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2020: A Good Year…For Hiking That Is

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In the mind of many folks 2020 was not a good year. With COVID ravaging the world many lost loved ones, while others lost their jobs and businesses. Musical, sporting, and other social events were canceled, and much of the world spent much of the year at home feeling trapped and perhaps alone, while social and political unrest divided the country. Thanksgiving and Christmas became much smaller gatherings this year. Still there was much to be thankful for.

One of the bright notes in 2020 it may have been that more people got outside. They hit their local parks and trails. Some outdoor gear became very hard to get as a result. I began volunteering at my local state park in 2020.  For me, 2020 was another very good year when it came to backpacking and visiting national parks as well, though getting there would prove to be challenging.

I visited nine national parks in 2020, seven of them new ones. I also managed five backpacking trips and slept on the ground in four new states: Minnesota, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. This is a new goal – to sleep on the ground in every US state. We’ll call it the SOG Countdown for short.

2020 By the Numbers

Miles flown: 10,112

Miles driven:   9,174

Miles sailed: 21

Hardest to reach: This year the hardest to reach award goes to Voyageurs. This required flying to Minneapolis, then driving four hours to the park, then catching a 30 minute water taxi to our trailhead. Timing was critical, especially on the way out when we had to hike to the trailhead in the wee hours to meet that water taxi at the trailhead and do everything in reverse to catch our flight while managing to find a shower in there.

Runner up: Great Basin. This trip including flying to Salt Lake City, then  driving four hours to the middle of nowhere.  

Longest drive: 2020 involved more driving and less flying due to social distancing. Congaree and Hot Springs take the prize  for the farthest drive to a national park in 2020. The Congaree trip was more miles one way (843 vs. 780),  but only because of the route I took. Had I taken a direct driving route, Hot Springs would have been farther (780 vs. 712).

Runner up: Were it a national park, my recent trip to the Ouachita Trail in the Tonto National Forest of Oklahoma would have nabbed the trophy with a 859 mile drive. 

Easiest to reach: Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’ve been to this park many times because I have relatives that live just outside the park. This was a 10 1/2 hour drive, mostly on interstates. It could be less if I entered from the north but I enter from the south side. The remaining parks on my to-do list will not be easy to get to.

Runner up: Grand Tetons National Park. If you fly into Jackson hole airport, then Grand Tetons National Park is within view when you land. 

The National Park Countdown: 38 down, 24 to go.

The SOG Countdown: 15 down, 35 to go.

Next up: Theodore Roosevelt National Park in May, though I may try to slip in another one before then.

2020 Photo Calendar

February: Petrified Forest National Park
February: Grand Canyon National Park
May: Voyageurs National Park
June: Hot Springs National Park
July: Grand Tetons National Park
July: Yellowstone National Park
September: Congaree National Park
September: Great Basin National Park
November: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
December: Segment 1 of the Ouachita National Recreation Trail in Oklahoma.

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Top 10: Trail Chef Failures

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I am not a trail chef but I hope to be one someday. I hope to pull the big white puffy hat that weighs two pounds out of my backpack and wear it like Chef Boyardee in the backcountry. One thing I enjoy about planning upcoming backpacking trips is the meal planning. I enjoy cooking meals on the trail and trying new recipes. Sure, it’s a lot less work when you just throw a bunch of dry protein bars in. The meals in a bag are okay sometimes. If you are looking to maximize hiking miles then the dry bars might be the way to go. In most of the national parks, especially recently, fires are not allowed, so making dinner becomes an activity the whole crew can participate in.

As meal planner for a recent trip to Great Basin National Park, I had a couple of failures that set me back on my journey to trail chef and getting my big hat. It made me think back to all of the ways, other than simply undercooking or overcooking, that I and others have goofed up the food prep in the backcountry. Here are my Top Ten Trail Chef Failures:

10) Knocking over the meal. This is one of the more common failures and it is an accident that can happen to anyone. I work with a Pocket Rocket so let’s face the physics, your balancing a large pan with heavy contents on a little tripod on top of a small canister that is sitting on an uneven surface. In the wind.

9) Lack of imagination. Planning the same thing for every meal, while not a crime, might cause a mutiny on a long trip.

8) Getting dirt in the food. This is not the same as number 10, which was putting the food in the dirt. You’re in a dirt environment. Finding places to set things down, without getting dirt on them, and then mixing said dirt into the pot takes special care. Watch out for wind-blown debris as well.

7) Running out of fuel. This happened to me once on a five-night solo trip in Zion. I had only taken a very small cannister and used it a couple of nights to heat a hot water bottle for my feet. Fortunately it was the last night on the trail and it’s not the end of the world because not having fuel doesn’t make the food any less edible.

6) Not bringing large enough cooking gear. This is a recent blunder I made. We did a virtual gear run-through, and I thought the pot someone was bringing was much bigger. We got by with cooking the meals in halves in a frying pan. It was a an inconvenience but we made do because that’s what you do on the trail.

5) Not enough food/ too much food. One of these results in carrying extra weight while the other borders on dangerous. Fortunately, I’ve only ever brought too much.

4) Forgetting the Pocket Rocket or fuel. If you are in a no fire environment, to not bring the method by which you can prepare any meals can be a real downer to the crew, especially on a longer trip.

3) Food allergies. If you are the meal planner and you don’t find out about someone’s food allergy until you are on the trail, then shame on both of you.

2) Getting the squirts. The backcountry is no place to have diarrhea or vomiting. Always wash your hands before prepping meals and always wash or sterilize dishes after eating. 

1) Bringing critters to camp. Leaving food in camp or spreading bits and scents around camp can, and usually will, bring critters into camp. This can get very dangerous in bear country. Always do meals away from tents and use a bear bag or locker when in bear country.

Honorable Mention: My personal top Trail Chef Failure kind of falls into category number one, but then it might deserve a category all its own. I had driven seven hours from Long Beach to the backpackers camp near mineral King in Sequoia National Park, arriving late at night. The day before I had purchased some ghee and other items in Long Beach, after going to multiple stores, to use in cooking all of the trout I would catch in the backcountry. If you aren’t familiar with ghee it is basically simmered butter.  Since the water is removed it is shelf stable. If you aren’t familiar with my fishing prowess, I would catch no fish.

I woke up early the next morning ready to pick up my permit and hit the Mineral King Loop. The campsite had a picnic table which I used to sort my gear for loading my backpack. I had come straight from a business meeting so nothing was loaded. Up until this point everything, including my pack and the plastic grocery bag with the ghee, had remained in my large duffle bag in the trunk of the rental car. On the long drive the ghee had turned to liquid in the trunk which would have been fine except that the glass jar had been upside down so everything inside the grocery bag was coated with a fine coating of butter. That should attract the animals on the trail! 

I thought I would put some liquid ghee in a plastic 8 ounce bottle, but it had gotten cold during  the night and hardened again. I had heated water for oatmeal and coffee so I decided to heat the ghee back up. Since it had hardened upside down, there was an inch of space in the bottom of the jar. It started to melt so I took it off the flame but when I set the jar on the cold picnic table it immediately broke and liquid butter ran everywhere. 

I then heated up more water which I used to clean up my groceries and the mess that I had made, including carefully finding all the broken glass. Finally, I scraped a bit of the hardened ghee off the top, careful to avoid the broken glass and put it in a Ziploc bag. It ended up being a lot of work for something I would not end up using.

These are my top ten. Do you have something different?

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Creatures Seen and Unseen

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For every creature you see in the wild there are countless more nearby, lurking just out of sight. Most times we don’t think about them, but at certain times in the backcountry we become more aware. And sometimes we wish we hadn’t. Ignorance is bliss after all.

Like the time in the Yosemite backcountry. I hadn’t seen another human in two days. I backtracked through the snow due to a swollen river, retracing my footprints, only to find fresh bear prints following my prints.

Or the time in Zion. My fourth night on the trail, when my head lamp caught two glowing dots looking back at me. My headlamp reflected off the retinas of something, but was not strong enough to tell me what it was. But my mind registered the spacing and equated it to something of good size. This happens fairly often in the dark of the backcountry.

And then there is any time you lay quietly in you tent and listen to the noises of the wilderness. You become very aware.

I had another of those experiences this past weekend in Congaree National Park. A few of them actually.

We visited relatives in the mountains of North Carolina over the long Labor Day weekend. I then took it a step further and was able to slip away from there for 27 hours to Congaree National Park in South Carolina for an overnight adventure.

It was 86 degrees and hot in the parking lot after my 4 hour drive. As soon as I reached the trail and the shade of the high canopy that the many towering trees provided, it was noticeably cooler, even comfortable. But the humidity was still high and I was quickly sweating.

I hiked over eight miles, enjoying the knees and coned trunks of the bald cypress trees. I tried to spot an alligator in Weston Lake that a hiker had told me about but saw large turtles instead.

The farther one hikes from the visitor center and the boardwalk the more overgrown the trails become. I found myself moving through narrow passages with overgrowth brushing both sides of my bare legs and I hoped that there were no chiggers as I was already scratching a dozen bites from the day before in North Carolina. I also had become aware that many spiders, some 2-3″ long, built their webs along the trail. Also, the trail was torn up in many areas. It reminded me of when wild turkeys scratch for grubs but on a much larger scale. I wondered if it could be wild pigs.

A section of the River Trail.

The River Trail reaches the Congaree River and runs near it for about a mile and a half. I spent the night in a flat dry spot off the trail, about 1/2 mile from the river. Hiking out in the dark I immediately noticed how many spider webs my headlamp picked up along and over the trail. I was fascinated and a little freaked out. I tried to take pictures of the spiders but failed in the dark. Even on the stem of the River Trail, which I had just walked the afternoon before, there many large webs over and around the trail – webs that I couldn’t have possibly avoided having not seen them. This meant the spiders likely rebuilt their webs every night after the hikers and animals went through. I ducked and dodged my way around the webs, sometimes going through accidently. I’d then wait to feel the crawling on the back of my neck as I looked ahead for the reflectors to make sure I was still on the trail.

The Congaree River

While still on the River Trail, I heard an awful noise. It took me a moment to place it – wild pigs. There were more than one and maybe they were fighting. They sounded nearby. Wild pigs were not something that I wanted to run into on the trail, especially in the dark. I tried to capture some of their noises on my phone but they seemed to pause each time I started recording, as if they knew what I was doing.

I came to another web with a large spider and stopped to get a photo, but then the wild pigs started again. This time very close. They seemed to be just out of the reach of my headlamp. I took off more quickly. But the faster pace didn’t work well in the dark. I found myself crashing into the spider webs, which panicked me more. I was suddenly off the trail crashing through the brush in the dark. The pigs and spiders were working together! But if I were trapped in a Charlotte’s Web movie, this was a much more sinister sequel.

Orbweaver

I stopped and calmed myself, found the reflectors, and got back on the trail. I proceeded at a brisk but controlled pace and soon the squeals receded in the distance.

Somewhere just before or after the Oak Ridge Trail Junction I clopped across a bridge over a creek and heard a great splash below. I spun my head beam down to catch something large moving quickly through the water and into darkness. A gator. Or I assume it was a gator. I couldn’t tell in that brief moment but I wondered what else would make such a splash getting in the water then move away so quickly.

After over an hour of hiking in the dark, I was glad to turn off my headlamp and hike in daylight. I reached my car a short time later having had a more intimate experience with nature – after all, that’s why I do it – and left behind Congaree National Park, where the wild pigs and spiders are in cahoots.

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America’s First National Park

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I recently spent five days in Yellowstone National Park. What struck me about America’s first national park (1872), aside from its vastness, was the dichotomy it presented: the volcano and the beauty of wilderness.

On one hand you have the beauty and the solitude of the mountains, forests, raging rivers, and waterfalls. In this aspect Yellowstone is similar to many other wild mountain areas that haven’t been cleared for ski resorts.

On the other hand Yellowstone has the many thermal features. I had no idea how fumaroles, mudpots, geysers, and bubbling lakes there were. You drive miles to another part of the massive park and there are still more of them, and you soon realize that you are indeed sitting on top of a volcano. Reading about Yellowstone being a super volcano, and then witnessing it yourself and coming to that realization on your own are two different things.

What seems to bring both of these together is the wildlife, some of which, because it has become accustomed to human presence, can give the illusion that it is not so wild, such as the bison lounging near the walkways, or elk grazing on the lawns in the town of Mammoth Hot Springs among the throngs of people. In addition to bison and elk, we saw moose, pronghorns, and a bear. My wife even spotted a wolf on our drive out.

The most popular areas are going to be crowded in the summer, such as Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic, and Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We found less people and more wildlife in the northeast quadrant.

I read that of the three million annual visitors, half of them visit in July and August. So while it was busy, it wasn’t as busy as it usually is in the summer, as many of the lodges were still closed due to COVID. Around popular attractions it could be challenging to social distance, but it was good to see that the majority of people were wearing masks. Masks were also required to go inside buildings.

You can still find some solitude Yellowstone, even in the summer, but you might have to work for it: go early or late in the day, go in the winter, hike farther away from the trailhead, or do all of the above. It’s worth it to have America’s first national park to yourself, or to have the illusion that it’s all yours. But get there before the volcano blows.

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Have a Berry Happy 4th of July!

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At my house, July 4th means many things. One of them is that it’s time to pick wild raspberries. A good thing about living in northern Indiana is that we don’t have to share them with bears. After staying up to watch a great fireworks display last night, this morning I put on bug spray, pants, and a long-sleeved shirt, and headed into the thicket and oppressive heat.

When picking wild berries here in northern Indiana we do deal with mosquitos, chiggers, spiders, lots of poison ivy, and an occasional garter snake. But it’s worth it since these will be used to make and top many desserts, as well as turn into some jam.

Happy 4th of July!

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Love in the Time of Coronavirus: Let’s Go Backpacking

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In these days of lock-downs and canceled events, I am proposing the best kind of self-quarantine: backpacking.

There is no better time to go backpacking than now. Not just social camping where you are still surrounded by tents and campers and COVID-19 germs, but remote backpacking away from others coughs and media.

  • Washing high contact surfaces? Not needed because you are alone.
  • Cough into your elbow? Not needed because you are alone. But this is a good habit to keep so you should continue it in the wild.
  • Wash your hands frequently? Not needed for COVID-19 in the wilderness but do it anyway to keep from getting diarrhea. We are not animals, people!
  • Six feet of personal space? No problem. How about 6000?

So now is the time to self-quarantine in nature, where dirt is king, showers are a luxury, a shortage of toilet paper doesn’t matter (as much). Go backpacking!