[pct-l] the fuss about prepardness

[Ralph Alcorn]

Two or three years ago I read Larry Gonzale's Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who
Dies and Why. It made me realize that a lot of my 50+ years of backpacking
"experience" was just good luck, repetitive carelessness vs the odds of a
bad event. Since that book, I particularly take care on PCT sections not to
do two or more dumb things the same day. For example, starting up a pass at
2 in the afternoon with an obvious thunderstorm moving in is one dumb thing.
Continuing on up while it's cold, wet, windy, dark is approaching, and I'm
shivering, is several more.

Last summer we got caught in freezing rain near Castle Crags, were slow to
get our rain gear on and got wet, so we stopped in early afternoon, put up
the tent, and got into our bags till we warmed up. A smart move.

On our recent hike from Agua Dulce to Kennedy Meadows trip I didn't follow
my caution instincts, to my regret. Around mile 618 we found ourselves about
three miles short of our goal, about 6pm, so kept on going, even though the
wind was blowing us all over the trail, and it was about 45 degrees. Dumb
move #1. I passed this one fair campsite on the side of Pinyon Mountain,
saying to Susan, "we can do better, there is always some microsite". Dumb
move #2. The trail kept routing us towards a low pass, the wind velocity
increasing as it got funneled between the hills. By the time we reached the
pass, the wind gusts were knocking us off the trail, even with hiking poles.
I did some research later, and according to one climbing site, that takes
wind gusts of about 70+ mph. Susan's back started to spasm from the sideways
wind gusts against the pack.
http://www.mountainweb.com/learn2climb/view_single.jsp?learntoclimb=38

Anyhow, my lifetime good luck continued to hold. Some dayhikers had left a
car there for their next day's destination, and they had left it unlocked.
We sat in the car a few minutes to assess the situation. Susan said, "I'm
not leaving this car". Well, I was seriously concerned about what we would
have done if the car had not been there, so I got out and attempted to put
the tent up. No way. Would have shredded the tent. Again, from the same
climbing site, I learned that there is a term for this situation, called
maytagging the tent. Ever had a washer roll your clothes up? So, I walked
down the downwind side of the pass, looking for a somewhat sheltered spot,
and finally found one. At that point, having satisfied myself on the no car
situation, I went back and happily spent the rest of the night in the car.
Of course it was too windy to cook, so we ate the next day's lunch (bars,
jerky, etc.) and had supper the next morning.

After the fact, we looked at what we could have done if forced to overnight
there with no car and no shelter. The tent had a bottom, and we could have
used it as a bivy, even with no poles. We also each had fleece pants, & down
jackets as well as rain jacket and pants. We also had an emergency space
blanket. So we would have survived, just spent a fairly miserable and noisy
night.

The next day was beautiful, and we continued on for several miles, but
Susan's back continued to spasm. Our exit points were Walker Pass, a day and
a half further, or possibly Bird Spring Pass, another 10 miles at that point
and a low traffic 4wd road. Zero Verizon cell reception since highway 58. We
decided that continuing on would be dumb move #3, and hiked back to the car
to wait for the dayhikers (who we had met a day earlier). If there had been
no dayhikers, we would have walked down from the pass to Kelso Valley Road
and hitched. We exited the trail and returned 10 days later, healed, and a
little more wind smart.

I have a couple of reasons for relating this. One is that we were carrying
enough gear to stay safe. The other is to illustrate that it is easy to make
mistakes when tired, and you need to make the effort to think "is this dumb
mistake #2?".

-- 
Ralph Alcorn
http://www.backpack45.com/pct.html