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| | | Trail Legs w/ a side of Marinara Sauce, AZ | | | |
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Trail Legs w/ a side of Marinara Sauce, AZ
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| Backpack | 14.00 Miles |
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| | Backpack | 14.00 Miles | 2 Days 2 Hrs | | |
| | 32 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | @KabukiMan and I intended to spend three days/two nights backpacking Charlebois Loop II, camping out at Charlebois and then at a campsite east of Miner’s Summit.
Spoiler Alert: We didn't make it to either.
(Stayed at the Oak Spring campsites instead, which, as another backpacker told us earlier that day, is better than Charlebois. But I'll let Bob tell the story.)
Important stuff first:
- The road to the Peralta TH was different driving in than driving out. It had rained in the interim, and I think the rain made the road smoother on the way out. Except that there were ruts in the road now. One so deep (about a foot down and foot wide) that I don’t know how the low clearance sports cars I saw coming in Monday could have crossed without bottoming out. Until the ruts are repaired, they can only become deeper & wider. HC w/ big tires recommended.
- Water was night and day difference after a night of rain. Although it had rained in the area earlier in the week (and so I was expecting water everywhere), most of the washes/drainages were dry Saturday. But there was water everywhere Sunday. For example, on Saturday, the big wash north of the Bluff Spring/Red Tanks Trails junction (La Barge Creek) was completely dry. Whereas on Sunday, it was so full that we couldn’t rock hop. (And further contrast to last month after three days of heavy rain where I was able to hop that Creek then.)
- There was very little scat anywhere. BUT, a big cat paw print at Barks like the one that someone here posted in a photo last month. (About 3 inches wide. Sorry, I didn’t take a photo.) Since it had rained Saturday night, and this was Monday morning, this was a fresh print. I think that there's a big mountain lion there.
- Apparently inch worms/green caterpillars can smell wet wool. Found one in the morning eating one of my socks that, the night before, I had hung up high on my tent to dry. (Am amazed that the little guy was 1) there, 2) could smell the wool and, 3) made the effort to climb my tent on the chance that he could eat my sock.)
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Now, regarding Trail Legs in my title: In the past, while doing sections of the AZT, when I’ve told thru-hikers I met how exhausted I was, almost all of them told me that I would feel better after I had gotten my “Trail Legs.”
What are Trail Legs? I don’t think that anyone can know what it means to have your Trail Legs until it happens to you. Now I think I know.
This particular trip seemed remarkably easier than any backpack trip I’ve done so far. And specifically easier than hiking Loop II a month before. To borrow from “My Fair Lady,” it was like I could have danced all night. Still slow. But felt strong and didn’t start to feel tired until the 2.5 day mark.
I’m guessing that having trained hard the week before, bulking up with carbs the week before, and having made two other backpacking trips in October all contributed to feeling “In the Zone.” (Another nebulous term that I’ve only experienced once or twice in the distant past.)
So that was nice. Now if I can just move a little faster than 1 mph.
Regarding w/ Marinara sauce: It started to rain when we arrived at Oak Spring. (5-ish.) I set up my tent in the rain (while wearing my poncho) and then boiled water, in the rain, for my meal. (Using my new alcohol siphon stove - more on that in a review later.)
Bob showed me a koozie that he had made to keep his food hot while it was rehydrating. I told him that I used the footbox of my sleeping bag instead - with the added safety of putting my food pack in a larger foil bag in case of a leak. (Per an Influencer’s Pro-Tip.)
It was still raining, a little colder, and now dark when it was time to eat my dinner.
Bob was eating his dinner in the rain. But he’s from Oregon and perhaps used to being rained on. I am not.
I desperately wanted to get out of the rain and enjoy my meal in comfort.
So I knelt down at the door to my tent, pulled off my poncho and now had rain raining on my back. I tried to find my meal in my sleeping bag before crawling into my tent. But with glasses fogging and my headlamp not aimed right, I grew impatient and figured I would find my meal from inside my tent. So I crawled into my tent and sat down. On my sleeping bag.
I suddenly felt something hot oozing around my right butt check.
Rats.
Yep, I had sat on my meal and marinara sauce had gushed out all over the inside of the footbox of my sleeping bag.
Looking back on it now, I made another mistake by trying to wipe up the mess with a rag as quickly as possible. Which drove some of the liquid further into the bag. In retrospect, I should have pulled the bag out of the tent and held the affected part upside down while trying to clean it that way. (But in addition to be being dark outside, it was raining outside.)
So now I was worried about two things: 1) staying warm in my now wet bag/dying of hypothermia during the night and 2) that animals would be attracted to marinara sauce.
Fortunately, no animals came by. And I managed to stay warm by sleeping with my bag inside out. (Since it was the inside that had saturated, wetting the liner and some down.) I used my SOL Escape Lite Bivvy (Tyvek based) to separate me from the wetness of the marinara sauce.
The next morning I put the footbox of my sleeping bag in the nearby stream to try to flush out as much of the sauce as I could before the next night. That helped. But after my return home, I spent about fifteen hours and a half bottle of Nikwax’s Down Wash Direct to clean the rest of the sauce out. (It took about 50 iterations of "rinse & repeat." But I think it's out.) |
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| Be careful. It's not quite "a jungle out there." But history shows that it can be dangerous out there. |
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