Into the Wilderness, Part Deux

The trail started out on a fairly steep incline. Not a good sign, as far as I was concerned, but we were there, we were packed, we were walking. There was no going back. We shuffled up the trail, wheezing and puffing and trying not to get discouraged. We reached the top of the hill and followed the signs pointing the way to the Superior Hiking Trail. They were also pointing in the direction of something called Mount Trudie. I ignored this.

The hike started out innocently enough, with slightly rolling hills through a leafy forest populated by mainly birds and squirrels, at least from what I could see. It didn’t take long, however, before we were faced with the first of what would turn out to be many steep inclines, so steep that rocks and logs had been hewn and shoved into the trail to create makeshift stairs. All of a sudden, we came to a large cluster of rocks, with a sign that said something like “Drainage Pike” or “Waterfall Valley” or some other such thing. Basically, it was a vertical incline going up a good many feet. Towards the middle of the climb I had to resort to clambering from rock to rock using my hands, splayed out to keep my balance while my pack knocked against rocks and trees on either side of me. When I finally pulled myself over the top, I looked up at Jeff. “What on earth have we gotten ourselves into?”


From there, we proceeded to climb. And climb. And climb some more. Legs burning, we went farther and farther up, and at times we would come close to some cliff and realize that we were towering over the Superior basin, trees and lake stretching as far as the eye could see. As we ascended into the heavens, we also became aware of a new situation. Thunder. Rolling, angry, threatening clouds to the west, coming our way. Thunder growing closer. And we were climbing right towards it, as if to meet it head on. This, I decided, was sheer madness. Obviously, I was going to die from a lightening strike, and I had never even made it to the first camp site. I found this disheartening, but the idea of climbing back down the cliff of death was even more dreadful, so we pressed on. Finally, with one loud crack, the rain began to pour. We pulled on our rain ponchos (thank you Jeff!) and made our way forward. After what seemed like hours of climbing, we came out on top of Mount Trudie, where we were greeted with sheets of rain and rising mists. Jeff’s glasses had completely fogged over, which caused much grumbling, and the rain was pouring in rivulets down our legs. The ponchos did little other than stick to our sweaty clothing and let the rain in through little folds around the neck and arms, so that instead of an all over drenching, we got this mish mash of wet patches.

After a quick stop to refuel, we decided that being on top of a mountain was probably not the smartest place to be in a thunderstorm, so we pushed on, now beginning the long, steep descent back into the basin. Going down was more difficult than going up, technically, as each step down places an enormous amount of pressure on one’s knees, and balance is much harder to find, let alone keep, at certain downward angles. When we finally reached lower ground, we found that the recent rains had turned the trial into a slick of deep, mosquito rich mud. It slurped at our shoes and seeped into our socks and coated our legs. Still, we pressed on. The sun came out, and a fine, humid mist rose into the air, so that mosquitoes and deer flies whined around us, bombing us at speeds approximating mach 20. The insect repellant rolled off of us onto the forest floor, and our damp sweaty clothing attracted every bug within a two mile radius.

And we trudged onward. After about five hours of hiking, we finally reached our destination. Bear Lake. We could see it from the trail, but to get there we would have to scurry down another steep set of stairs. On weary legs we made our final descent towards camp, and, hopefully, food, fire, and rest. We reached the bottom, only to be confronted with a dour old man who had set up camp on the one site by the water. It was a small, cramped site, and he had a large tent taking up all of the room. Dismayed, we asked if there were other sites back further. “Yuh,” the old man grunted, “but they’re full.” And then he stared at us, hard, unfriendly. I started to feel uncomfortable. “Um, okay.” Jeff and I hesitated. We were exhausted. We just wanted to sit down. There were old wooden seats around the fire pit, and we needed rest. Our legs were shaking and we were close to exhaustion. So, in the spirit of someone who knows what we’ve been through to get to this place, the old guy offered us a seat and encouraged us to stay a rest for a while. Just kidding. Of course he didn’t! He just stared at us until we turned around and made our way back to the trail, climbing up the steep set of stairs.

And here is where I’ll admit I came pretty close to losing it. I was so tired I could barely see straight. My pack felt like it weighed fifty pounds. My legs were like jelly, snapping out in front of me like two long wet noodles with feet attached. I was worried that at some point they would just quit moving. It was two miles to the next campsite, and if that was full, another three miles to the one after that. Two miles takes on a new meaning when you add steep hills and a full backpack to the equation. I was frustrated and close to broken and beyond disappointed. I couldn’t believe that the people at the camp by the lake hadn’t even offered us a seat. I couldn’t even comprehend being that unfriendly, that thoughtless. Jeff did his best to calm me down, but at this point I was beyond consoling. We made the decision to double back and go to the next closest campsite. It would take a few miles off our hike the next day. So, we staggered back to the Round Mountain campsite, with the attitude that we didn’t care who was there, we were camping there too, and just try and stop us.

We found the campsite and headed in along the densely wooded trail, which then opened up onto a large green clearing, full of freshly chopped wood, a latrine (well, a sign indicating where the latrine was), a beaver pond, and an enormous birch forest. And there was no one there. This was it, this was camp. The only thing we had to share it with was a colony of about 10 million mosquitoes. We immediately dumped our sacks and started on the long, tiring process of building a smoky fire from nothing but bits of damp wood. We had no kindling with us, no fire started, so we had to go around and collect all the dry birch bark we could find. One painstaking hour later, and we had a roaring fire. We stood and looked at it, as proud of it as anything we’ve ever done. This, we thought, was something to be admired. It had gone out twice on us, but we had coddled it and coaxed it into existence. Finally, we could relax and stop worrying about the fire going out, so we went about setting up camp.

Our first interruption came from two young men who wandered into the camp. They seemed surprised to see us there, although why that would be I haven’t a clue. We encouraged them to sit and rest and told them there was plenty of room. They were disappointed with the campsite, and said they had been staying at much nicer places along the way. They ate a quick dinner and then left without ever mentioning their names. We finished setting up the camp, cooked our dinner, and then opened up the wine that we had packed in. We were just settling down to enjoy the evening, when our next visitors arrived, in much the same state of mind that we had brought with us into the campsite. They dropped their gear and announced that they were staying.

Kate and John were a very nice couple from Minneapolis, up camping for the weekend. We shared the campsite and the fire, and it was interesting to have company other than already established friends. We told them we had been drinking, which led them to the not entirely correct conclusion that we were drunk. In reality, we split a liter of wine over several hours. I did not even come close to drunk, although I was stumbling over words in my exhaustion. But John and Kate were just sure that we were smashed, and I wasn’t about to take the time to dispel their convictions, so we just let them think it. Later, in the tent, Jeff whispered to me “When we get up in the morning, let’s ask them who they are and when they got here. Then, let’s accuse them of drinking our wine.” Later, he turned to me and said “Let’s leave a little trail of snack mix from their tent out into the woods.” John, you see, was paranoid about bears and had gone to the trouble of hanging his food stuff in a tree. Jeff and I had just stashed ours by the tent. We dared the bears to come. Jeff spent the next hour thinking of ways to torment our fellow campers. I laughed until my sides hurt as much as my legs. I finally fell asleep while trying to listen intently for bears, or, at the very least, raccoons.