That’s my boy, Jack, below. I love him and his brother David more than life itself. Jack and I went camping and backpacking on a hiking trip this weekend.
But, this weekend, I failed. That’s okay. Failing is okay in our house. In fact, it’s expected and encouraged. I have failed at a lot of things in life, on the path of learning about them, and so, I’m familiar with the benefits of failing.
Still, it does not always feel great in the moment. I failed to get to the ‘grass-covered peak’ of a cool mountain on day 2 of a 3 day backpacking hiking trip. Though I’m a seasoned walker, this was my first backpacking hiking trip, and I learned later that some of the other fathers were marathoners, and all except one other father (who successfully managed the hike, and was a marathoner) had gone hiking before, many times. They had an understanding of the gear, terrain, and stamina. I learned late in the trip that one of the fathers hiked the Himalayas with his wife. I have not run or tested my lungs in years, maybe ever. I walk a lot, and I figured it was the same language. Mountain hiking is like running to me now. You have to have control of your breath, and a good understanding of your body under physical stress. I, for one, was not ready for this trip, but I did not suspect that going in. What’s worse, it was a father-son trip, and my son thought he was ready because I thought I was ready. Deep sigh. So, where to begin?
A synopsis of the hiking trip:
12 people, fathers and sons, were going on a three day camping and hiking trip. We’d travel about a mile on the first night to a camp near the parking for Camp Shenandoah and camp. We would then wake and hike from that spot to the top of Elliot Knob on day two, about 8 miles uphill and over 2000 feet elevation on a 4000+ foot peak, and we’d return on day three. Here’s a screenshot of those two points.
Here is a topographic look at the area:
And here is a link to Elliot Knob in Google Maps (interactive):
What is Elliot Knob?
“Elliot Knob is the highest point in Augusta County, and one of the highest peaks in Virginia. Just west of Staunton and secluded in Buffalo Gap, this hike features two waterfalls, several great views to the west and east, and a grass covered summit. If you’re lucky, this hidden treasure can be all yours for a day. Â From the small parking area pass the closed gate and head up Falls Hollow Trail. The trail is marked with both yellow blazes and yellow plastic diamonds, and follows an old logging road for the first 1.5 miles.” curated by lemasney from Elliot Knob Hike at https://www.hikingupward.com/GWNF/ElliottKnob/
My 11 year old son and I made it to within a half of a mile of the peak, and we were not able to go any further. We started up at 8:30am, and by 5 we were exhausted. By 7, we had finally decided to give up on the ascent. The others had gone ahead, after I informed the last leader I saw at 5pm that we were done, and that if they did not see us, that we had decided to exit, which we eventually did. I’ll explain the details of that rather harrowing experience in the considerations below.
Failure is only failure if you do not learn from it.
So in that light, I’m going to share with you all what I learned on this trip. These are ten things in no particular order, that I wish I had really heard or understood when seasoned hikers told me about them, leading up to the trip.
Consideration 1: Know the hiking trip before you go, and consider your limits.
I learned about this trip just a few weeks ago. I did not know any of the other fathers or their kids. When I heard about the opportunity to take an 8 mile trip with seasoned hikers, it sounded like the safest way to gain insight into such an adventure. We were able to borrow tent and packs, and the rest of the gear and food would be a minimal investment. We learned a lot, and most of the trip was joyful and manageable. I saw bright orange lizards, beautiful waterfalls, rock formations, 10 different kinds of mushrooms, striations and geologic history, and one of the most beautiful foggy mornings in a sunlit forest that I have ever seen. I saw the tops of all of the other mountains in the area. It was only in the last few miles of the hike that the wondrous discovery was replaced with a sense of just getting there, until getting there seemed impossible, at which point it was.
Part of the issue is that the research I did for this post is the research I needed to do for the hike. Seems simple, right? I relied instead on the expertise of the other leaders, and should have taken a more serious look at the map, studied it, and known where we could have shortened the trip more safely.
If you look at the first map screenshot above, it shows you essentially two points. This was what I understood of the hike, just these two points. The other maps were just in my imagination. The elevation lines on a topography map, I learned in a meeting for planning, meant a hundred foot incline. We’d pass twenty of them. Neat! I had seen a trail map, but I simply did not understand the scale of what we were to do. The trail map for the second part of the trip in ascent to Elliot Knob follows, and I should have studied it:
The other hikers had endurance, understanding, and pace that Jack and I did not have. I consider myself fit. I walk every day and track it. To give you some sense of what I am normally capable of versus what we did that day, consider this:
What this shows is that I try everyday to get 5k steps, and I love the feeling at the end of the day when I do. I do not walk up mountains, I do not encounter thin air, and I am not wearing a 60 pound pack. I got two new badges on this trip: the 30,000 steps in a day, and the 35,000 steps in a day, and so did Jack, in thin air, with packs. That’s pretty damned awesome. We actually hiked further than everyone else on the trip because the escape was backtracking our ascent for miles, but it was a lot easier going down a mountain than up. I do not think this will keep us from hearing that we failed from the peak reachers, but it feels kind of nice as a caveat. 🙂
In short, we were not ready for this trip. I’m fit enough to live well, but before I do this again, I’m going to do 10k steps a day for a few days in advance of the trip, with a pack. If I can’t, I should not be going.
Consideration 2: Have three hiking trip plans.
The plan was to follow the pack and to go to the end. We needed an additional shared plan in the event anyone had to leave near the middle of the trip, and a third plan in case anyone was not able to do the final approach. In the end, it was chaos, darkness, fear, and the unknown that put us in danger. It was clear-headedness, awareness of what we had passed and how it connected, and logic of the way that a service road worked that got us home. Part of the issue was the fear of letting others (who we did not know well) down or putting others in danger if we departed suddenly. The option should have been discussed ahead of time, and I’ll make sure it is next time.
Consideration 3: Know how many calories you need on the hiking trip, and pack no junk.
When packing food for a trip like this, a thousand options exist. You can get prefab meals and MREs and cook pasta and sausage bakes. I got a pie iron for this trip that only came out of the pack when I carried it to lighten the load on my back. Silly, in retrospect. I had a camp stove, newly bought. It is still in the box. I carried fuel up and down the mountain without using it. Jack and I ended up eating trail mix (great), bagels (yum), apples (sweet!), cheap granola bars (uh-oh), prepackaged fruit cups (whoa, no), and an entire loaf of crusty bread (great) and some canned tuna (ew). I even brought two eggs (wait, what?) that I ended up throwing into the woods as a snack for some lucky fox instead of our hearty Sunday morning sandwich I had envisioned with the pie iron over the camp stove. There were also about 8 cookies. In retrospect, with clarity, I should have packed the most nutritious, simplistic, no-cooking, no-water-required, no pie-iron, no weight food I could stuff into 3 day’s bags with easy access. I figured higher calories was good, but in retrospect higher quality calories were required. I spent two minutes unpacking to get a snack every time, so ease of access is essential.
I typically eat 1400 calories in a day, restricted from my normal 2000 calories because I float between my goal weight of 200 pounds and 210 pounds. Fitbit tells me I burned 4735 calories that day. I brought enough food to have Jack and I eat 2000 calories each per day. That was almost 1.5 times too little food. Others had food, but I will have enough next time.
Very important: Get a self contained water filter with enough capacity to quench your intense thirst a few times between water stops, and make sure that you have sufficient water stops. I had a waterbottle with a filtering straw, and two backup bottles, and we used them all day long. There was never enough water between stops, so make sure you can bring it with you.
Consideration 4: Pack precisely what you need, with weight and safety in balance.
Things I’d given anything to exchange:
- A thin body mat and a blanket or a hammock instead of my inappropriately huge winter-camping sleeping bag with down lining.
- More whole-foods in trail mix form instead of cooking utensils or gear (pie iron, stove) and certainly less junk food, high in sugar and little else.
- USB Batteries, compass, three flashlights instead of a dead cellphone.
- Protein based trail mix instead of Tuna, cookies, or poker mix.
- A tarp as a structurable tent. (Jack promises to veto this)
- Organized larger plastic bags instead of any trash-creators, like wrappers or boxes or plastic.
Consideration 5: Have comfortable, thick-soled hiking shoes.
This was emphasized, but I did not grok the importance. I brought two pairs of shoes: a pair of walking shoes that I was not familiar with, and a pair of sandals that I wear most of the time. The walking shoes kept my feet from blisters, but I felt every rock beneath my feet. I never wore the sandals. Jack wore jeans and sneakers. We were barely walking by the end of the day.
Don’t mess around. Get great boots for hiking, with compression features, ankle support, and thick mountain-proof soles.
Consideration 6: Have a backup plan, an escape route, and a few ways to communicate.
Here’s a short list of items I should have had on this trip:
- A map of the trail with topography and clear escape plans.
- working smart phone
- whistles and shared signals
- walkies for each hiker
- contact info for each hiker
- Backup USB batteries to power devices for each day of the trip.
Consideration 7: Bring the right tools, and test your gear.
What I brought:
- a fork/knife/spoon multitool
- a $3 3 LED flashlight
- a smart phone that died on the first night
- a flip phone with low battery
- a borrowed tent
- two borrowed framed backpacks
What I needed:
- A swiss army knife
- A $10 heavy-duty 9 LED flashlight
- USB batteries
- I needed to open and set up the tent before the trip
- I needed to have a better understanding of the way a contemporary hiking backpack works. After really examining it upon return, after wearing it for a long 12 hour hiking day, I realized that my pack was set up for a much smaller frame, which made the pack work against me.
- I needed to know that one of my key frame grommets was missing the pin, and that my pack was unhinged and unbalanced most of the trip as a result. It was repaired by one of the leaders midday, but only because he noticed and took action. By that point, I had done a lot of extra work, and it took a toll.
Consideration 8: Determine and discuss exit points and fallback camps. Ask 100 questions.
We should have known exactly what to do in the event that we became hopelessly separated. Without communication, visual contact, or even the way to make a very large sound or show, we could have been stranded.
Here is a list of some things we did not expect as we finally reached route 42 at the end of the service road, as we turned on our flip phone, low on power:
- It was pitch black dark at 8 pm.
- There was no cell service for a fifteen minute walk up or down a road that I did not know the name of (Route 42 beside the National Forest, I learned later).
- There was no civilized station of service (gas, convenience, police) of any kind for any visible distance.
- I never got a cell signal and so I’m not sure what sequence of calls I was going to make, but I never considered 911.
- We would end up having to flag someone down, ask for help, and thank them profusely. We got a ride after flagging down a car when we gave up on getting a signal. Having an 11 year old and hiking gear in the dark on the side of a fast road helps you to share your urgency. We were saved by a Iraq war vet and her Virginia native husband who knew Camp Shenandoah like the back of his hand. God bless those people, who asked only that we ‘pay it forward’. I shared that we would.
- Think of the worst and prepare for it.
Consideration 9: Don’t separate from the group.
You may be wondering how this part happened. The fact is that towards the end of the day the status quo of having everyone be in visual sight waned. The strongest able-bodied hikers often scouted ahead and would stop at major turns in the path, or when leaders would slow them down. For the last hike up, it was less important to do that theoretically, because there was only one path up, no offside roads, no alternate paths, no other way but down. As a result, I imagine that the mindset was just keep going up. That was the advice we got, with a smile. “You’re so close!” was encouragement, and we agreed to try. The leader and his son who we had last contact with, who had waited for us at the service road, left for their final ascent, 1.5 miles up, but a bulk of the ascension of the overall trip was in that last 1.5 miles. We tried that until we could not try it any longer, between 5 and 7 pm, when we had to descend to keep the light. Our last contact was a hopeful one, but we expressed our doubt that we would make it up.
The biggest issue with this was that the hike down, especially in our debilitated state, was treacherous, dark, and unknown. Safety in numbers, so stay with your group. In our case, we would have had to have done something like what we did eventually, but because it diverted from the plan, it was a surprise, and it should have been a (potential) part of the plan instead.
Consideration 10: Make choices, not defaults.
Jack and I discussed a lot of things in our last ascent to the top of Elliot Knob. We talked about the feelings we were having, including fear and despair. We encouraged each other to have hope. We cried. We talked about the disappointment of everyone else having done what we were not able to. How we could maybe make it if we tried. How we were safer to think about alternatives. That we had options.
The only thing keeping us exhausted on the side of a mountain in pitch black trying to set up a tent while crying and looking for bears with a flashlight was our discussion of that possibility. We decided that safety in retreat was better than exhaustion in success or regret in disaster.
I am crying as I write this at Jack’s bravery in light of the choice of either danger or failure. It was no contest, but we considered both for a long time as we were forced to rest, as we were trying to take labored, heavy-breathed steps up a steep incline like I had never traversed before, with heavy packs we could not drop, as we ached and yelped as we turned each corner and saw another quarter mile of difficult trail upward, with no towers in sight, like those we had heard about at the peak. We heard, saw, and felt nothing but nature. No cars, no humans, just nature, getting darker, and an uphill trail. We felt alone.
Jack and I learned a lot about the beauty of the deep woods and mountains of Virginia. We learned about preparedness and resourcefulness. We saw the tops of every other mountain in the county. We learned about the flora and fauna from a biologist. We met new friends and learned about their lives and philosophies. We saw vistas and waterfalls, and the intense life-giving sun changing the air as we walked. We learned about our limits. We learned about the importance of safety in the most unlikely places. We learned that we can rely on one another. We learned that we will always work with each other to be safe first, and winners at other times.
It’s the journey, friends, it has little to do with the destination. Be safe, have fun, make choices and get home.
