The First Attempt

The First Attempt

[Italics indicate trail-written journal material]

I pull my Suzuki Sidekick into the cleared parking area at the bottom of Hendry’s Creek and its trailhead. It's about 9:15 on a Friday morning during the summer of 2003. "Oh man", I think, "This is it, you're actually going to start this." I park the car in the shade of a large water birch and shut the engine off. There's a moment of silence before I open my door and get out. I find myself in the bottom of a canyon. On both side of me, steep talus slopes rise up, covered in sparse soil, low brush and cheat grass. The bottom of the canyon is flat but filled with scrub brush and a small but perennial stream that is hidden by birch, willow and rose hips. Hidden from view are the rocky toped Snake Range Mountains of eastern Nevada. Mount Moriah - one of the highest points in the range - cannot even be seen from the canyon bottom where I stand.

My father, who had been riding in the passenger's seat, also opens his door to get out into the fresh air. We both wander around to stretch our legs. I walk off to relieve myself and finishing that, return to the car. Dad has peeled an orange and offers me half. I accept. We wash our hands in the creek and return to the car.

"You want me to take your picture at the trail head?" he asks.

"Sure, that'd be great"

I shoulder my gear-laden pack and walk from the car over to the trailhead. While I try to contort my facial muscles into a decent smile, my dad snaps the photo. He slips the camera back into the top compartment of my pack and steps back while I tighten the necessary straps on my pack. Finished, I look up at my father who is looking at me. "Well" he says, "I guess this is it". We approach and shake hands then pull one another into the half hug that is customary of the time. Standing there I realize that this is the first time that I have embraced my father in a long time. With our farewell completed we exchange a few words then I turn and head out on the trail.

Something inside me doesn't like what is happening and fights it by filling my body with emotion; most noticeably a lump in my throat. I ignore it. As I walk on I hear the tiny engine of my car jump to life. I keep walking. I can tell that the car is not moving or that it has only moved slightly. I stop and turn around and see that the car has moved but instead of it facing the way out it is facing me. What my dad is doing I have no idea. Is he having trouble with something? Does he see an animal? Is he holding the car there as an act to give me a chance to call it off and return to the safety of my home? I don't know, maybe he just wants to watch me go. I turn and walk away, partially wanting to turn back.

So that was it. That was the start to the great adventure that I had spawned in my head several months earlier. The plan…? Well, at first it really wasn't a plan, more of an idea. The idea was that I would load a pack with gear; head out my front door and into the mountains. Four or five days later my parents would drive the hour and a half over to the Utah border and hopefully pick me up. Needless to say, my parents were not too thrilled by the idea. I was 17 and relatively efficient in the outdoors but they believed they had put to much time and money into me to take a chance like that.

The idea eventually evolved into a plan complete with a mapped route, preplanned campsites and emergency supply caches. The trek would start at the Utah border and end on my doorstep in Ely, Nevada. The route would cross over 60 miles of Nevada terrain, which included three mountain ranges, one wilderness area and two valleys. I planned to do it in 4 days. As far as I knew no one had ever done it.

Why anyone would want to start such a trip was still relatively unknown to me. I do know that I had been inspired by my Nevada History class, which dealt with westward expansion. After reading about the Donor Party and their adventures I felt an urge to experience a situation of similar circumstance (the traveling part more than the collapse of social norms). I was also eager to hit the mountains after spending most of my winter in the lowlands. My adventurous spirit had to be satisfied.

It was these reasons that resulted with me at the Hendry's Creek trail head on July 18^th at 9:30am. Not much to do but walk. Not a lot happened. Eventually I depleted my one full water bottle so I decided to take a breather and pump some water from the stream that I had been following. I pumped enough to fill the bottle then pumped directly into my mouth to quench my thirst. Finished, I packed up the water pump and grabbed the water bottle. What I saw sent a wave of panic through my body. FLOTSAM! "No, it can't be" I thought. My bottle was filled with it. The water was almost cloudy with debris when it should have been totally clear. "Shit! Did the pump fail? Oh God! I pumped all that water into me!" I was petrified with the possibility of a broken pump with twenty-plus miles to go until there was totally safe water and terrified with the fact I could have ingested water that could hold any number of water born parasites. Was I going to get sick? No help from below, still another 10 miles or so to the table. Was I going to die? "Damn" I though, "How did this happen?" I dumped the water out and tried again. Less flotsam. I figured that was a good thing. I walked back onto the trail. As I looked at the water I realized that most of the particles were fairly large. These, I concluded (and hoped) were actually particles that had washed off the rubber tubing. I was still unnerved about the water. "Carry on", I thought. I realized there was really nothing I could do about it now. I could boil it. Not worth it, to much fuel. The damage, if any, was done. Besides, I'm always up for making friends, even if they happen to reside in my small intestine.

To keep my mind off the water incident I let it wander. Several thoughts passed through my head. The first, weightlifters. Yeah, that's right. I'm talking about those big, burly, iron pumping, vein busting individuals of society. Someone of such dedication and devotion to one's self should deserve quite a bit of respect, no? Ha! Respect!? You'll get none from me. You'll get none until I find you where I stand now. Until you put your freakishly built body to work you are deserving of nothing. You wouldn't even know where to start when it comes to backpacking. Weightlifters; kiss my ass. Another thought, more of a realization, is that all of us, in various and often hidden ways, are dependant upon our parents. As we live out our last hours of life, it is apparent that all that we were in our lifetime can be based upon our rearing in the home.

Further up the trail now. I find myself amidst the Aspen, fur trees, columbines and grasses. The stream is smaller now and flanked by mosses and ferns. I need water. I pump. Looks clean, I'll trust my gear. Could be the last water for a while, so I fill four liters into water bottles. One two-liter bottle is throwing my pack off balance. More hiking, more thoughts.

Again I find myself without water and thus in need of it. Goddamn life cycle. I'm close to the table of Moriah now. Less life about. The grasses thin, trees make room between one another. The lush Nevada forest I had been hiking through for the past few hours gives way to the alpine landscape. I see a dry creek bed and decide it's worth investigating. I drop my pack, drink the last of my water and proceed up the dry creek bed in search of a seep. The creek bed runs west to east. Its head is a talus bowl that runs down from the high ridges that lead to the peak. It runs downhill, across my path, down into the trees and I assume back into Hendry’s Creek. My uphill search ends waterless. I return to my pack and decide to search downhill. Success! About 400 meters down the creek bed water breaks the surface and pools about the rocks. I am elated, for now I don't have to hike the three miles back to the last water I saw. I also pride myself in the fact that not many people would have found the tiny seep due to its size and ephemeral nature.

I settle into a comfortable position and begin to pump from a small pool not more than six inches deep. I am careful not to stir up the silt. Don't know how much this pump can take. As I sit pumping, a small sparrow appears at the edge of a pool below me. It flits onto a rock, freezes while it checks its surroundings. Assured that it is safe, it dips it's beak to the water and returns to its cautious stance upon the rock. All of this being done in the blink of an eye. The bird goes on like this for a minute or so. While the bird drinks and I pump I feel a strange yet strong connection to my environment. Here we are, bird and man, one small, one powerful, caught in the same dance for life. I, the member of a social group so powerful that we alone could determine the fate of the entire planet (my feathered comrade included) and the bird, who's presence on this planet is only noted by myself and his or her mate. We now sit together with one shared objective: to drink. So simple. So beautiful.

Thunder rolls through the rocky crags of the high country. For me there is no better sound than that of thunder. It is a sound of good things to come. I love it. I love it now more than ever. At the sound of the thunder my mind is cleared except for her. I see her, with all her grace, intellect and beauty. She fills my head and life is good. Sonic aftershocks rise and fall, and she too fades then returns in my mind as the thunder rolls on. I long to share the moment with her but would it be the same?

My bottles filled, I hike back up to my pack. The extra weight of the water is painfully felt. My hips are raw from the hip strap sliding over them. Some pack adjustments are certainly needed.

The steepest part of the trail now lies beneath my feet. Soon I crest the hill and find myself on the table. A wondrous, nearly level, tundra-like place. There exists only small forbs and grasses, a few trees cling to the ever rising mountains but for the most part it is a level tundra. A murder of crows, numbering close to 200, rolls along the table. I assume they are feeding on the grasshoppers which appear to be quite numerous.

I find a camp site after chatting with two gentlemen who came up from the west. It begins to rain. I sit in silence under a tree and wait. The rain slackens enough that I can set up my tent. I spend the evening watching animals, eating dinner and writing.

That night, I fell asleep without a definite plan. I knew I was going to hike off the table and down into Cricket Canyon and the south fork of Big Negro Creek. Once out of the canyon I would be on the eastern side of Spring Valley. I had planned to cross the desolate valley under the cover of darkness to avoid the sun and ranchers whose land I would be crossing. Once across the valley I would camp for the night then head up Cleve Creek the next day. I would hike up Cleve Creek until I reached the bottom of Kraft Canyon at which point I would follow it out of Cleve Creek and up to the top of the Schell Creeks where I would camp for the third night. The next day I would hike out via Mosier Canyon and into town. It had never sounded extremely difficult before but after the incident with the water pump, I felt like I was pushing my luck on borrowed time. My stove was also on the fritz and required constant attention when in use. To add to my indecisiveness, the only things that I had heard about the ten mile wide Spring Valley was that it was full of snakes. I hardly had to imagine how easy it would be to step over a bush and onto a prowling rattler in the dark of night.

Morning found me sleeping in, and I wasn’t able to break camp and begin hiking till close to 8:00am. Luckily the clouds from the night’s thunderstorm were still thick and succeeding at keeping the temperature low. The hike off of the table was easy due to the fact that there was a trail and I was in slightly familiar territory. The trail was steep and with a heavy pack it was very easy to hurry along. I reached the trail head some time later then bushwhacked a mile or two to a point on my map that showed a clear but steep ridge that dropped into Cricket Canyon. I had never been into the canyon before but the mapped showed a road heading out the bottom of it so I figured it’d be an easy walk.

My assumptions about the canyon turned out to be dead wrong. The canyon walls were cliffs of crumbling limestone which limited my points of access from Cricket to Negro Canyon, and the Negro Canyon bottom was choked with vegetation. The road was there, sort of. Parts of the road were open but most of it was shrouded in thistle, choke cherry, rye grass, birch, rose hips and many other species of plant. By now the sun had come out and the temperature was beginning to rise. Inside the canyon, with its thick foliage and stone walls, it began to get rather warm and humid, a rarity in the Great Basin. As I barged my way down the road I realized I was in perfect snake country. I was grateful I was in Nevada and not some place back east where you really have to watch where you step. I totally lost the road at one point and, faced with a wall of foliage, resorted to walking down the creek. At least I could see down the creek and the fear of snakes dwindled. The going wasn’t much easier. At one point I slipped while walking a log and instinctively grabbed onto foliage for balance. I was disappointed but not shocked when I realized I had grabbed a hand full of stinging nettles.

I left the creek after fifty yards, clawed my way through the rosehips and eventually found the road again. At one point I stopped to catch my breath and to take in the sights that were around me. I examined a tree for no reason in particular and was stunned when I followed one of its branches out to its extremity. There was fruit in the tree! “Apples!?” I thought. Sure enough, tiny apples about the size a chicken egg were in the tree. I marveled at the tree and thought about how old it was and who had planted it. Maybe there were more trees like it in the canyon. In the garden paradise that was Negro Canyon, I took the fruit from the tree and did eat them so. When I realized my seemingly biblical situation I was certain that the serpent was lying somewhere, basking in the warmth of solar radiation.

I had lost about 4,000 ft of elevation over 7 miles in the course of four hours. My right knee which had ACL problems in the past was starting to feel strained. I stopped for a quick lunch of crackers, cheese, and meat then forged ahead through the Nevada flora. As I moved down the road an impulsive buzzing came from behind me and I added an extra yard to the step that I was in the middle of. There, under a ledge of limestone, the unmistakable coils of the rattler slowly restricted around themselves. The serpent of paradise had finally showed himself. I examined the snake while my heart and lungs began to function again. It was a medium sized snake that, had he struck, would have left me in pain and sickness for a few days but alive. I apologized for disturbing his basking and eating his fruit, then cautiously walked on. A lot of people shoot snakes on the spot. I for one have never killed a snake out of spite. Like most ‘dangerous’ animals, if left alone they really pose no threat.

I finally broke out of the jungle that was the south fork of Big Negro Canyon. My arms and legs stung as the sweat oozed into the numerous lacerations that were left from a dance with the rose hips. It was another five and a half miles down a well defined two-track. The sun was high in the sky now and the temperatures were nearing their highs. I arrived at the stashed car around four-o-clock. On the way out of town the previous day, Dad and I had each taken a vehicle. We drove to the bottom of Big Negro Creek and left one rig then drove the second to the other trailhead where I was dropped off. The only problem was that the car to be left at Big Negro (our Ford Expedition) had suffered a flat tire. This was resolved by installing the spare, but this left the rig vulnerable to future flats and left me with a sub-par escape vehicle. Dad planned to return with the Suzuki and a patch the tire before my trip would end.

I ate some food, lounged in the shade, then heard the whine of a car engine and saw my white Suzuki Sidekick crest the hill with my parents inside.

They asked how I was and if I was going to go on. I though about it for a few minutes then said no. My knee, the stove, the snakes…they all had twisted my will into submission and I couldn’t argue myself into continuing. As we all left the canyon and I left my endeavor unfinished, I vowed that I would begin as soon as possible with a second attempt. If only I could find a friend to come along…