Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 1 & 2)

Round Two

In late August of 2003, Paul Bath and I struck out on what has become known as Trail 22. The ‘trail’ was more of a collection of hunting roads, Forest Service trails and backcountry routes that I had formulated in my head during the doldrums of my junior year in high school. The route ran from roughly the Utah border to our home town of Ely, Nevada. I had found the mileage to be somewhere around sixty miles and later found the net elevation gain to be more than 13,000 feet. We had given ourselves four days to hike it.

Earlier that summer I had attempted to complete the route alone but had reluctantly given up half way through on account of a failing camp stove, failing knee and ominous premonitions of snakes. But I believed that if I had a wingman of sorts, I would definitely be able to complete the trek. Paul Bath had become my wingman.

I had played high school soccer with Paul for three years but until the day of the trek, I had never spent much time with him off the soccer field. He had invited me over to his house after an ultimate Frisbee game. He asked if I wanted a glass of water. I accepted and asked if he wanted to trek from Utah to Ely. I don’t think he believed me at first but when he realized that I was serious he jumped at the bit. The only problem was that he had college starting in the end of August. “Time would be tight”, we said, but we had confidence that we could do it.

The first day of our hike involved driving two cars out of Ely - me in my Suzuki Side Kick and Paul and his father in their rig. As a safety measure, we would leave my car in a primitive campground half way along the route. After ditching my car I hopped in with Paul and parent and we motored on out to Utah. We bounced and bucked up the last mile of road to the trail head of Hendries Creek. We ran through last minute checks and said our farewells to Paul’s father and began to walk.

Those first few minutes were hard on the mind because that’s when we first realized what we were about to do. I had run through the trek a hundred times in my head but each time the entire trip was covered in mere seconds thanks to my advanced CPU (Cranial Processing Unit). Now that we were actually there, the thought that, “We are going to be walking for the next four days” left me with a feeling of anxiety.

This first day of our trip would take us from an elevation of about five and a half thousand feet to an elevation of about eleven thousand feet over the course of eleven miles. There, on top of the Snake Range, we would camp. The next day we planned to hike out of the mountains, across Spring Valley (elevation, 5,580ft), and to the Cleve Creek Campground. We would spend the night at the campground then hike up Cleve Creek and up to the top of the Schell Creek range (10,700ft) where we would sleep for the third night. The next day we would hike out of the Schells and into town.

We started in the bottom of Hendries creek and followed a Forest Service trail up the canyon. The creek was present for more than half of the distance so we didn’t have to pack much water which made for light packs. The canyon, like most, was filled with leafy trees, cool shadows and green meadows of grasses and flowers. The trail cut back and forth across the creek and at times we had a hard time keeping track of it but it made for a more active hike.

Through stages, we eventually gained enough altitude to leave the moist green forests behind us. We then found ourselves amongst the regions oldest elders; Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) and Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva). White firs and Engelmann Spruce soon surrounded us as well. The thick grasses and ferns had long since thinned into a scrappy carpet of grass, small forbs and spindly brush. The water had thinned out as well. While Hendries Creek was still flowing strong, our trail had led away from the water and now our bottles were near empty. No worries though. On my previous excursion I had discovered a tiny spring of flowing water near the top of the trail. There hadn’t been much but there had been just enough to pump. Now, late in the summer, I was wondering if the water had dried up. We dropped packs and deviated from the trail with our empty bottles to where I remembered the spring to be. At first we couldn’t find it but eventually we located the water. The pungent odor of elk urine gave the impression that the seep was heavily used by the wild life. Sure enough there was still a pool deep enough to successfully pump the diluted elk piss into our bottles.

Bottles full he walked back to the trail and our packs. One final push and we were on The Table, a flat expanse of tundra-like landscape that sits at eleven thousand feet. Twelve thousand foot high Mt. Moriah lay just beyond a ridge line to the south. Lightning flickered in the distance as the sun began to sink. We hiked across the table and into a thick stand of bristlecones were we set up our camp for the night. Eventually, a storm that had been off in the distance was upon us. We walked out into the openness of the table and sat on an ancient piece of eroding wood and watched the lightning until it moved on. With the lightning gone and the evening light fading fast, we retired to our tent. We felt good after the first day. We were both sore and tired from the hike up but saw no problem with going on.

The night before we left, I was down in the basement running through check lists for the last time. It was nearly 11:00pm and after a full day of work, I was wishing I was asleep. As I stuffed some things into my pack and tightened some straps I heard a voice behind me. I turned to see Paul. He was covered in dirt and his cloths hung off of him like he’d been crawling in a ditch all day.

“Hey man, what’s up?” I asked

“We had to go out to a wreck. A semi carrying lumber drove off the road on Antelope Pass. I spent all day hauling lumber out of a ditch.”

“That sucks, man” I responded. “You still game?”

“Yeah. I had a question though. Do you think these shoes will work?”

I looked down at his pair of New Balance Running shoes.

“They are all I have right now” he said.

“Yeah, I guess they’ll have too” I said.

The fact that Paul was attacking this trip with a pair of running shoes had me worried but as I would later learn, it was symbolic of Paul’s attitude which was: Don’t worry about the problem at hand, just keep working on the goal and a solution will arise.

The sun pushed us out of the tent the next morning. We had slept in a bit but not beyond reason. We ate and broke camp and were hiking by 8:30. To get off the table we followed another Forest Service trail that both Paul and I had been on before when we were younger. The trail took us down into and then up out of Dead Man Canyon until we reached the trails head. Once at the head of the trail we followed a road to the head of another canyon that we planned to drop into so we could get out of the mountains. After looking into our canyon and assessing our situation on our map we decided to stay on the road and swing around the mountain to the north and hike down a ridge rather than drop into the crotch of some wild canyon.

We made good time on the road. We encountered our first cows and discussed weather or not we could manage to kill one if need be. The issue was left unresolved. A little further down the road we passed our first human establishment – wall tent, four wheeler, pick-up truck, beer cooler – the unfortunate usual. Archery season had begun a week or so earlier. No human to be seen. Finally we arrived at the top of the ridge we intended to hike down. A faint two track followed the ridge for a while so we followed it. Eventually the road died and we were left to find our own way.

By now we had lost enough elevation that we were into the mahogany and pinyon forest. Bitter brush, cliff rose, ephedra and prickly pear were abundant as well but on the south facing ridgeline there was almost no underlying vegetation. Descending further, the ridge too began to die out. The slopes on either side began to get steeper and steeper. As we looked off either side of our ridge, we could see cliffs of rock becoming more prominent so we decided to slip off the east side of the ridge and down into the bottom portion of Salt Marsh Canyon. The going was rough. Thank god we were going down. The slope was littered with huge boulders and loose rocks, the result of thousands of years of erosion. I couldn’t help but push a boulder off the lip of a small cliff and onto the top of a pinyon.

After working our way down the bouldery hillside we ran into and paralleled a fence that led us out of Salt Marsh Canyon and into the main drainage of Negro Creek. A well establish two-track led out of Negro Creek and into Spring Valley. Once on the road we resumed our quick pace. The bush-whacking that we had to do to get down the ridge had taken it out of us. So far we had hiked 10 miles and lost five thousand feet of elevation. Luckily the march down the road was made bearable by heavy shadows from the building cumulonimbus.

About two miles down the road we stopped to pump water on account of empty water bottles. As Paul got started pumping water I scampered of into the basin big sage to respond to the calls of nature. Just as I was wrapping things up several fat rain drops pelted my head. Then another few, and more, and more. Before I knew it, the sky was down pouring. I ran down the road to help Paul knowing that none of our packs were covered. I rounded the bend to see him dragging our packs like wounded soldiers into the scant shelter of two massive cottonwoods. We broke out our pack covers and raincoats but most of the damage was done. It felt good to be wet after the dusty day. We sat under the trees and watched the road fill with water. The torrent was soon accompanied by salvos of thunder. The rain and rest rejuvenated our bodies and as soon as the rain eased, we finished pumping and moved on.

The rain still fell as we walked down the road. The thunder was mind blowing. Every thirty seconds a fait flash of light would wash over us and then three to four seconds later the thunder would follow. At times each thunder clap was overlapping with the other to the point that there was almost constant rumbling. I was a little worried that with so many strikes, our odds of getting hit were slowly improving. Nevertheless we marched on. Eventually the rain ceased and near 4:00pm we reached the mouth of Negro canyon and stared out across Spring Valley.

As I looked north up the valley a lightning bolt from another storm cell rocked the valley floor. A few moments later, another bolt streaked down from the heavens and solidly connected with the earth. The thought of walking across the valley under such fierce skies made me nervous. We’d be the biggest lightning rods out there compared to the sage, rice grass and wild rye. Paul and I talked about if either of us felt up to it and what time we would be getting to the campground. We concluded that we were both beat and that if we started walking right then, we would get to the car sometime around midnight. We decided to go for it but not before another downpour forced us to improvise a rain shelter which we sat under for most of an hour.

It was close to 5:00pm when we started walking. The valley was about nine miles across. All I had ever been told about the valley was that it was filled with snakes. This rumor had helped me give up on my initial attempt. The thought of walking in the dark and stepping over a bush and onto a hunting rattler had always been on my mind. Now, snakes or no snakes, we were going to walk it.

We cruised down the bench of sage brush for a mile or two until we got to the main dirt road that ran up the valley. There, we stopped for our last big break before the last push. Rested and ready we crossed the road and walked down a steep slope that used to be the shore of an ancient lake that had filled most of the valley. The valley floor was filled with small sand dunes, dried up springs, and shallow empty basins that hold water in the rainy season. A whole new array of plant life surrounded us that we had not yet encountered on the trip. Of course, all of it had seen the vicious hooves of hundreds if not thousands of cows over the past few seasons. The rain clouds remained as the evening light began to fade. However, the sun was not about to be out done. In the last minutes of light a fiery sunset managed to break through the grey.

By the time it was getting dark, we were about half way across the valley. I was starting to feel tired and my nerves were starting to fray. I still hadn’t given up the thought of death by snake bite. At one point I was following Paul along a trail when his foot brushed the seed pod of some plant (likely a larkspur). The pod shook violently and its dry seeds rattled in such a way that my tired mind took it to be an angry rattlesnake. I jumped back and let out a curse before I realized I had been fooled. A good laugh nonetheless. Throughout the night a thunderhead that could be seen over the Schell Creeks routinely blinded us with bursts of silent lightning.

Sometime around 10:00pm we hit State Route 893. A paved road that felt funny under foot but a fine place to stop. My usually busy mind had grown weary of all other tasks except placing one foot in front of the other. I snapped a couple of pictures and we sat down on the side of the road to relax in the cool of the night. I ate the last of my food and drank the last of my water. We had walked over twenty miles that day and we still had a few to go. As we were about to leave, a halo of light appeared on the south horizon of the road. Headlights of a car soon crested the hill. “Let’s see who it is”, I said.

The pickup blasted past us in the dark. “Odd”, I thought, so much for country hospitality. The brake lights suddenly blinked on and the truck rolled to a stop then drove in reverse back towards us. The truck slowed to a stop in front of us and a man in his forties appeared in the driver-side window.

“You boys alright?”

“Yeah we’re fine. Just taking a break.”

“Oh?” said the man

“Were on a backpacking trip”, said Paul.

“Where you boys coming from?” the man asked.

“Well this morning we were on Moriah.” I said, figuring he was a local and familiar with the area.

“Are you serious!? Whoa! You guys are some crazy bastards! Shit, grab some beers! There’s a bunch in the cooler in the back.”

Paul took up the offer and slipped two Coors into the breast pockets of his flannel shirt. We thanked our road bound friend and ambled off into the darkness.

Finally, near 11:30pm we tramped into the campground. My car was where I had left it but someone had made camp right next to it. There was a pickup with a camper in the bed and a tarp canopy stretched off one side. A pile of fire wood sat next to a fire pit filled with smoking, glowing embers of a dead fire. I didn’t care that the occupants were asleep as I started my car up and moved it to another camp sight.

We decided that it’d be easier to sleep in the car rather than set up the tent or risk getting rained on. Sleeping in the front seat of the Suzuki probably wouldn’t have worked the other 364 nights of the year but after hiking nearly 30 miles in one day we weren’t too concerned with the cramped quarters.