Packing the tent is nerve-racking: at any second I feel like the wind might blow it out of my hands and far down the mountain. Lindsey and I grit ourselves and wrestle it into the bag. The tent is a Big Agnes Fly Creek UL 2, which is basically a lopsided tripod, with a long center pole running the length of the tent and two shorter poles framing the door. The design is lightweight, but it shapes the fabric into a sail which catches every last bit of wind. Throughout the night, each gust would catch the sail and whip the center pole to one side or the other. If the noise of the wind hadn’t already woken us, the center pole would wake us when it whacked our feet. We are tired. The trail is a long, gradual downhill following the contours of erosion: big loops around the right with sharp incursions to the left at each empty stream. At the first of these, a set of four tents has set up inside the wash, and a couple hikers are huddled around camp stoves making breakfast. The chapparral is waist-high and affords us long views of layered mountains to the east. Conversation is impossible over the constant whine of the wind. We continue on like this for a few miles, eventually hopscotching with the group of hikers we passed that morning and another pair of couples who hike fast. At one break, Lindsey tells me that her knee hurts. The constant downhill and fast pace are an unkind combination on the joints. We should go slower, but the constant wind seems to always drive us to a faster pace, as if we could out-hike it. Our next water source is off a side-trail about a quarter mile. I tell Lindsey she can rest her knee for a bit while I go get water, but she doesn’t want to just sit and wait for me, so we decide that I’ll hurry to the water and start pumping while she hikes in that direction, and she can meet me there so I don’t have to carry 10 liters back by myself. Now we are hiking directly into the wind. I quickly notice that we had been protected from the worst of it as we hiked along the side of the mountain, and now it is unobstructed. For the first time on this trip, I am truly miserable. I get to the water tank, which is just across a road, and find instructions painted on a rock on how to access the water. It is like a puzzle: first, turn the handle three-quarters turn to the left. Then, lift the metal gate. Pull the handle and wait for the water to go through the chute. I fill the bucket and sit down behind the water tank for some relief from the wind. On the first attempt to fill my filter bag, the wind hits the cloth bucket and I spill about a liter down the leg of my pants. Lindsey arrives a little while later, before I have finished filtering. Her face is twisted in misery. When she gets to me, she starts to cry. The tears stream sideways on her cheeks as the compassionless wind refuses to relent. I wrap her in my arms and think that this is not what I wanted from our first backpacking trip. She only cries for a moment—it’s all she needs, and then she is strong again, and I am proud of her resilience. We sit together and finish pumping the water. There is a parking area with pit toilets nearby, and we go to use the restroom, where I experience an exciting wind enema. We take a break from the wind by sitting inside one of the bathrooms while we eat snacks. Luckily, it’s one of the cleaner pit toilets I’ve seen, and there seems to be none of the odor that usually accompanies such a place. Perhaps the wind has done us this one favor. Rested, we continue onward, and finally—finally!—we get to a valley. The wind disappears within an hour. The climb down is steep, and we have to go slow for Lindsey’s knee. A couple of hikers come by, one at a time, and we talk with each of them. One girl tells us that she actually made lunch in one of the pit toilets. It gets very hot in the bottom of the canyon. Someone has left a water cache where the trail crosses a jeep trail, but the bottles are all empty and now it’s just trash. I sure hope someone is coming back to pick it up. The jeep trail and surrounding desert vegetation—and probably the trash, too—reminds me of childhood trips to Baja Mexico. What goes down must come back up, and soon we face a steep climb up the other side of the valley. No sooner do we emerge than the wind comes back, but now it has segmented itself into huge sudden gusts that push us off the trail and into the grasses and small bushes on either side. We continue to meet, pass, and be passed by the same eight hikers. We find out that the two couples are hiking as a group, but the other four are all solo hikers who just happened to camp together last night. One of them tells us that if we can make it to the Rodriguez Canyon Fire Tank, there should be some protection from the wind. That’s only a few miles from here, and we have hours of daylight left. We make our way up, along, and over a ridge line, stumbling off-trail and back with each new gust. It’s slow going. The trail turns downhill, and the wind is a little less violent. We are still knocked off-trail, but it happens a little less often now. We arrive at the fire tank, nestled where the canyon overlooks a huge open valley at least 10 miles across, and find that there are already about 14 hikers here. But no problem, there are still plenty of sites. Several are between large bushes, but those have all been taken. Our only choice seems to be a flat open area with a few other tents, so choose a spot next to Cathy, the hiker who told us she had made lunch in the bathrooms earlier in the day.
We chat as we set up our tents, still fighting with the wind. It’s mostly calm now, but when the gusts come through they seem stronger. You can actually watch them come across the mountain slopes, like invisible boulders flattening all the grass and violently shaking all the bushes. There are also occasional sprays of rain and ice whipping down with the gusts. This is ridiculous. Cathy tells us she’s worried that the wind might break her tent, which is also a Big Agnes. I tell her about the previous night and how well the tent held up. I tell her not to worry, it’ll be fine. She is less worried, and walks down to the fire tank to fill up with water. Our tent is up, and we start to put up the rainfly, when a gust flattens the whole thing to the ground. When it pops back up a moment later, a broken pole is sticking straight up through the rainfly. Shit. Lindsey looks to me to see what we should do, and I think she can see the panic in my eyes, because a moment later, I see it reflected back. It takes me a minute, but I pull myself back under control and start thinking about options. I remember the tent pole splint, which I almost discarded in order to save carrying a couple ounces. Now I’m glad I brought it. If this doesn’t work, we can use the rain fly as a tarp tied to some bushes to keep the rain and ice off us. The night will be rough, but we’ll be okay. I tell Lindsey our options, and she’s still distressed, but I can tell she feels better. We look for other places to set up. We try setting up behind a large bush in an otherwise open field. It doesn’t matter. The gusts are coming from all directions and we can barely set up the tent. Finally we settle on a narrow opening surrounded on three sides by bushes. We will have to climb through the bushes to get to our tent, but hopefully it will provide some protection from the wind. We get set up (the splint works!), make dinner behind the fire tank (which may or may not provide some protection), and climb into bed. We sleep erratically, in short bursts: we hear gusts coming down the mountainside, and we both reach up and stabilize the tent as it shakes. Around three or four in the morning, the gusts become gradually less violent and spaced farther apart, and we finally get a little sleep.
1 Comment
Jason
7/6/2017 06:10:55 pm
Holy shit! Hang in there. Great writing btw.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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