John Rachal's Blog

It was the first evening of John and Val’s Marvelous Adventure, which we were spending at the Governor Jim Hogg City Park, a pleasant little place in Quitman, Texas after a drive of about 425 miles from Hattiesburg. We had eaten take-out from a close-by Mexican restaurant so as not to leave our two poor canines in our camper too long without the protective comfort of their parents, not to mention adult supervision. The evening was quite cool, and I had gotten my prized Texas map out of the car and was taking a small bag of trash out to a nearby dumpster. The dumpster was about five feet tall with a four inch ledge on each side and was empty except for some recently cut shrubbery. I apparently had one of those increasingly common senior moments and threw the map in with the trash. This map had sentimental value; after all, I had actually talked to the AAA lady; we had bonded; we were tight. It arrived, along with three others, in the proverbial nick of time, the day before our departure.

Reaching in, even standing on the ledge to do so, would not work. Still over a foot out of reach. Apparently senior moments—this was a new discovery for me—are sequential and closely timed, so I stood on the ledge, threw my right leg over the top, found the floor, and noticed that my left leg was vigorously protesting this foolishness by catching itself on the edge, threatening to drop the shoe on the outside. Finally the foot bowed to the apparent inevitable and came on inside with the rest of me. I put my recovered treasure in my back pocket, and finally started to consider the challenge of getting out. This, or at least so I deceive myself, would have been no problem to that 30 year old me, even without an accommodating ledge on the inside. I put my hands on the edge and pushed up. My feet came off the floor, but the prospect of trying to put one of them on the edge seemed to be an open invitation to tumbling over for a five foot fall with no assurance of what would hit first—all this on the first day of the trip, which seemed unnecessarily early for a hospital visit.

I stared forlornly at our little camper, all lit up and warm inside, a mere thirty yards away. I had already been gone for a good fifteen minutes, but did my lovely wife choose to inquire why a thirty yard trip to the dumpster was taking so long? As a matter of fact, no. Had I been sufficiently provident to take my phone with me? Again, no. Yelling seemed a bit unseemly, and I began to wonder what a night in a dumpster might be like. My arthritis-riddled shoulders were complaining about the push-ups, but there seemed no alternative. Still, going over the edge with one big heave seemed to promise unpleasant consequences. I tried hoisting myself on the plastic flap on the other half of the dumpster, but it was designed for thinner people finding themselves in this situation. I began to regret those days in tenth grade geometry that I had characteristically spent preoccupied with thoughts of the fair sex, motorcycles, track and field, and other distracting amusements. But at long last, a possible solution presented itself. I pushed some of the almost non-existent trash into a corner, thinking that a corner, with one hand on each side, would be more stable than a one-dimension side. I stood on the meager pile, gave a gentler push into a straight arm position with my feet above my improvised platform, managed to lift my right leg up, and—the details are a little sketchy here—ended up on the outside feet first.

Damned map. Google maps are better anyway. If I can find another dumpster, that baby is history.

After a good breakfast at Sykes, I left Kalispell for Glacier National Park about 8 a.m. My plan, subject to re-consideration, was to hike the Snyder Lake Trail, a nine mile “moderate” difficulty hike with an elevation gain of 2000 feet (for comparison, the Washington Monument is 550 feet high). I had previously noted that my Glacier Day Hikes book refused to give a difficulty level of “strenuous” to any pretentious little hike that did not involve at least 3000 feet of elevation gain, no matter the distance. Snyder Lake was a predicted 5-6 hour hike, and plenty enough to test me. I had avoided it two days earlier, largely because the book description specifically mentioned that one should be cautious in view of the fact that bears love parsnips, which abound on parts of the trail, and that the dense foliage at ground level at those parts could hide a bear a mere ten feet off the trail. I’m not partial to bears, and in fact they scare me, especially grizzlies. There are only a few hundred of the latter in the Park, which is big, and several thousands of people, and many of them are hiking. While seeing a black bear is not too unusual (we saw one dash with sobering dispatch across the road last year in east Glacier), grizzly encounters are almost negligible compared to the number of hikers in the Park over a summer. Still, “almost negligible” isn’t zero, and a tenderfoot such as myself tends to think about these things. Also, a mountain lion had been seen during the last few days at two locations, one where Val and I had been a few days before, and another sighting on the Sperry Trail, which one had to hike to get to the Snyder Lake trail. All the trailheads announce that you are entering grizzly country, and helpfully add that you should never hike alone. Then, just for icing on the cake, I heard on the radio driving the 30 miles to the Park that just the day before a couple had been attacked by a sow grizzly with two cubs in Yellowstone, and the man was killed. The woman had rolled in a ball and played dead. The bear picked her up by her backpack, then dropped her, and finally moved on. So this was all part of the “subject to re-consideration” aspect of my plan.

Aside from a fanny pack with two bottles of water and an apple, and a small backpack with my brand new Nikon camera with an 18-55 lens and a 55-300 lens, I was armed with a jingle bell attached to my bootstring, a walking stick, a Buck hunting knife, and a new can of bear spray. The knife was a touch ludicrous, whimsical almost, but the image of an annoyed bear on top of you conjures up all sorts of desperate and almost certainly unexecutable defensive fantasies. Still, you dream, and having a knife can’t hurt. Besides, a good blade can always come in handy. What about that guy who got his hand stuck under a boulder in the wilderness and had to decide between life and hand?

My whistle-thermometer-mini-light-compass-magnifying glass informs me that it is 70 degrees. Soon I’m off, with an intention of turning around at any point bear phobia takes over. There is no one else, and that is the most eerie part. I’m talking loudly, telling the bears I don’t need any today, singing “Dixie,” and generally appearing absurd to anyone who might have been around, but wasn’t. The trail is wide, with little underbrush here, and snakes its way upward through large spruce, cedar, and hemlock trees. This goes on for about an hour, and still not a soul. I pass the fork for the Mt. Brown Lookout trail entrance, which informs me that the summit is 3.7 miles up, for a total hike of eleven miles, and one that earns the honor of “strenuous.” Not today. Just beyond the fork, at 1.8 miles, the Snyder Lake trail also branches off the Sperry, with the lake 2.6 miles up. Well, no bears or mountain lions so far—only a huge mule deer right on the trail who moves off just enough to pose for me—so I keep walking up. Then, fairly soon, people! It was a work crew of four guys digging drainage ditches off the trail. I chatted for a minute or two, and apparently there was one soloist ahead of me. Then I asked, with studied aplomb, about bears in the area. Apparently, no big deal: “You’re probably more likely to see a mountain lion.” Oh! No problem then. In addition to shovels, they did have bear spray, which apparently is useful for anything that has eyes and breathes through a nose.

I move on, and probably around 3.5 miles am surprised by a man and a woman and their college-age, cross-country-skiing daughter coming up behind me, and they are moving out. I picked up my pace, which I had not thought doddering, and latched on and we chatted all the way to the lake. I never did actually know what parsnips looked like, but the ecosystem had changed as we had climbed, and the trail was often only fifteen or so inches wide. The ground-level foliage was thick and about waist-high. We crossed a short scree field of large and small rocks, and the trail was often muddy with small, two to six foot crystal streams crossing it. One couple was descending, either campers by the lake or the “soloist” mentioned by the work crew. We reached the lake, and were surrounded by tall, jagged, snow-patched mountains. We were also surrounded by mosquitoes who were thirsty and who had not read the warning labels on their anabolic steroid packages. Or perhaps they were a different species, mosquito montana giganticus. We took some photographs, at least when one of the mosquitoes wasn’t blocking our view, and then bid our goodbyes as they quickly started back down. I stayed and ate my apple and took some more photos, having decided that my fellow travelers might want some family time without a hanger-on, and that I was also more comfortable knowing that there were at least some others on the trail.

Hiking down does not get your heart rate up so much, nor do you need to breathe through your mouth after fifty feet, but it is not without challenge. Naturally you have to watch your step for all the rocks and unevenness in the trail, but depending on the steepness, it can put some stress on your knees, and your toes can jam up in your boots and hurt. This is why it’s wise to cut your toenails the night before a steep hike. One serious hiker I met on the descent told me he lost a toenail every summer. He was 65, looked 50 on a bad day, and did about three 10-12 mile hikes a week in the summer. He had planned to hike the Mt. Brown Lookout hike, but had missed the turn-off for it, and so would do Snyder Lake. He had done Mt. Brown the year before and said it was the hardest hike he had ever done. A youthful mule deer approached us warily on the trail before giving us wide berth, and then we parted. The trip down was pretty uneventful. Bear thoughts had receded. After four hours almost on the nose, I was sweaty and itchy, but pretty well satisfied.

John Rachal
July 12, 2011

About 10 a.m. I leave the Grove Park Inn by car for west Asheville, planning to park at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a bike trip up to Craggy Gardens. The Asheville temperature is about 42 to 44 degrees at 2200 feet elevation, with a predicted high of 54. Concerning weather, I characteristically underestimated my needs, and thus had left Hattiesburg thinking that surely I would not even ride if I was going to need my neoprene biking booties or full gloves. But, as an afterthought, I thought I ought to bring my full length biking pants since, after all, this would be Asheville and it’s barely April. So at the last minute in Hattiesburg I said sure, why not, and threw them in the bag, along with helmet, shades, biking shorts, socks, regular fingerless gloves, a summer short sleeve biking shirt, a heavier long sleeve biking shirt, a sleeveless nylon windbreaker, and a sleeved nylon windbreaker. Four layers—definitely enough. But then the day before the ride doubts had crept in—after we were already here, of course—and Val and I trekked over to REI about eleven miles out of Asheville, where she clothes-shopped and I bought nylon toe covers, some full-fingered biking gloves, and some little battery-operated blinking lights, forward and back, which I discovered were required for tunnels. I even tried to bungy cord my Polartech jacket to the bike frame, but it was too bulky for leg movement. Afterwards it occurred to me that I should have worn it over the long sleeve shirt, with the other three thin layers stuffed in the shirt’s back pockets until the descent.

Around 10:30 I’m at the Folk Art Center, and notice that a quarter of a mile up the Parkway there is a roadblock all the way across, which had not been there the day before on the scouting mission. This was not good; this little jaunt had been on my mind since I did it last summer, and I even had fleeting dreams of going past my 15 mile turnaround mark and maybe even all the way up to the peak of Mt. Mitchell, which, at 6684 elevation, is the highest point east of the Mississippi River. Until yesterday I did not realize that the turnaround at the summit was not 20-25 miles, but a full 35 miles. About 30 or so miles up the Parkway road, another road breaks off the Parkway and goes five very steep miles to the summit. I have hiked the last three or so miles on an often rough trail to the summit, and with the hike back, it was a good several hours work.

So, confronted with the roadblock, I go inside the Folk Art Center, ignoring the handmade blankets, on a firm quest to ascertain the reason for this roadblock and whether I should ignore it and duck under and be on my way. Well, it had snowed in the night at higher elevations, and there were concerns about ice on the road. Another lady joins in, saying that she lives in Black Mountain and snow had covered the area at upper elevations. The official Parkway lady suggests some other biking possibilities, but adds that I could go under the roadblock, though for the record she didn’t tell me that.

It’s fairly chilly, so I put on everything I have except the sleeveless nylon windbreaker, which I stuff in the shirt pocket for use coming back down, when the wind chill could be brisk, maybe even unpleasant. I scoot under the roadblock, wondering if I’ll be paying for this ride with a heavy fine, and started the ascent. The REI guy had told me that the first three miles are pretty steep and are often used as training rides, up three, down three, repeated until done. They are steep—one of my memories from the first ride last summer was that as a flatlander and hill-hater, I was breathing heavily in the first 200 yards and wondering what in the world was I thinking and should I turn back right now and call it just a big misunderstanding. So this time I was prepared for that, and slowly inch upward in my lowest two gears at between 6 and 8 mph, when even a quarter of mile seems like real progress. The road is dry and I am warm. Clouds move in and out, and the sun feels and looks re-assuring. And of course the traffic is not bad—in fact, non-existent, thanks to the roadblock—and for about four miles I see only one runner and one biker coming down. The biker and I briefly chat, noting our confederation of illegality. He had started well before my starting point on the Parkway and had only turned around about two miles higher than where we are now. He mentions one little rockslide but no snow or ice.

So I keep climbing. There are several fairly flat spots and even some downhills, but ironically the occasional downhills are actually disconcerting, since they feel like ground lost that you have to make back up. I’m not noticing any change in temperature, but there is some wind, sometimes rather loud. But the general quiet and the very real sense of aloneness are a little eerie, and the spots of sun make for a good companion. To my left is either steep forest or a rock face, and to the right many scenic views interspersed through the steeply descending trees. At about ten and a half miles, and over an hour in, I see the first tiny flecks of blowing snow along with icicles on the rock face, with sparse and thin patches of snow by the roadside. But the road is still clear, though a little damp, and my goal is Craggy Gardens at 18 miles. I’m working fairly hard, occasionally out of the saddle for variety, and so it doesn’t seem particularly cooler. At about fourteen and a half miles, a human being speaks from behind and startles me. We ride along for under a mile, and he says he thought he was the only one doing this today. He is a serious triathlete, training for one of his three full Ironmen per year, doing about 400 miles per week (not counting, presumably, his running and swimming), and unintentionally putting fitness in a whole new context for me. He has come from eastern N.C. to do some climbing work, and just yesterday he started at the Folk Art Center and went to the peak of Mitchell, thirty-five miles up, and of course the same back down, and he was intending to do it again today.

As we rode for that short period together, the whole ecosystem changes, with snow clinging to every single one of the billions of small twigs of all the trees on both sides of the road. It’s like something out of Dr. Zhivago, all whiteness, except for the road and rare patches of blue sky. But it’s mostly cloudy—more whiteness—very little sun. There are some marginally easier places where 10 or 12 mph is fine, but I tell him that this is my comfortable pace, and I know he has 20 more climbing miles to go, so he moves on.

I pass the point where I turned around last summer, Craggy Gardens picnic area, which is about 15 miles. My destination is 18 miles, the Craggy Gardens Visitors Center. It’s windy and a little chilly, but nothing serious, probably mid-thirties at this elevation. The snow is barely a dusting, but on the ground it’s pretty much everywhere except for the road. The previous night’s icicles are everywhere on the rock, some a foot long, some breaking off. Then, at about 18 miles, there is the Visitors Center, closed of course since the road is, but there is my buddy, straddling his bike and having a bite to eat. I stop also, and now it really is cold. The elevation is around 4900 feet. The wind now seems really harsh, and there is no sun. I had eaten a Hammer Gel at the second tunnel, and now clumsily take out a Powerbar, but it is so hard I’m afraid I am going to break a tooth and so put it back. The triathlete had turned around a couple of hundred yards farther up, saying there was ice on the road. I am jealous of his heavy gloves and booties, and I’m shaking. Now the descent, which had earlier seemed like a fun, exhilarating payoff for the labor of climbing, has become a fearfully cold prospect. We start together, but even going down he is soon out of sight, given my old man caution and all the mountain curves. My hands and feet, which had not been cold at all until I stopped at the Center, are stinging with real pain, especially my hands. I am shaking so much that the bike is shaking, giving a scary feeling of instability, and I am braking much of the way to try to stay under 25. I would love to put one hand somewhere warmer, but there is absolutely no way to even think of riding one-handed. It is a little frightening, knowing that even going downhill it will be 45 minutes of pain and uncontrollable shaking. A couple of miles down, the triathlete had the same thought as I, namely pulling over at an overlook to try to warm up the hands. I pull up too, and though doing so stops 25 mph of wind chill, my hands are deep orange, and the body-shaking will not stop. He says he’ll never complain about 95 degrees again, and it is the coldest he has ever been, a sentiment I echo. A few spots of sunshine from gaps in the clouds help marginally.

Then we are off again, and soon he is out of sight again. He said that he had hit 44 descending the day before until total fear kicked in. In warm weather I had hoped for 40, but not this day, not this cold, not this unstable. Despite braking, I am descending three to four times as fast as coming up, and soon there is more sun and the snow is gone. I can even feel marginal improvement in my hands, but the shaking will not quit. The brief uphills are actually welcome—10 to 15 mph, and working, the warmth improving as the elevation lowers. I hit 32 at one point, but it feels too dangerous with the shaking and the sometime wet road. Finally, the roadblock is in view. Soon I’m putting the bike on the rack, getting in the car, and turning on the heat. Hannah calls, and my voice is unstable from the shivering and shaking, and I drop the phone at one point.

Back at the hotel around 2:30, I look up the temperature at Mt. Mitchell. All I can find is the temp for the state park, not the summit, though I was about 1800 feet below the summit at my turnaround point. Weather.com shows 42, “feels like” 34, with 18 mph winds. The wind chill of descending had to have put the temp in the teens at our higher elevations to have hurt our hands so much, and the triathlete had even changed to thick biking mittens. Holding the mouse to do the temperature check, my hand still shivers. The last 45 minutes of that approximately three hours were not pleasant. If I do this again, it will be in August.

John Rachal
April 1, 2011