Last Dance with White Wolf: Day 1

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity…” –John Muir, 1898

If you followed any of last year’s Montana Diaries, you know that I had planned another week-long fly fishing trip to Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.  For a variety of reasons, it didn’t work out this year in spite of some intricate plans.  I still wanted to scratch my itch to get away from laptops and cell phones to focus on some intense fly fishing, but I needed a destination that didn’t require plane tickets or rental cars.  Yosemite is about a 3-hour drive from the house. Most visitors head for Yosemite Valley where they can see Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and the Merced River flowing through the campground. It’s a spectacular vista and high on the list for international visitors as a ‘must-see’ along with the Grand Canyon.  Far less traveled is the 1,100 miles of Yosemite Wilderness that is reachable only by foot. Of course, most Yosemite visitors don’t have an unnatural obsession for fly fishing for trout.

Congress defined Wilderness as having “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.” Furthermore “the imprint of man’s work” must remain “substantially unnoticeable.” Certain activities are inconsistent with this concept and are prohibited in the Wilderness Act. They are:

• Commercial enterprises
• Roads and structures
• The landing of aircraft
• Motorized equipment
• Motor or mechanical transport

This doesn’t sound like much to someone who is born and raised in Michigan and is never more than 5 minutes from the middle of a woods, but to residents of California’s Silicon Valley it’s a stark contrast to an endless suburban sprawl of pavement, homes, and office buildings.

White Wolf is the campground that is a launching point for the Yosemite Wilderness. It offers trailheads into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, which was my destination. A   wilderness permit is required to stay overnight inside the wilderness boundaries of Yosemite.  The permits are free, but quotas are placed on trailheads into the Wilderness to ensure that hikers get the solitude they expect.  About 60% of the quota is allocated to reservations, and the remaining 40% falls to ‘walk-up’ applicants.  I’ve made the White-Wolf to the Tuolumne River trip three times before, and never has it been a problem to get access.  The distance is about 9 miles, but it’s the 4,000 foot elevation change that filters out all but the most hard-core or ignorant hikers. I’ll let you decide which category I fall into.

I left my house by 6:00 am on July 4. My plan was to hike in on Wednesday and hike out on Sunday, spending four nights near the river.  The ranger station at Big Oak Flats opened at 8:00 am, and I arrived at exactly 9:00 to get my wilderness permit.  The ranger walks you through a checklist of wilderness procedures, and is quite anal-retentive about them. I respect the job, and appreciate how diligent they must be to preserve the wilderness environment.  I stay on the trails, practice caution if I build a fire, and am careful not to leave a mess for others that may camp after me.  But there’s no way I’m packing out my used toilet paper. The reality check has to kick in somewhere. More on bizarre national park rules later.

I got my permit and got back in the car for the 40 minute drive out to White Wolf.  The campground is only open for 2-3 months a year. It’s at 8,000 feet, which isn’t usually snow-free except between mid-July to September. But this year was a mild winter, so the facilities opened early.  They offer a restaurant, some canvas tents available for rent, and a semi-developed campground with 74 spaces. It’s a popular destination for day hikes to Harden Lake, Lukens Lake, or even a short stroll along the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River, which is really a very small creek but quite scenic. I found a parking spot and got my gear out for the hike.  I packed a change of clothes and enough food to last for five days plus, of course, my fishing gear.  Common backpacking planning says you should plan on 2 to 2.5 lbs of food per day, but the 4,000 foot elevation change means burning lots of calories en route so I needed to make sure I had enough for the hike in and hike out.  I left the parking lot at 10:30 am. I had planned about six hours for the hike, which would get me set up in camp in time for dinner.

I had knee surgery in January to deal with a torn meniscus. It was causing my knee to swell up like a chia pet and get stiff if I even stood on it for even 40 minutes at a time. I had some anxiety about whether I would still be up for hiking after the surgery, but I had been fairly serious about rehab for the past six months. I had been working on strength and endurance at the gym and even put in a seven mile hike out to Livermore just to test it out. It had held up pretty well, and I was confident that I could make the trip if I managed my nutrition wisely.

I brought 2 cans of Red Bull and slammed down one just before I left camp. My pack was about 43 lbs, which wasn’t too bad. But I also had a 10 lb bear canister of food and another 7 lbs of gear in my creel and waist pack, which meant I was hauling 60+ lbs. My fishing gear accounts for about 12 extra pounds that most backpackers don’t haul, but without it the hike didn’t make any sense for me. (Hey, I have to convince myself that there is some reason why I labor more than the other hikers I see along the trail.)

I did well for the first 75 minutes, chugging along at a good rate. I had set some waypoints during my previous trips so I knew how to carve up my hike. The first couple miles are a pleasant hike through the forest, gradually descending 800 feet towards the river valley. I didn’t stop until the first trail fork, which is where the route first starts getting steep.  Now some of you think that hiking downhill can’t be very strenuous and only a wuss would complain about it.  Let me propose this exercise to you:  Find a 10 story hotel or office building and take the elevator to the top floor.  Then take the stairs back down to the lobby. Get back in the elevator and go back up to the top, take the stairs back down. This time, strap on a 40 pound backpack and carry a 10lb bag of sugar or box of printer paper with you. No fair holding on to the railings (there are none in the wilderness). Repeat 40 times, and then collapse in the lobby.  When the paramedics come to haul away your soggy carcass, drenched from the sprinkler system that was triggered when your thighs burst into flames, console yourself that at least you weren’t going UP the stairs, because that would have been strenuous!

After a brief rest and the other can of Red Bull, I headed off to conquer the next 1000 foot drop. The view here is breathtaking, but only if you have any breath left to take. This is the steepest part of the trail, where the descent is literally not much different than stair steps cut into a zigzag pattern along the side of the mountain. There isn’t much shade on this part of trail, and the angle of the sun was punishing. I had to stop again after 40 minutes to rest. I told myself that if I could get down to 6000 feet, the worst would be behind me. It was hot, and my knee was reminding me that it had surgery 6 months ago. Hyperextension was the cause of the original problem, which is exactly what you are most vulnerable to with a lot of downhill hiking. At this point my legs were like jelly, and I couldn’t really trust my knee to lock like it is supposed to when I hold it straight. Go back to the exercise I mentioned earlier and try it without locking your knee; see what happens after, say, 20-25 trips down the stairs.  It hurts.

I stopped at a small stream crossing to rest and refill my water. It’s a common oasis along the trail; scenic and shady.  As I was recovering, another couple came along behind me on their way down to the river. She was from Houston, and he lived on the big island of Hawaii. They had apparently been a couple before one or both moved away, and I could tell that she was questioning whether this was the kind of bonding activity she had been hoping for in their reunion.  She was questioning how much further she had to hike and thinking about the hike back up the mountain.  He was thinking, in hindsight, maybe some roses, dinner and a movie would have been a more rewarding itinerary.

In this little pool I counted at least 6 brook trout.

After chugging down some Hammer endurance mix and all the water I could drink, I loaded up and continued on.

It was hot, and I was fatigued.  Breaks were coming more frequent now, about every 30 minutes. I was more tired than I’ve ever been before on this hike, and I was starting to question whether this trip was a good idea.  As I tried to recover and psyche myself up for the home stretch, two young ladies came along the trail in the same direction. They were both quite attractive. I don’t say that in any kind of suggestive or perverted way, but usually when you encounter two attractive young ladies travelling together, nine miles into the wilderness after a 4,000 foot decent you treat it like a UFO sighting:  Without certified, photographic evidence you keep that information to yourself because it sounds foolish to anyone who hears it.  But I guess my credibility is already suspect, so you can decide whether it was a mirage.

The thought crossed my mind to set up camp and finish the hike the next day, but the psychological defeat of not making my goal, coupled with the fatigue of packing up and finishing the next morning would have ruined the trip for me. After all, hiking is only a necessary chore for me. I don’t really enjoy it; it’s just a way to get to a fishing destination. Prolonging it even a little can cut in to the real reason for the trip. So I mustered all my will power, told myself it was only another half hour, and pushed through to the bottom.

I felt like a marathon runner breaking the tape when I reached the bottom of the trail and started to parallel the river. I knew the best fishing spots would be spread over the next two miles upstream, but I didn’t want to carry my pack any further than necessary.  The few hikers willing to make the trip down to the river tend to share the same spent feeling and bunch up at the first available campsites.  I passed two tents but dropped my gear anyway while I looked for the next available site.  After a little scouting I found a place near the river but not visible from the main trail.  The river flows along two miles of relatively flat land known as the Pate Valley, which features some tall redwoods, oak trees, and high-shade.  Many of the trees were scarred by a fire that had passed through the Valley many years ago, but not caused enough damage to strip all the vegetation.   I found a spot with a small fire ring and a clear view of the sky, and a flat rock-free area to set up the tent. I retrieved my pack and went to work setting up camp.  I was so exhausted I didn’t even feel like eating dinner. But past experience showed me I needed to wash off and eat dinner if I stood any chance of making the next day worthwhile.

I finished setting up the tent, put my sleeping gear inside, and hung up my bear canister. My legs were screaming obscenities at my brain with each step, but I did my best to convince them they would feel better if they could just get me to the river. I waded out a short distance and found a hole where I could sit down and wash off.  After getting past a few critical commitment points (guys, back me up here), I managed to submerse my whole body in cool, clear water.  I didn’t have a thermometer, but I guessed the temperature was between 66-68 degrees. That’s way cooler than most swimming pools, but hardly what you would call icy. Anyway, it only seems cold for a few seconds, and then it’s nothing but soothing relief.

I stand by former claims that immersing oneself in cold water after a hot, exhausting day is one of the most transformative physical events one can experience. I literally went from “c’mon guys, just a few more steps to the river” to “maybe we can still get some fishing in after dinner”! 

But after I got out of the water, reality slapped me upside the head and told me I needed to eat something and get to bed.  Sunset was not for another 2 hours, but I wasn’t going to last that long. The fire ring would need some revamping before it could support an actual fire, and I wasn’t up for the construction project. I boiled some water, ate my spaghetti, took some Tylenol PM and zipped up the tent.

I made it. Surviving the hike was a significant part of day one.  But I knew I would be paying for the stress of the hike on Thursday.