Backpacker – September 2019

(Darren Dugan) #1

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
96 BACKPACKER.COM


hiking with Tumbler. First, mosquitoes loved her so
much that they didn’t bother me as long as she was
nearby.^9 Second, she was talented at finding silver lin-
ings—like setting a new P.R. for mosquito bites.
Despite the bugs, rain, and snow, we were hooked.

EARLY ON IN OUR HIKING PARTNERSHIP,
I was the insufferable sage, taking advantage of my
half-century of hiking experience to guide my youth-
ful apprentice. Part of my calculation was that I could
win street credibility in the wilderness that would
carry over to daily life and my warnings about, say,
alcohol-fueled parties.^10
When we were lost in the snow, I instructed
Tumbler to look for blazes and old footprints. At
one point, I triumphantly showed her some tracks
ahead, and we eagerly followed them, thrilled that we
had found the trail again. Sometime later, Caroline
noticed that the footprints had toes. And claws.
“Dad,” she said, “I think that’s a bear you’re
following.”
My most important wisdom concerned the weather.
Nothing is more critical, I advised Caroline, than
being prepared for the elements. Not only that, you
must be ready for the worst rainstorm, the deepest

snowfall, the coldest freeze. And above all, never let
your sleeping bag get wet! We preferred to cowboy
camp under the stars, so our evening ritual was to gaze
at the sky and calculate whether it might rain. If pre-
cipitation looked imminent, we would pitch the tarp.
A tarp is not just a shelter; it is an art medium. I
showed Caroline how to pitch it between trees or with
hiking poles, how to angle it to protect from driving
rain or snow, the paramount importance of “taut,” the
cardinal sin of “sag.”
Once, in our first year or so, we were hiking on a for-
ested ridge in the Oregon Cascades, towering firs all
around us, when we found a small bare patch to camp
on. It was a chilly, breezy evening, a bit overcast, but I
assessed what I could see of the sky and pronounced
us safe without the tarp.
“Are you sure it’s not going to rain, Dad?” Tumbler
asked. Surprised by this challenge to my authority, I
pointed out that the wind was coming from the west,
where the sky looked clear. She said nothing.^11
Nothing, that is, until 3 a.m., when she shook me.
“Dad, it’s raining,” she said.

Clockwise from left: Caroline on the PCT at age 14, in the Goat
Rocks Wilderness, Washington; Nick in the High Sierra in
2016; mosquito defense in Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness

9 Dad’s like: “Oh, you have
49 bites? That ’s weird. Even
though I haven’t put on
repellent I don’t seem to have
any. But I did scratch my leg
once a couple of days ago, so
I can relate. ”

10 I won’t say if this was a
successful strategy.

11 Unlike some people, I
wasn’t going to pretend I
could predict weather by
getting a glimpse of the cloud
cover and “feeling” the wind.
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