Blistered Kind Of Love

by Angela Ballard

  After the delay, we really had to move to make the Edison Lake ferry. Duffy, spurred by the thought of the “first beer free” policy at the Vermilion Valley Resort, led at a trot. We cruised along Bear Ridge through a hailstorm and then started down fifty-three pine-sheltered switchbacks. Glancing at his watch, Duffy broke into a gallop and I kept up as best I could. We had to make that ferry; if we didn’t, we’d have to walk an extra six miles around Edison Lake. The High Sierra had been wondrous, but we were spent—so spent that the idea of six extra miles sent us into a frantic race against time. As we glimpsed the lake, we sprinted over rocks and roots. We were going to get that boat or break a limb trying.

  Wounded Knee Walker

  FOR AS MUCH AS WE’D FRETTED about the possibility of needing to perform ice-axe self-arrest in the Sierra, in reality my axe had pretty much been deadweight. Lashed to the back of Big Red, spike jutting toward the heavens, the green chunk of aluminum had traveled hundreds of miles through The Mountains, but I’d only unstrapped it once, on the downhill traverse of Forester Pass. This wasn’t due to safety concerns—the snow was soft and the steps deep—but rather for a photo opportunity. We needed at least one mountaineer-esque shot for our scrapbook, and I needed to put that axe to some use. After all, I hadn’t used it to dig fire pits, fight off bears, or even to hunt wild marmot. So far, the only useful thing that axe had done was allow me to wrap some extra Duct tape around it.

  Now, let me emphasize two things: An ice axe can save your life, and some years it is an essential piece of thru-hiking gear. Who knows, Dr. John Lowder might still be alive if he’d been carrying an axe in June of 1999. We’d been fortunate, however, catching the Sierra in a low snow year (around seventy-five percent of normal) and following in the footsteps of dozens of other hikers up and over six high passes. For us, late in an anomalous snow season, axes had been extraneous. But regardless of our experience, I wouldn’t recommend that aspiring thru-hikers spurn the ice axe. Fish, on the other hand, wasn’t convinced.

  “Useless. Utterly useless piece of equipment. That Ray Jardine is full of shit. I traded mine for a Wiffle bat.”

  We sat around a crowded table at the Vermilion Valley Resort (VVR) enjoying steak sandwich dinners. Angela and I traded joyful banter with Fish, Ryan, and Daris (Pansy Ass)—banter about the Whitney summit and “Naked Hiker Day,” the difficult and ice-cold creek fords, the surreal beauty of the High Sierra during snow melt, and the day’s race to Edison Lake.

  “I was sure you guys wouldn’t make it,” Fish said. “We hadn’t seen you in days, not since Mather Pass. Then, ‘poof,’ you appear from the woods as the ferry is taking off.”

  By catching the last ferry of the day across Edison Lake we’d avoided the six-mile side trail around the lake to the VVR. I’d run the last quarter of a mile, the sound of a primed engine spurring me on, screaming the whole way, “Hold the boat! Hold that boat!”

  “I tell ya, the Fish should learn not to count people out.” Fish often spoke in the third person.

  Our dinner-table discussion abruptly changed course when the waitress appeared with pie à la mode. The Vermilion Valley Resort was famous for its pie—apple, cherry, and boysenberry, baked fresh each day by co-owner Peggy Wiggs. Peggy and her husband Butch had owned the VVR since 1996 and continued a tradition of hiker-friendly services, including the much-anticipated “first beer free” policy.

  Like the Pink Motel, the Vermilion Valley Resort is somewhat of a misnomer. While the concept of “resort” is a matter of perspective, the wacky thru-hiker may be the only person liable to consider Vermillion Valley to have actual “resortlike” facilities. A noisy electric generator supplies power, phone service is only available via satellite, and two mildewed showers serve the entire encampment. Hotel-style lodging is limited, so most hikers pitch tents or sleep in the bunkhouse, choosing from a collection of stale mattresses. Perhaps not what Hugh Hefner would opt for, but to us a splendid luxury.

  After dinner, I struck a deal with Butch. In return for work in the kitchen (scrubbing pots and cleaning floors), he’d clear our tab and throw in a few beers. I considered this a fantastic coup, and happily listened to a broken stereo brutalize the Doors while sorting through a soup of dirty dishes. Angela, on the other hand, was not pleased. She’d been given the task of mopping the floors and was disgusted by the antique, grime-encrusted janitor’s mop. Needless to say, she would have preferred to be socializing by the campfire. I love campfires, too, really I do, but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to do something other than spend money. As a medical student with tens of thousands of dollars in loans wrapped around my future, I’d developed a severe case of financial guilt. And I was up for anything that could alleviate this guilt without having to sacrifice the trip in the process. In reality, our hiking budget was not all that tight—Angela had saved money from her salary, my parents had made numerous contributions, and I’d taken out an extra Stafford loan. By comparison, Chris and Stacey were struggling for every noodle and hot chocolate packet. At Independence, their re-supply box was once again missing in action. This was the third time that their Pittsburgh re-supply headquarters had botched a delivery and they had to spend an extra day in town, scrounging supplies from the hikers box and soliciting donations from fellow hikers. We gave them a few of our brick-weighted MREs and some of Angela’s stale (not to mention bland) gorp. I told Chris that these “gifts” were our belated revenge for their water-hoarding back at Scissors Crossing.

  Our work detail lasted an hour, and then we headed toward the campfire. On the way, I assured Angela that I wasn’t really a cheap bastard; it was just that I was somewhat spending-impaired. People like me needed help and understanding from our loved ones, not to mention blank checks and gift certificates.

  In front of a raging fire, a ring of about twenty people surrounded a hiker strumming the guitar. Peggy sang along to “Bye-bye, Miss American Pie” and Butch, a stocky guy with a thick mustache and beard, sported a wide smile. His noggin, with trademark cowboy hat, swayed back and forth and he tapped his leather boots to the rhythm. I put my arm around Angela and felt her tension melt. We became lost in the music and the clear mountain night.

  There was another communal campfire the next night, this one at Pocket Meadow, a three-mile hike from Vermilion Valley. Angela boiled water for our freeze-dried dinner while I envied Fish and Ryan’s feast—deep-dish apple pies from the VVR. It was Ryan’s first time in The Mountains, and he was glowing nearly as brightly as the fire’s embers. “You haven’t lived until you have been in the High Sierra” he exalted. The High Sierra had also invigorated Angela; despite the long, tough miles, the look of wonder never dimmed in her round brown eyes. All my desert promises had been fulfilled, and then some.

  As dinner wound down, I asked Fish about the genesis of his trail name.

  “So, it’s April of ninety-eight and the Fish is on the AT.” Fish adjusted his seat on a boulder, leaning in to tell the story. “I was hiking in the North Carolina Mountains at about 5,000 feet. Being from Tampa and not owning a winter jacket, the possibility of cold weather hadn’t occurred to me. So I’m rolling along, eating up miles. Suddenly, this white stuff, cold white stuff, starts falling from the sky. Now, remember, I’m from Tampa. I’ve never seen snow before—never. This white stuff sure looks like it could be snow, but I’m not sure. So, I stop this south-bounder and ask him. He nearly coughs up a lung laughing. ‘Yeah, it’s snow.’ he says.”

  “What else could it be?” exclaimed Daris between giggles.

  “Well, mystery solved, right?” Fish continued. “So I keep rolling in my tee shirt and shorts and this darn snow stuff gets colder and wetter and colder and wetter until I don’t feel the cold anymore. After ten miles of this, I start to realize that I’m in deep shit. So I stop at the next shelter, but it’s totally packed. Twenty-four people in a seven-person shelter. So now I have to pitch my tent without being able to feel my fingers. Probably took half an hour to get it up. I don’t even re
member crawling in. Must have just passed out. Next thing I know, it’s the middle of the night and I’m shivering like crazy and racked with nausea. So I light my stove in the tent to try and warm up.”

  “Why didn’t you wake up someone in the shelter?” Angela asked.

  “The Fish was too proud to wake up other hikers. . . . In the morning, my tent is completely covered with snow and ice, inches of the stuff. And right about then I’m hating snow. Some guys eventually come over from the shelter to check on me, and I tell them I’m not going anywhere until all the snow is gone. I don’t think they realized how serious I was, they just kept asking if I was okay, if I felt all right. ‘I’m fine,’ I said to them, ‘but you know what, I’d rather be fishing.’ That’s how I became Fish.”

  Later, we sat tossing twigs into the settling remnants of our fire, discussing upcoming plans. Fish, Ryan, and Daris were debating whether or not to catch the bus into Mammoth from Reds Meadow (about twenty-seven miles up-trail) for an unscheduled stop. I wasn’t sure how much the burgeoning tryst between Fish and Daris played into this; I surmised that Fish was anxious to find a cozy room where he could fondle Daris’ pansy ass. As tempted as we were to join them and observe the progression of this romance, we were determined to continue on to Yosemite and Tuolumne Meadows. We hoped to get there before the July Fourth holiday; maybe we’d even find Catch-23 and ol’ Crazy Legs there.

  On the first day of July, our fifty-fifth on the PCT, we woke early and were soon greeted with a ford across Mono Creek’s swift-moving current. I stepped into the unbelievably cold water and maneuvered around the frothy rocks, nearly losing my balance several times. Safely on the other side and jogging in place to warm my numb and achy legs, I yelled words of caution to Angela. She was midstream and looked up fearfully to acknowledge me before stepping forward. Abruptly, she lurched sideways into the current, submerging herself to chest level. She yelped and grimaced. For a moment I thought she was going to be washed away, but she quickly righted herself. She scowled down at the rocks beneath her and (quite uncharacteristically) uttered a loud profanity.

  “I crunched my knee, bad,” she said once on dry land. “Wrenched it.” There was a superficial cut and an area of redness around her left knee.

  “Yeah, you have a lot of erythema,” I noted.

  “Ery—what? Sounds serious. Think you’ll need to amputate?” She was joking, so I knew it couldn’t be too bad. I gave her knee a kiss and covered the wound with antibiotic ointment and a bandage before we hiked on.

  Two days later that knee bump was no longer a laughing matter. We were camped above Thousand Island Lake in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. The lake is an aptly named narrow expanse of water dotted with thousands of granite outgrowths, some bare, some decorated with trees or tundralike growth. Lying in our tent, sheltered from the wind by granite on both sides with a brilliant view of the sunset reflected in the patchwork lake, we had every right to be optimistic. The toughest sections of the Sierra were behind us and we were twenty miles from Tuolumne Meadows and only eighty or so from the thousand-mile mark. The only problem was that Chigger’s knee wasn’t cooperating. Hiking, especially downhill, had become painful, and she now walked with a distinct limp. Angela was not one to complain about physical pain (her focus usually centered on emotional aches and general fatigue), but she was clearly hurting, and I worried that she’d suffered a ligament or cartilage injury, or perhaps was developing patellar (knee cap) irritation. Even excessive doses of ibuprofen, or Vitamin I as we called it, weren’t helping. Angela had been popping them like jellybeans all day but still grimaced with pain at nearly every step.

  Things were no better in the morning as we tackled the arduous climb up to Donahue Pass and into Yosemite National Park. The descent was treacherous, featuring unsure and unkind footing. Angela was struggling but stoically picked her way down the trail. Our pace had slowed to just faster than a crawl and after a brief discussion we decided that I would hike ahead to grab our re-supply package from the Tuolumne Meadows post office before it closed for the July Fourth holiday.

  With 13,000-foot Mount Lyell towering over me, I strode purposefully through Lyell Meadow and along the west bank of the Tuolumne River. The river flowed down a series of peaceful curves, gently gliding its way north through green fields. The trail’s tread, however, was not peaceful; there were multiple paths, many of them wet and muddied as repeat foot travel eroded them below the water table. Sierra meadows, I’d learned from the guidebook, had started as lakes left by receding glaciers. Slowly, over thousands of years, silt and rock from surrounding mountainsides filled the lakes, eventually creating lush meadows. This meadow, however, hadn’t completely evolved—with my every step ancient lake water oozed above ground.

  Eventually I reached drier ground and kicked into a hip-swaying speed walk that would have made Richard Simmons proud. I arrived at the Tuolumne Meadows General Store with ten minutes to spare. By 4:20 that afternoon I was sitting at a picnic bench adjacent to the General Store, sorting through our re-supply box. Chris and Stacey relaxed nearby, mixing rum and Coke. Chris, with an extremely earnest face, provided an extended dissertation on the cost-effectiveness of hard liquor versus beer.

  “Rum and Coke—just can’t beat it, man. Most buzz for the money. Beer can’t compete, fizzy water with no kick.”

  Normally I would have jumped to the defense of barley and hops, but right then I was preoccupied with the whereabouts of Wounded Knee Walker. About fifteen minutes later, as I began to re-pack my gear, she appeared, still grimacing and with a slow and deliberate limp. I was ecstatic to see her and very proud. She’d handled this better than I would have, I was sure of that. At the same time, I was afraid that this might be it; our trip could be over. Done, kaput, finito, stick a fork in us. I knew that by this stage in a thru-hiking endeavor, chronic-use injuries more than anything else forced hikers off the trail. And Angela, possibly initiated by her fall at Mono Creek, appeared to have developed a painful chronic-use injury.

  Remarkably, she was in a good mood as we set up our tent in the Tuolumne Meadows Campground. Perhaps it was because she finally had an ailment that commanded my full sympathetic attention. While she rested, iced, and elevated her knee, I toured the campground looking for firewood, without much success. Instead, I discovered a fascinating fireside lecture by a park ranger on the deadly mountain carnivore, the ochleratatus tahoensis mosquito. I only planned on staying for a minute but was sucked in. I returned to the tent with a barrage of mosquito facts.

  “Hey, Chiggy, did you know that it is only the female mosquito that bites humans?”

  “Yeah, that’s because we girls are dangerous,” she said, baring her choppers.

  “Okay, but did you know that their saliva has both a painkiller and a blood thinner? That’s why you don’t always feel the bite, and that’s why they can suck up a bunch of blood without it clotting. It’s also why you get a bump . . . the anticoagulant proteins trigger an immune response.”

  “Ohh.” She pretended to be impressed.

  “And,” I said with a flourish, “the female can only lay eggs after sucking blood, and the more the better, so that’s why those blood-sucking bitches will sit there with their proboscis imbedded in ya until completely full . . . if you let them, that is.”

  “Gross! To think that I had all of those probe-thingees in me when we crossed Evolution Creek.”

  “You think that’s gross, they once did a study in the Alaskan tundra where they videotaped a man standing outside for a full minute, completely nude. They watched the tape and counted the bites. Over one million!”

  “Can we talk about something else? Like you finding me some more ice for my knee?”

  Later that night we were awakened by a horrible ruckus. Air-horns, shouts, a bottle rocket, and then more shouts. A cruisin’ bruin! Yosemite bears are notorious campground scavengers, habituated from years and years and millions and millions of careless tourists. Nowadays, some are so bold that they will ru
n up and grab a PB&J sandwich out of your hand in broad daylight. Wisely, we’d stored all of our food and gear in the sturdy bear lockers of Tuolumne Meadows Campground, and without food, humans are of little interest to most bears. Besides, the events of the previous summer suggested that in Yosemite, one is at greater risk from fellow humans than hungry bears.

  During the summer of 1999, the brutal slayings of three Yosemite tourists and a naturalist by handyman Carl Stayner had terrified visitors to national parks throughout the country. They had terrified me as well. Bears were in many ways predictable and avoidable; wackos with internal voices urging them to kill were not.

  Having made it through the night unscathed by man or beast, we greeted July Fourth without much excitement. Back home, friends were preparing for beer-b-cues and fireworks. At Tuolumne Meadows, all we were preparing for was potential disappointment. Angela’s knee felt somewhat better, and equipped with a new elastic knee brace she was able to move around. Still, a return to the trail anytime in the near future seemed unlikely. I was reminded of that ominous PCT fact—even in the best of years, only one out of four thru-hikers would make it from border to border. Were we soon to be added to the growing list of thru-hiking casualties?

  Bald Eagle and Nokona, AT veterans we first met in Agua Dulce, had driven through Tuolumne the day before in a blue rental car to pick up their re-supply box. They were heading home and trying to scavenge a few important items from boxes up and down the California PCT. After being plagued by deep blisters, body-covering poison oak, toothaches, and shin splints, they’d finally thrown in the towel at Independence after Nokona developed severe altitude sickness. They both looked dejected. Nokona, wearing dark sunglasses, stood silently at a distance. Bald Eagle vowed they’d be back another year, but I wasn’t convinced.