I Took a Nap and Couldn't Find My Way Back

Desolation Wilderness, CA · 2014 · Second trip, still borrowing gear

Two years after my first trip, I went back to Desolation Wilderness. A little more confidence, the same borrowed gear, and a brand-new way to get myself in trouble.

These photos aren't great — they were shot on an old HTC phone, and it shows. But every blurry one of them is attached to a lesson I only learned by getting it wrong. Same wilderness as last time. Same habit of borrowing everything and showing up with not quite enough of it.

Night 1 I froze in a hammock

First night, camped near Lake Aloha. My first time sleeping in a hammock on the trail.

This was my first night ever sleeping in a hammock on the trail, and I loved the idea of it. I still do — I'd recommend a hammock to anyone, with one enormous caveat: only with the right gear. I had borrowed a hammock but not an underquilt, and we were camped near Lake Aloha where the breeze comes across the water all night. With nothing insulating me from below, that breeze stripped the heat right out from under me. I practically froze.

Same story as two years earlier: under-prepared, borrowing all my equipment, and missing the one piece that actually mattered.

Camp A bear hang on a dead tree

A PCT hang — the technique isn't allowed in Desolation anymore. Solid execution, questionable tree choice.

I'd leveled up since the last trip, at least a little. This time I rigged a proper PCT hang — a technique that, for what it's worth, is no longer allowed in Desolation Wilderness (a bear canister is the rule now). The hang itself was actually pretty decent. The problem was the tree: I'd slung it on a dead one. If a bear had climbed up and snapped the branch off, dinner would've come right down to it. Right idea, wrong tree.

Day 2 Becoming a photographer

My big artistic statement over Lake Fontanillis. The HTC and I gave it our best.

The next day I decided I was a photographer. This is my attempt at a masterpiece over Lake Fontanillis. The lake did most of the work; the phone did the rest; I mostly stood there and pointed it in the right direction.

The mistake A mile from camp, and lost

Getting artistic. Then getting horizontal.

A mile or more from everyone else, with no plan for how to find my way back.

Then I got artistic, and then I got horizontal. I found a warm slab of granite and took a nap — and ended up wasting hours of the afternoon asleep, a good mile or more from the rest of the group, with no one around. When I finally woke up, I pointed myself back toward camp and started walking. And almost immediately I wasn't sure. Which way was it, really? Was I heading toward camp or away from it?

I made it back. But for a while there I genuinely didn't know which direction I should be going, and that is exactly how a good day turns into a bad one. You have to keep track of where you are — where camp is, where the group is, which way you came from. Wandering off alone with none of that in your head was a huge mistake. It happened to end fine. It very easily might not have.

Drifting off to sleep a mile from camp is lovely. Waking up unsure which way camp is, is not.

Afternoon The reward

Earned it. Cold-lake therapy.

We swam to wash the day off. Cold-lake therapy is one of the few things on this trip I got completely right.

Morning The cup that bit back

A great morning, undercut by a titanium cup that turns coffee into a lip burn.

It was a great morning, right up until the coffee. Borrowed titanium cup — light, packable, and a brilliant conductor of heat. The whole rim went scalding, so every sip burned my lips. Once again: borrowed, and not the right gear for the job. Lots of hard lessons on this trip, most of them about the difference between having gear and having the right gear.

Heading out Views, and a dose of humility

On the way out. Worth every wrong decision that got me here.

On the way out, the wilderness handed us some great views — the kind that make you forgive yourself for a frozen night and a burned lip.

Nothing humbles your rugged self-image like getting passed by kids.

And then, because the trail has a sense of humor: kids. Nothing reminds you how rugged you are quite like watching a group of children march the same miles you just suffered through, completely unbothered.

The lesson Know where you are — and what you're carrying

Two trips into Desolation, two versions of the same problem. The first time, I followed other people and never knew where I was. The second time, I walked off on my own and still didn't know where I was — just with worse consequences waiting if I'd guessed wrong on the way back.

You don't have to be an expert to stay found. You just need to always know where you are relative to camp, the trail, and the way back. When you load your route into Backpackers Friend before you leave, your position lives in your pocket. You can see camp, see the trail, and see exactly which way to walk when you wake up from a nap a mile out — no signal required.

The gear lessons I had to learn the hard way. This one, you don't.