Day 5 - The Table Mountain Hop

The whispering breeze through the lone piñon above our tent sang us through the night. When the sun began thinking about rising, we were thinking about breakfast. Carson popped out around 5:25 and nursed the coals back into a cooking fire. I made grub, pouring what was supposed to have been about five days worth of brown sugar, almonds and raisins into the regular oat ration. Well worth the idea. It was almost sickeningly sweet. Almost.

After a few large rabbitbrush flare fires to seer the skin and warm the engines, we left camp around 7:30. Fifty yards had us into the Table Mountain Wilderness Area, and the two-track quickly degraded into an overgrown swath of willow and chokecherry.

The ‘trail’ became apparent occasionally, and we did our best to follow it. Up, up, up. The dry streambed was soon a bubbling creek beneath the willows, and we moved up the canyon as the sun began to warm us up. We followed the main canyon for a spell, then aimed for the left fork, looking for the mapped trail, now amongst the aspen, and got pretty thoroughly stuck in the shrubbery. The trail was gone (all for the better), and we couldn’t see the layout of the drainage or its relation to where we wanted to make the top of Table Mountain. We split up and made our way slowly through the brush in the narrow canyon. Fed up with this after about an hour, we discussed our objectives and decided that we should hike up the left side of the canyon to clear our path of the dense aspen and rosehips, and side-slope it up to a saddle to the southwest. Before we did this, we pumped and drank a bit of water (we were not really carrying any), and had a snack break.

Paul took things to the next level and pulled out two packs of sharks, establishing the break as a bona fide shark attack. We began to get really cold, even though we were in the sun, so we struck our course up the steep canyon side, and leveled out a bit to hit the saddle. From the saddle, we had a sheer face of about 1,500ft gain. Wanting to get to where we were going in a gnarly direct kind of way, we started up the steep face without trying to switchback at all.

Before it got too steep, Paul discovered a tattered piece of a cotton game bag and a full lemon lime Gatorade beneath a mahogany. We gave it a sniff test, which it passed with flying colors, and abruptly consumed it. Electrolytes, baby, bathed in the elements for who knows how long. A year? Who cares. Delicious.

We continued, and it soon became steep enough that there was a hazard of rolling rocks on one another, so we staggered ourselves across the slope. An hour and ten minutes later, we busted our way out of a dense aspen and fir stand, excited to summit. Pumping endorphins, we approached the top only to discover that we had been duped by the topography. False summit. Looked like another twenty minutes through scrub aspen then rocks to the real top. Endorphins crashed. We took a few minute break to contemplate exhaustion, then continued. I huffed it, trying to muster it in one shot. I succeeded, summiting a few minutes before Paul and Carson. I plopped down, with my back to the fiercely chilly wind, and stared into the great wide open, under the skies of blue. Carson and Paul arrived shortly after; rebels without a clue. We were in awe of the view and beautiful day. The trip up to that point had been a hard scramble through the scraggy lower mountains, rewarding in its own ways, but the 360 panorama into the heart of Nevada was invigorating. We all bundled up, putting on those few extra layers we had packed but not used yet. Cold front coming.

We took pictures, refueled the guts, and giddily paced about admiring the land. A survey to the east with binoculars revealed that we could see every mountain range we had crossed in our entire Trail 22 journey, except the first; the Snake Range. The Schells were the most distant, shining snow fields through 120 miles of cool May air. Hoping to milk a few shots out of the decommissioned video camera, we pulled it out and set up a shot on the east side of the peak out of the wind, hoping to speak briefly of the last two days and also to share our rewarding easterly view. The battery held, and we got what we wanted. Pleased, we filmed a bit on top as well.

Table Mountain is literally a big four mile long table. To the west, it is slowly sloped down through some of Nevada’s largest aspen stands - the top of a crooked fault block - cut by small streams and gullies that turn into canyons as you move down toward Monitor Valley. The east side, which we had just ascended, was steep and abrupt, representing the end of the fault block.

Needing to get a move on, we packed up and started to hike south along the flat mesa-like ridge. Quickly, we spotted a few blue and white tent-like structures at the head of a meadow a bit below us in a wide gully. Interested to possibly meet some folks or discover something interesting, we descended the gully and approached the tents. The lone wall tent was surrounded with axes, pulaskis, boxes of other tools, deer antlers and various bones, beer cans, 50 gallon steel drums, crude tables, saws, and other stuff. It appeared to be vacant. We yelled “Hello?” to no response. We entered the large tent to find several more packed up tents, a dozen large plastic tubs full of stoves, fuel, cookware, food, Gatorade mix, hunting supplies, chairs, cots, and, to our astonished and unbelievable delight, beer. Beer in quantities we could only dream of. Beer of several types, all cheap, but something to the order of 130 cans. Paul did not hesitate to tear into a 32 case of Bud lights and start tossing them to us, as if they would soon disappear. We rummaged for food, as it was apparent that no one had camped there in a half year or more, but soon discovered that most of it had been consumed by rodents, including about five pounds of yogurt-covered and sprinkled animal cookies (Damn I say!).

Ready to go, we put everything back where it had been, tied everything back up, and left the tent. We ended up taking only five beers, two small snack bags of Cheetoes and a small quantity of Gatorade powder. I began to feel a bit of guilt for our plundering as we walked away, but after I thought about all of the beer cans, trash, and diabetic mice that the establishment had generated, I shrugged it off. Plus, there was more beer in that ragged hut than four rednecks could drink in a week and still hunt properly, so I felt no shame. This Bud’s for me, drunken dudes.

Regaining the ridge, we continued in the afternoon sun a mile or so to the south. We spotted several elk and deer groups along the way. Eventually we hung a right and crossed a low ridge through an elk-hammered aspen stand. We disbanded a bit, separated and getting a tad out of touch with one another. We reconnected, though, and from there we descended a winding draw full of wet meadows. The sun was down behind the ridge, and it was starting to get chilly. We were looking for a suitable camp spot but it was too steep, mushy and full of bushes and trees.

The trod continued, and we began to get boxed into the narrowing canyon. It was very Colorado-ish, noted Carson. The draw turned into a canyon and eventually we came to the confluence of our canyon and a small stream. Our route had us following the small stream back up its canyon for a ways, then cutting out to hit a saddle. We began following it up, not wanting to have to go all the way to the saddle to camp, but willing. Within several hundred meters, we found a spot just big enough to pitch our tent. Arms reach from the stream, bordered on all other sides by downed aspen logs, and nestled between the steep rocky mahogany and fir covered slopes, it was a perfect place to end the day.

We set up the tent and got dinner supplies ready. I gathered a big load of prime sun dried mahogany and we fired up the fire and cracked the beers. On a pee walk, about twenty yards downstream, I discovered an ancient forest gallery of carved aspen porn. About a dozen erotic positions were represented as well as various forms of self pleasure. Oh, the solitude and woe of the lonely Basque shepherds.

Cheesy noodles with cheesy cheese soup was on the menu for dinner, and we finished by passing around a pot of scrumptious stream-cooled Oreo puddin’. The eight dollar Brazilian stogie then made the rounds, as well as a bit more of the Whiskey. The evening was cold but we were in good cheer and spirits (figuratively, of course…and literally too). Darkness eventually exiled the twilight, and the night awoke. Buzzed, beat, elated, and beginning to tire, we rolled into the tent one at a time, wrapping ourselves in all our warm fuzzies. Siesta.