"burrow owns you"
-Bob_The_Newt
|
| Conquering the Mountain | | | Author: | | | IP: | cf3k-lciXXXX | | Date: | 08/16/00 11:08 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | Famous Reporter(1), Old Classic(2), Funny(2) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 10, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for Johnny_Vegas: 8.4483 |   |
I've lived in Los Angeles for about 2 years now. For those of you that don't know, its a sprawling city that is kinda of spread "out" as opposed to places like New York and Chicago that are spread "up". Encircling this grand metropolis that I call home are numerous mountain ranges. To the north we have the Santa Monicas and the San Gabriels, while to the east-northeast we have the San Bernadino mountains. For two years I would drive on the highway looking at the mountains in the distance. Then on a weekend family visit I went to Reno. There again I was surrounded by beautiful mountains jutting towards the sky. As I looked at a particularly large mountain by the name of Mount Rose I told my wife and her family that I wanted to climb that mountain. They thought I was crazy, and said it would take me days to climb it.
But damn, that hunk of rock didn't look THAT tall! Sure there was snow on the top, but I thought I could make out individual trees on the mountainside. Ah well.. My journey must wait for another day. Returning home, I read a book entitled Into Thin Air written by a man by the name of Jon Krauker.
The book was an account of a disastrous expedition to the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point in the world. It took place in 1996 where I believe four people (can't remember exactly) lost their lives. I highly suggest you read this book. It contains some truly inspirational accounts of bravery and human will power.
About a month later me and my wife Angi, or as some of you know her "WarriorPrincess" took a trip up to seattle to visit with my sister and mom. My sister was doing some training for work there, and we all decided to fly up and spend a four day weekend together. The second day we were there we drove up to Mt. Rainier driving up the mountain until we reached about 6000 feet. There was snow on the ground and the sites leading up to that point were spectacular. Freezing cold water falls, snowy peaks all around, lush woodland... I saw quite a few hiking trails, but I wasn't about to take a bunch of women tromping through the woods, especially with a pregnant wife. (Yes, little Johnny_Vegas will be here soon my friends!) At the ranger center, I purchased a book entitled "Mountaineering" the fifth edition. I asked the grizzled old mountaineer that was manning the cash register if it was a good book, and he said "If you want to climb mountains, that's the book that'll tell ya how to do it!". I laughed and said I wouldn't be climbing mountains any time soon, I just wanted to check it out. My sister walked up and said "If your gonna climb mountains you better get in shape first". I was thinking "No shit Tammy, thanks for pointing that out!". The mountain man then fed me a gem of wisdom that I shall remember from here unto eternity "Best way to get in shape for climbing is to just go do it." I asked the old geezer if he had climbed Mt. Rainier and he pointed at a book which he said he wrote. The book was filled with pictures of the mountain and his climbing exploits. All the women bought a copy of the book (it was cheap) and had the old guy autograph it. These are now being sold on E-Bay for $500 if anyone is interested.
As we meandered down the mountain I read the book with excitement (the mountaineering book, not the old fart's pretty picture book), and tried to concentrate on not getting car sick as we swung left, and right over and over again. There were sections on building snow caves, dealing with altitude sickness, water purification techniques and whole lot of other useful survival tips. Sure I'd probably never need to know any of this stuff, but I've seen enough movies where the plane crashes and a bunch of "city folk" are stuck in the middle of freaking nowhere, where 90 percent of the time half of them get eaten by bears. I probably read a good quarter of the entire book before I closed the cover not to read it again.
Funny side note. I saw the SIXTH edition of the same damn book in barnes and nobles a month later. Reminds me of the Gateway commercial where the guy is driving home with his new T5 computer, only to see them putting up the T6 billboard. GRRRRRRRRRR!
A couple months passed as I lived out my rather inactive life in Los Angeles working the keyboard at my programming job. I discovered a basketball court right next to our office building and soon had half the company playing games of horse once or twice a day (much to the dissatisfaction of the CEO's I'm sure). This was the extent of my excercise "regimen". I belonged to a gym, but it was way out of the way and I never went to it. I used to stay in shape in college and high school by playing basketball, but that was two years ago, and I now had nothing to keep me from falling into an early grave.
I picked up a book entitled "101 hikes in Southern California" one day at the local Barnes and Noble. It was a pretty cool book. All the hikes were rated from 1 to 5 stars in difficulty. The one stars were too easy, some of the two star hikes seemed decent, but I set my sights on the more challenging three star hikes. The description for this level of hike was "You should be in good physical condition". Well gee, I wasn't. But I had grit. I figured I was stubborn enough to attempt one or die trying (ok, ok, I'd use my cell phone and have a helicopter fly me out before I died. heh, wait what's this NO SERVICE bullshit?? NOOO!!!).
After returning from a relaxing vacation in hawaii with my lovely wife, I decided on climbing a mountain the next weekend. The first person I asked to accompany me was Will "Iron Man" Lucking. Will used to be in the marines, and now keeps in shape playing a lot of tennis. He also has done some pretty hardcore hiking in the past, but nothing very recently. I showed him my little hiking book, and he said he'd go on any hike that I chose, but preferred one kinda nearby so we didn't have to drive far. Well good, I got one person, lets try for more. I asked all my programmer friends. NO DICE. Programmers are mostly lazy "indoor types" and the majority of the programmers I knew, fit that stereo type to the T. Why climb a mountain when you can just drink Mt. Dew? It didn't make sense to them.
I decided we'd take the "Big Santa Anita Loop" hike. Basically it was a round trip, circle hike, where you climbed to the top of Mt. Zion. A rather small peak. The stats the book had for the hike were 9.4 miles, 2100 feet elevation gain, and 5.5 hours of hiking time (not counting breaks). "Hey I can do that", I thought.
It was saturday, the day before the hike. I took a trip down to my local Adventure Outfitters to stock up on supplies. Here is a list of the things I got.
- compass
- waterproof matches
- whistle
- water bottles
- first aid kit
- sunblock spf 40
- bug spray
- mini maglite flashlite
Besides all that stuff, I bought a gallon of lemon ice gatorade, some various energy bars, trail mix, and dried fruit snacks. You never know if your going to get lost. The funny thing is, my food to water ratio was WAY off. Meaning, there was no way in hell I could wash down all that food with the amount of drink I was taking, so it was really pretty dumb to bring so much damn food.
It was go time. I got up, took a quick shower, threw my water bottles in my backpack and headed out the door. I picked up Will at his apartment and we were off on our little adventure. It was time to make Mt. Zion our bitch and hopefully not the other way around.
We arrived at the entrance of a dirt road leading to the mountains, just north of Pasadena. The road was freaking blocked off! There was a sign mentioning something about forest fires and "TOO DANGEROUS! NO CARS ALLOWED". That's funny, considering my wife earlier told me to find out if their was forest fires where we were headed, and I didn't bother. (I believe I said to her "Forest fire, forest shmire! Bah")
Will pointed out that it was probably a 3-4 mile hike on that dirt road before we even got to the actual trail. That was enough for us to change plans. We instead picked a different destination. A place by the name of Mount Islip was about an hour and a half away, and looked to be a good three star hike. The funny thing is that I didn't even think that the name "I-SLIP" was unlucky at the time. It was a 7.7 mile hike, 4 miles up and 4 miles down along the "Windy Gap Trail", with a total elevation gain of 2400 feet (8500 feet at the summit). I pointed out that, while shorter, this hike was much steeper than the other one we had planned on, but we were out of options and didn't want to abandon our expedition by any means. I was PUMPED to climb, I couldn't turn around and just go home.
After paying the kind park ranger lady five bucks to enter "Angeles National Forest", I weaved my dirty old 96 Dodge Ram up the mountain headed to our start point. The ranger stated it was an "hour" to Crystal Lake park (our start point) which seemed a long ass time, but considering I could only drive 35 miles an hour up that bitch of a road, it turned out she was right. Along the way we saw a lot of people playing down in the river valley splashing around in the water. Some people were driving trucks in the mud down there and just generally goofing off. I joked with Will when I saw a truck precariously perched on the edge of a cliffside, and said how fun it would be to just give that truck a little bump. MUAHAHAHAAA!!
After paying ANOTHER freaking park ranger lady five bucks to enter "Crystal Lake Reserve" (we bitched to her about paying twice, and she told us the other rangers weren't supposed to charge us.) we arrived at a nice little parking lot, and a ranger station. Will wanted to get a better map then what we had (the one we had was hand drawn) so we headed in to meet "Buck" the park ranger. He was an old guy who appeared not to have done much hiking recently judging by his protruding gut. He didn't have much in the way of maps either, all he gave us was another crappy hand drawn map, but at least it had distances on it.
After putting some sunblock on to avoid getting barbecued, and insect repellant to avoid getting carried off by the giant forest mosquitos, we headed up the "Windy Gap Trail". The trail was decently marked with stones on either side in many places, making it very hard to lose your way, which is good cause if you got lost you might not ever get found before you died of thirst (I already had plans of hitting Will over the head and stealing his water if need be, muahaha).
The forest provided welcome relief from the hot sun as we journeyed along. The trail immediately started getting steep, with the extra exertion making me start to breathe a little heavy. I didn't want to seem like a complete wuss, so I tried not to breathe too hard at first, but I had no choice. I was an out of shape twenty four year old computer programmer, and their was no hiding that fact from the world. Will lead the way as we engaged in idle conversation, mostly complaining about the noisy campers playing loud music back by the parking lot. We really didn't understand driving out to the beautiful wilderness only to ruin the serenity of it all by blasting heavy metal, forcing everyone for miles around to listen to your damn music. Stay in your parent's basement and do that you dumb shits!
After a mere twenty minutes I asked Will to stop and let me catch my breath for a second. We had been hiking rather quickly up the steep mountain trail and I was already breathing as heavy as if I had been jogging. Some idiot had left their empty bottle of water by the trail, and I wondered at what kind of low life would litter in a place like this. I should have picked it up I guess, but I guess I just didnt feel I had that responsibility( Yes, I know, BAD JV!). Will wanted to see how heavy my backpack was, which made me think he wanted to carry TWO packs (Iron Man Will Lucking ladies and gentleman!) but instead he offered to carry one of my 32 oz waters since I was carrying a lot more water than he was. That way we evened out the load. My backpack was pretty gay. My wife bought it for me, and it had this little telescopic iron bar that came out the back, which let you pull the backpack around using the little wheels it had at the bottom. It was just not a cool hiking pack, and the silly bar and wheels were unnecessary weight. But perhaps if I was cool like Macgyver, I could disassemble the wheels and bar and fashion some sort of wheel and pully system, to lift a fallen boulder off of someone's leg saving their life. You just don't know with things like that.
 Onward we marched. We'd pass in and out of the shade of the trees. A solo hiker passed us on the trail and was far ahead within a few minutes. I was moving at a pretty steady pace taking sips of my water bottle as I walked. I found the terrain quite interesting, the trail winding its way between trees and boulders and along the sides of dried up creeks. It must look pretty nice here in the spring when the snow melt is running down the mountain filling up the stream beds. We kept going and finally we crossed the Deer Flats road for the first time. We weren't even a quarter of the way to the top at that point.
I was stopping at good 15-30 minute intervals, but for never more than a couple minutes, sometimes only 30 seconds. Perhaps I would have taken longer rests but Iron Man Lucking didnt seem to want to rest much. After a good deal of hiking we crossed the Deer Flats road yet again (see map). This put us at approximately one third of the way to the top. I was pretty darn tired, my legs were tired, my back was tired, and I still had a LONG way to go. But I was determined to keep going all the way to the top. I think it was about 11:20 or so at this point, the sun was getting warmer and the tree cover was getting thinner. The temperature gauge was close to 90 degrees. I had to refill my water bottle at around this point as well...
In some places the trail was quite narrow, if I fell it would have been the last of me. Some places I could have fallen hundreds of feet down a barren cliff-side with only boulders to slow me down. The cliffs provided great scenery of the surrounding country side, allowing me to snap quite a few pictures. So with the danger, also came beauty. I wasn't worried, I'd have to be drunk or blind to just walk right off the trail.
By looking at his map Will informed me that we had a mile to go before we reached the junction near "Little Jimmy Camp", where we'd have just another .9 miles to go until we reached the top of the Mt. Islip (Damn, I can't stop thinking of how sadistic you have to be to name a mountain that). My legs were starting to feel a little like Jello™, and I was hoping I could make the rest of the trip without Will having to throw me over his shoulder. Just one foot in front of the other, over and over. It was like being on a stair master from hell, but with pretty scenery, fresh air, and the only sound being that of my panting, pounding heart, and heavy footsteps. Will would go up to 30 yards ahead of me, then slow down for a while and let me catch up. A man and a woman hiking behind us, caught up to us, exchanged a few friendly words, then continued on ahead of us. They appeared to be "seasoned" hikers judging by the rate they were moving.
I was getting DAMN tired and we still hadn't hit the final 0.9 mile marker. I was moving at a pretty slow pace but at least I was moving. My legs felt like they were made of stone, I took relief when I hit small sections of the occasional level ground, but sure enough a large incline would follow it taking the energy right out of me. I don't think you really can appreciate how big a mountain is until you climb it. Its something you really must experience first hand to understand the scale of it all. And walking up a steep trail is probably ten times as tiring as normal level ground. Sometimes the trail would be nothing but a bunch of big rocks that would shift a little as you walked on them. You always had to be careful to not twist your ankle or to lose your balance.
Sometimes I would stop and take a picture giving me a good excuse to catch my breath for a couple of seconds. I'm glad I did though, because there was some pretty spectacular views as we got higher and higher on the mountain.
 We finally got to an old wooden sign that said "Mt. Islip Peak 0.9 Miles". WOOOODOOGIIE! Didn't seem like too far did it? In fact I could look up and it seemed that the summit was just a little ways away. Boy was I wrong. That was the hardest 0.9 miles of my life. I think the same sadistic bastard that named it Mt. Islip also put up that sign saying "0.9 miles" just to make me think "Hey its not even a full mile, just a fraction of a mile, this should be a piece of cake". The home stretch was the most difficult part of the whole journey. The trail was very steep, with constant switchbacks (That's a back and forth path to get up a steep mountain) and with ever diminishing amounts of trees to provide us shade. The worst part was when I kept expecting the top to be "right around the bend". Such cruel tricks the mountain can play on you. I kept looking at the mountains around us and saying things to Will like "It can't be too much higher look, we are already as high as the other mountain tops around us". But no, the mountain wasn't so kind as to show us to its top just yet. In fact we climbed for what seemed to be like an eternity and STILL we weren't there. I started taking tiny little breaks every five minutes or so. I had to, even though I knew we had to be real close as Will kept verbally reminding me. Finally Will just took off ahead as we sensed we were almost there. As I rounded the final bend I yelled out to Will, "Are we there yet dude??", to which he replied much to my satisfaction "Yeah I'm on the top!". That gave me renewed strength as I climbed the remaining part of the trail. I saw that the couple that had passed us were up there talking to Will, and as a joke I said "Forget it, I can't make it, I'm going back down!". That got a good laugh from the peanut gallery.
There we were on top of the mountain. I guess I actually had it in me. That's what I really wanted to prove to myself, and it was a good feeling as I looked north over the Mojave Desert. To the south was LA, but unfortunately you couldn't see much of the city because of the nice layer of smog. The surrounding mountains were very nice to look at though. Will is also a pilot, one time me and my wife flew with him over this same mountain range. The view from his airplane and the view from where I was now standing was remarkably similar as I looked out at the desert below. At the summit there were remnants of a stone cabin from 1927 as well as the footings of an old fire lookout tower. I joked with Will and the hiking couple we met, saying that would be a cool place to live. I could just sell snowcones to the hikers that came up here every weekend. Would be a bitch to haul water up here though. Now that I think about it, maybe in the winter it would be possible since the top of the mountain would have snow which you could melt and drink (You know where to find me next winter folks). I snapped a bunch of pictures, Will got one of me standing on top of a pile of rocks there at the top with my arms outstretched to the sky like some freak. That's probably the last time I'll be at 8250 feet for quite a while. Its funny to think that I live at about 10 feet above sea level, and here I was at the height of a 825 story building!
After an hour of relaxing, eating, and drinking we headed back down. I was having a very easy time of things on the way down. The only effort really in descending a steep trail is to ensure that you don't trip and fall off a cliff. Will was hauling ass, and to keep up with him I was probably going a little too fast. A couple times I almost twisted my ankle and another time I actually stumbled forward quite a ways before catching my balance. After that incident I took it a lot slower and I often would round a bend to find Will there waiting for me. I never got to rest once the entire way down, except for taking a few pics including an "action shot" that Will took of me as I rounded a corner. My feet were a little uncomfortable with some new blisters, but compared to the effort it took to go up the mountain, I was in heaven. I guess I figured we'd be off the mountain in a flash, heading downhill, but it seemed to drag on forever. As I went down the trail I was in disbelief that I had actually just gone UP the mountain a few hours before. Finally after an hour and forty-five minutes of nearly non-stop downhill hiking we entered the parking lot and the journey was over.
|
|
|
|
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
