#3, Lessons Learned, no. 1
Jul 03, 2022
american verdure, 2004
As I write this, I should be backpacking.
Today is Sunday, July 3, 2022, the middle day of a 3-day holiday weekend in the US, one of only 3 such holiday weekends during the short backpacking season in Colorado. It is a chance to take a longer journey to somewhere inaccessible by a single day of hiking.
The trail is the perfectly-named Oh-Be-Joyful Trail in the bucolic Ruby Range near Crested Butte, Colorado. I created the opening photograph in 2004 at the higher reaches of that trail. Yes, I've been hiking it for nearly 20 years and it never disappoints. It is stunningly beautiful. A standout among Colorado's famously majestic alpine scenery.
I planned the trip, what provisions I would need, the food I would eat, the clothes I would wear, and the camera gear I would haul up the trail to obtain photographs I cannot create anywhere else. After a 5 or so hour drive from home to the trailhead, I would shoulder the pack and camera gear and hike as far as possible up the valley on the first day, then pack everything up the next morning and hike up to high camp about 6-7 miles and almost 2,000 vertical feet from my car. This would be another memorable trip with that view of Mt. Garfield out my tent door. Perfect and done.
Yet, I am home.
Despite countless backpacking trips, despite 26 years of hiking and camping trips into the wilderness, despite collecting all the lightweight and durable gear that does exactly what I need it to do,
I was not prepared.
I failed to prepare my pack, my gear, and my state of mind for what could happen. What would happen.
Lesson #1: Get an early start. Despite packing my backpack with nearly everything on the night before the trip, I still needed a couple of hours to gather all the provisions and load up my car the morning I left. So I got a late start.
Since the drive from home to the trailhead was 6 hours, those 2 hours were critical to how I felt when I arrived. I left home at 930am instead of bright and early and I arrived later and under a bit of stress for how much time I had left in the day to hike. Starting the hike at 1pm was a whole different adventure than starting at 430pm and left no room for unforeseen misadventures. (Cue the foreshadowing...)
Lesson #2: Don't assume everything will be fine, as it always has been in the past. When I gathered all my gear at home, I assumed it would all fit in my pack. But I didn't complete packing then; I waited till I arrived at the trailhead. Not everything fit. The left out piece of gear was my camera bag, which I slung over the rear of the pack while my camera fit into a clip on my waistband at the ready. I had done this many times before without any issue.
Only this time, the camera bag wasn't empty - it carried a lens and several other items of some value - and it was my medium sized bag that pulled backward as I hiking, adding stress to the hike.
Lesson #3: Assume rain. That's right. On top of the 430pm start, on top of carrying a backpack and an externally-loaded camera bag, the thick clouds moved in and began raining on me only an hour into my hike. As I regretted not bringing a rain cover for my pack, I took shelter under the canopy of a grove of fir trees but not before my pack, my camera bag, and my clothes were wet. I was, thankfully, wearing nylon pants and a polyester hiking shirt that didn't chill me, but as I put on my rain jacket, another regret overcame me.
Not only were my pack and camera bag not waterproof, nor was my rain jacket. For the next hour, I cursed myself as I witnessed the rain soak everything in sight. Under thick gray skies and thunder roaring through the valley, I huddled in the lee of giant trunk serving as my shelter and hoped for the clouds to part as I contemplated how long to wait out the rain and what to do.
With the forest and meadows soaking wet, setting up my tent would expose everything I brought to the rain and could possibly stay wait all night, including my faithful and trusting chocolate lab who was carrying his own soaked pack and rather dubious of the conditions. I really didn't want to spend a night shivering in my sleeping bag and risk my dog getting hypothermia.
At 630pm, I decided my best course of action was to abandon this backpacking adventure and hike back out to the safety of my car. To cut my losses and avoid any further mistakes. To avoid greater risks and do the safe thing.
I gotta admit: this stings. I had been looking forward to getting back to the upper basin to gaze across the verdure at Mt. Garfield's symmetrical crest, to meander through wildflower meadows and past ice-cold waterfalls, to rise early and soak in the first light of summer's morning. I couldn't wait to see again what I saw decades ago and not only photograph such familiar scenes but find new compositions with my contemporary artistic vision.
I had changed over the years and I wanted to see how Oh-Be-Joyful had changed. My failure to prepare for rain and the other issues abruptly and unexpectedly ended my chance to revisit an old friend whom I missed so much and longed to see. Had the stream changed course? Were the waterfalls and wildflowers as abundant? Had visitors respected it or caused damage?
From my own perspective, would I create the same photographs as years before? Or would I turn my attention to the finer details, the abstract compositions, the patterns of nature?
If I prepare well, I will find answers to my questions.