The battery hike

We had an inordinate number of equipment crises on this first day, the most critical being when we realized that none of our rechargeable batteries had charged. That meant that our radio receivers, MP3 recorders, GPSs and two-way radios all were dying. Without the receivers, we couldn't find our bird; without the MP3, we had no way to record our precious heart-rate data; and without the GPS and the two-way, no way to find each other.

I volunteered to go get batteries, which I thought would not be too hard; I only had to find my way back to my car, which I knew was close to the main road, and I knew there was 1 trail through this area a bit to the south of us. So: hike south till I hit the trail, then follow the trail to the spur road, follow the spur road to the main road, follow the main road to my car, then get in my car, drive to the nearest tourist store and get batteries. Then find Jamie again.

The scramble south got to be a bit eerie. I walked and walked and walked, but no trail. I KNEW the trail had to be there, and since the trail did a huge loop around us, there was no way to avoid hitting it eventually. Yet it was strange to be plunging off into unknown territory in a strange direction. I walked and walked and walked, down ridges and through woods and down ridges and through woods. Could I have missed it? Could it be such a tiny, unmarked trail that I had marched right over it without noticing?

I'd popped out of the woods by now. I was in a huge flat mesa of beautiful sagebrush desert, hiking through wildflowers. I took one more step and suddenly there it was, right underfoot, stretching away to me left and right, clear as day, a trail!

So then I followed the trail, and it seemed to go on for a long, long, long way. (two miles, I figured later, but it seemed longer) It curled up and down through the enchantingly beautiful sagebrush flats, then climbed back up to the mountain ridges, past magically beautiful views of the Tetons, then dropped down past a beautiful pond, and then, with that same shocking sense of suddenness as when I'd found the trail, there was the spur road, right under me. Freshly paved and shockingly black, it seemed like an alien landing strip in the middle of all that wilderness.

Now all I had to do was follow it a little ways to the main road.

A "little ways". I turned left and started walking. Plod, plod, plod. It was mid-day by this time and the black asphalt was bakingly hot. The sun was blazing down. Plod, plod, plod. Plod, plod, plod. I could not believe how slowly the road moved past me. I started noticing tiny details of the repaving job - oh, here's where the steamroller had to back up a bit; here's where they must have dropped a new load of gravel.

It was extremely hot. I started zigzagging from tree shadow to tree shadow. Tourist cars zoomed past occasionally and I thought vacantly "I should ask somebody for a ride," but by the time the thought drifted into my head, the car was already long past.

An extremely long time passed and I was still walking in the sun, on the hot black road.

f-i-n-a-l-l-y came .. The Main Road! yay!

Now I just had a little ways to go.

plod, plod, plod.

- whoosh - [car going past] "maybe I should ask somebody for a ride..."

plod, plod, plod

AT LAST the turnoff to where my Forester was parked! A tiny bit more plodding and there was my Forester. It looked magical and surreal, like a spacecraft. Could this vehicle actually propel me without my having to walk?? I unlocked it - got it - started it up - so strange to suddenly be seated in the plush seats of car, driving. The Forester whisked me at what seemed an impossibly fast velocity - forty miles an hour! my god! it was incredible! - right past that spur road entrance, right past all those Signal Mountain woods that I'd been hiking through, till I reached tourist central, Signal Mountain Lodge. Dozens of RVs driving around, women with thick make-up tottering on high heels to the Signal Mountain cafe, people getting gas, kids running around, two or three Harley bikers, people with rafts and kayaks. And a little convenience store surrounded by tourists buying bad coffee and horrifically disgusting snack food. I walked in and said "I'd like to buy all your double-A batteries."

Batteries in hand, I sat still in the car for a moment, chowed down a huge bag of Smartfood popcorn at enormous velocity, then drove back to Signal Mountain. Jamie and I were communicating by text message on our cell phones now, since our two-way radios were dead. But both cell phones were near dying too. Jamie told me "Just go up to the lookout at the top of the mountain, come down that same trail again, and about 1 minute after you go past a hairpin turn, turn right and hike up the next ridge. I'm on top of that ridge."

What Jamie didn't know was that it wasn't 1 minute past the hairpin, it was 6 minutes past the hairpin; and that there wasn't 1 ridge, there were five parallel ridges, (at least), steeply divided from each other by scrambly steep gullies full of those perfectly round little rocks. I scrambled up and over one. It was completely exhausting. Jamie wasn't there. I scrambled down the other side, nearly falling a dozen times, and plodded up the second. Jamie wasn't there. I scrambled down the other side, saw a third ridge, started to get a very bad feeling about this whole thing, started scrambling up the third....

Finally, five ridges later, there was Jamie! Perched bright as day by a gigantic fallen trunk on skinny ridgetop #5. Nearly mute with exhaustion at this point, I just collapsed next to her.

"THERE HE GOES!" said Jamie. She charged down ridge 5. I called out, "Wait, wait! The batteries!" "Oh yeah," We swapped batteries, got our two-ways going, and she charged down ridge 5 and up ridge 6, while I trailed contentedly behind, battery quest over.