We had a friend who was going to run, literally, our resupply up Kearsarge Pass and meet us on the trail. Even the offer was amazing. Pre-trail magic? Then she scored an awesome new position and was unable to take the leave needed to make the trip. We’re super happy for her, but we needed a new plan.
So then, for about one solid day, we entertained the idea that we would do something super sketchy and run up there ourselves, leave everything in a bear canister hidden in some recess of a cool, dark cave. Then we thought, what if there’s no cave? Then we thought, we’ll take a SHOVEL and BURY the bear canister and cover it up with rocks and mark it on our GPS so we could find it later! Then we thought, if a Ranger found it and confiscated it, we’d be sad…and hungry. If a bear really did get it after all that effort, we’d be really super sad…and hungry…and besides it would be bad for the poor bear. Then we thought, what if our GPS batteries died and we couldn’t find our stuff? Trip ender.
Plus, it’s totally illegal.
Well the volume of food we needed didn’t even sort of fit in there, and anyway we couldn’t even find the lid to the extra bear canister. There went that idea. Fine. We’ll do things the right way, like usual. We’ll be all law-abiding and rule-following and Boring.
Then we thought we’d just drive over to Onion Valley Trailhead and leave all our stuff in a bear box there so it would be safe. Unless someone stole it all. But who would want to steal all those little bags of crumbs? Hmmm. Or, what if some little kid left the door open on the bear box and the squirrels and ants ate everything? It turns out the public bear boxes are in full sunlight anyway, so everything would basically be cooking in a little oven for two weeks. Another plan quashed in its infancy.
Okay, that one was sketchy too. And also mildly illegal.
Back to boring.
We caved and called my parents to see if they would just drive it down to us.
“Of course. We already offered to do that weeks ago,” Mom reminded me.
Oops. Oh yeah, they totally did.