There’s no reason in the universe to get up that early, he said the night before.
But there it was, 3:30 in the morning, and I dragged myself around, making coffee and a little breakfast sandwich, then it was off to pick up Sophie. It was our last practice trip before the TRT. We were doing three days, two nights in the wilderness.
We had a long way to go. By the time we loaded up the goats, got to our trailhead, saddled everyone up, and hit the trail, it was already 9:00.
600 feet later we’d already run into three dogs, four people who took photos, were added to two Instagram feeds, and had to pull off trail three times.
We wound around through the forest and up through some boulders and heat and exposed trail. We took Artsy Photos of the goats at lookout points and fought Bosco as he fussed and fussed. We passed dogs and they passed us. The boys drank at little ponds and larger ones and no other hikers knew where they were because no one had a map that showed mileage. So every person asked every other person what they knew. And no one knew anything. But we all kept going anyway because it was pretty obvious the trail went somewhere.
And then we finally passed a lake that was on the map and had a marker. Everyone seemed to turn off there but we kept going. Up up up up. Through snow that Sophie felt was too sketchy and the goats barely noticed it was there. Up up up up past the twisty old trees that only exist in places where they can barely eke out a living. Up up up up into the bright blue sky and through the tiny purple flowers and the bright green of new leaves splayed out, clinging to the earth.
We made it up to the PCT. We stared at the posted map for a while and found we weren’t allowed to camp anywhere nearby. We basically needed to have started in a different direction to get to a place to stay. Our map said nothing about it. So we crossed the boundary away from Lakes Basin into an area where we were allowed to camp and followed a crazy 4×4 road, looking for a Good Spot. We passed a lovely little sparkly alpine kind of tiny lake and headed toward a larger lake we found on the map. The map that showed no mileage. And no elevation.
So we went down down down down a crazy downhill that was technically a road. A road that would take a lot of money to fancy up a vehicle enough to make it able to pass that way. Down down down down some more. Slipping and slipping through the water trickling down the road. Down the rocks.
The goats busy being Sure-Footed as Goats.
Jon Snow actually did pretty good. He only laid down once and only refused to move for a couple of minutes. At least he is able to express his needs in a Decisive Manner.
We finally reached the lake at the bottom and had the place completely to ourselves. We set up on the opposite side, up on a hillside overlooking an incredible view of pristine wilderness. We spent a good four hours setting up the electric fence with this side setting up perfectly only for that side to fall down, repeat five thousand times. With a hour break for dinner right in the middle to avoid a complete pity party. The fence was big enough to go around our entire camp. The goats, the high line, my hammock, Sophie’s tent, our sitting area, our cook area. The whole thing. We looked around, all proud of ourselves and turned it on.
And hoped we’d Remember the Fence in the middle of the night if we had to pee.