  The divide was rather windy at the top so we decided to drop down over the pass so we could get out of the wind for a snack.  But we were not too far down the other side as it became clear the skies were no longer blue.  They were filling in with clouds.  We hiked to the bottom of the other side of the pass.  We stopped at a small little stream where Bec could soak her foot.  It was around eleven in the morning, big puffy clouds were starting to gather.  Consulting the maps we talked about our options of continuing or pitching tents at our present location. We could see up the side of the next pass.  A winding pencil line of a hiking trail flowed up and over what we knew was not the top of the next pass, but certainly, it could not be that much farther.  Perhaps another 200 feet of elevation that we could not see.  Being that it was still so early, we decided to hike on.

As we neared the last 200 feet of elevation before reaching the top of Mt. Fairview our luck ran out.  The wind had picked up, the temps had dropped, and the skies started throwing bursts of hail and large rain on us.  We dropped our packs and grabbed our rain gear, wiggling and wrangling to get our gear on without losing it to the strong winds.  Geared up we pressed on to hike up and over the pass and descend from the high ridge before the lightning started.  Sadly, we are at the best part of the hike with views, but with our heads down, we press forward across the ridge walk knowing that we need to get to a safer elevation.  At this point, you might be remembering the rules of lightning:  tallest, largest, pointiest...You want to be none of these.  

Finishing the last part of the ridge walk we meet a group of exuberant youth hiking up the trail from Parika Lake.  They were wearing shorts and t-shirts. The leader of the group had a wildly flapping yellow poncho.  The poncho whipping so violently that it offered no rain protection and more of personal slapping assault weapon.  These youth apparently saw no weather related reason to be headed down, heck, they had just spent 2 hours hiking up… One thing about hiking is you are free to make your own choices.  Older and perhaps wiser, our group of women chose to get the heck off of the ridge and leave the youthful group as the tallest, largest, pointiest.

From the saddle of the pass, our group headed down towards the grassy area above the alpine lake of Parika and the younger underdressed group headed even higher up towards Parika Peak.  On our walk down towards the lake, lightning struck in the valley we were hiking.  Thinking that she was the tallest, largest, pointiest, Bec dropped down to all fours.  At first, I thought she was struck by lightning, but I had felt none of the electricity in the air, quickly realizing she was ok and in greater need of getting further down the trail, Bec got back on her feet and continued with us to hike down the switchbacks to the rise above the lake.  

At the rise above the lake we took a quick survey of camp location, looking for three tent areas that were “flat” along with a good “kitchen”.  Seizing the break in the rain, we got busy pitching tents before the racing black clouds burst with their next load of hail, strong winds, and hard rain drops.  Just as we were almost finished pitching the tent, the youth group were frolicking on top of Mt. Parika.  The clouds burst open,  Kathi and I tossed our packs in the tent doors and crawled in.  For the next two hours, we sat in our tent safe from the pelting rain and hail.  I did not see the youth group hike down past us.  

With all of the tent time that we had, each of us had brought along something to engage our down time. I was sitting in the tent organizing my gear and writing my story of the day.  Kathi was doing her brain puzzle book which contained several different brain puzzles including crossword puzzles.With our three tents within voice distance, occasionally Kathi would have to send a question along the tent telephone voice line and inquire if anyone knew who was the author of the Nancy Drew series, or what the word for Father was in French.  Claudia brought along several saved up crossword puzzles from the Milwaukee Journal, Bec brought along her iPhone with downloaded books, Marybeth had picked up a book at the grocery store the night before we left, and I wish I could remember what Pat had.  Bad me.  

Today’s hike was just under five miles and we peaked at 12,149 feet.  We gained an elevation of 2,493 feet and lost 1,237 feet.  We had along the way great views, sun shine, flowers, clouds, wind, hail, rain and hard earned satisfaction.  

After two hours of rain and hail, the skies cleared and we exited our tents long enough to know it was just a small break in the weather.  We picked up what we were going to need for supper, hit the bushes to take care of business, and talked about safe cooking in the vestibules of our tents.  We each headed back to our tents as the next storm blew in.  And blew it did!  I was trying to light the stove in the tent vestibule area.  The wind gusted so hard the tent bent to one side releasing the tent from the stakes.  The vestibule started flapping in the wind.  I had no intention of lighting the tent on fire, so I doused the fire, rehooked the tent to the stakes and worked on keeping the tent up.  At times, I had to lay on my back with my foot up in the air supporting the top cross bar of our tent.  The wind was so strong, that I was sure it was going to kink the tent pole.  While lying there, with my foot up in the air holding the tent up, my mind narrowed in on an idea of how to engineer a stronger system.  I came up with the idea of bolstering the crossbar with my hiking pole and tethering the hiking pole handle to the tent crossbar with the extra string I had squirreled away in my ditty bag.  After putting this idea into action, I had a perfect solution to the wind/tent problem.  I could now sit back up and relax a bit.  It was getting late in the dinner hour and the storm was showing no sign of quitting.  Kathi and I decided to eat our evening jambalaya meal cold.  

In the other two tents, Pat and Marybeth had also thrown in the towel on a meal cooked under the vestibule.  They were trying to prepare some soup but they were battling hail and ended up with more hail in the pot than out of the pot.  Claudia and Bec managed to get their stove fired up, however, in the process of getting their stove out of the storm, our safety girl Bec burnt her thumb.  

Sometime after midnight, the storm moved on and the wind stopped.  The skies cleared allowing the full moon to brighten the night.  I took this opportunity to blow the air mattress back up...and go outside for a quick trip to the bushes.  The evening sky was beautiful.  The moon was so bright that the stars looked dim.  I crawled back into the tent and fell asleep hoping the mattress held until morning.  Just as I drifted off to sleep, I awoke with a startle of a coyote’s lonely howl at the moon which was echoing about the alpine valley where we were camped.  I laid there with my eyes wide open, for the first time considered the other creatures we were sleeping amongst!

It is raining and hailing so hard you can no longer see the mountain across the way.