Camp!

Campsite attained!

I sat on a log, ditched the beastly snow shoes and rested... till my swirling head told me I had to eat something soon.

i quickly set up kitchen, hastly made some ramen and slurped it all down in record time. Ramen never tasted so good in my life. I didn't even need to force myself to drink the rinse water out of the pot I made the ramen in.

The food in my belly, the tent was next. My friend Jeff suggested I dig a small hole in the outline of the tent to provide extra windshelter and keep me warmer for the night. I used the snow shovel I brought with me to dig the hole about 4 inches deep. In hindsight, I'm not sure if this helped much, but it was fun nonetheless.

Trying self arrest that evening didn't go so well. The snow was a skier / snowboarder's dream: powder. But for me to try and initiate a slide was impossible. I'd jump out onto a 30 or 40 degree slope only sinking in about 2 feet and going nowhere.

I just gave up, out of breath and tired to go back to the campsite.

I started dinner (tortellini and tomato pesto). I also managed to find the time and energy to stamp the snow down with the snow shoes to make short paths between the sitting log, kitchen and the tent (and by stamping, I mean stamping, stomping, jumping up and down, and otherwise beating the snow down). This ended up being very fortuitous - I could now walk these paths with just my boots (so much nicer!) and for the next morning.

I went to bed that night at around 5 pm with a headache. I realized that the past couple of hours, I've been having trouble making clear decisions, been having a throbbing headache and felt a bit nauseous. Probably a combination of dehydration - but also partly altitude sickness. Up to this point, I was considering hiking off Black Mountain b/c felt kinda bored, but also loneliness crept in. But I knew that with how I was physically feeling, the smartest thing for me to do was to trust my gear and rest for the night. So i popped an ibuprofen pill (go drugs!), and hunkered down inside my sleeping bag liner, which was inside my sleeping bag, which was inside my bivy, which was inside my tent which was inside a 3" deep hole. I was good to go that night, despite the occasional coughing fits.

A note about the mental anguish. I went up there initially to take a vacation from life in general - no people, no objects or anything else of my usual life. Just some quiet time to myself. But I ended up having to face inner fears and thoughts up there by myself. WHich is all good - I knew this would happen :) I figured it was akin to a religious retreat. Like the guys who filmed the March of the Penguins said "we were alone - and face to face with only ourselves".

I completely woke up once in the middle of the night when I had to pee. I'm so happy with my bladder - even though I spent 20 minutes trying to debate if it was worth it to get up and pee. The outside was relatively warm for a night in the snow, but the moon was awesome! It was only half full, but its light reflected off the snow and the snow amplified the ambient light levels in turn.

With morning, I walked around my headache gone. It was dawn - I think I slept for about 12 hours, off and on throughout the night. I noticed that on my way to the kitchen, that I wasn't sinking the usual foot into the snow when i walked off the (literally) beaten path - the snow froze into ice! This meant that I could try practicing self arrests!!!

I made breakfast (oatmeal with a few handfuls of gorp), boiled some snow for the hike out and jumped around like a stupid giddy child as I found steeper slopes to try self arrests.

A few words about this - self arresting is incredibly exhausting. Each attempt (all successful!) put me out of breath. I tried all sorts of different scenarios too - feet first, head first, belly down, belly up. I even tried one were I intentionally lost my ice axe and made a self arrest with my hands and toes. I even did a few stupid ones - self arrests with crampons on. Why stupid? there are dozens of injuries each year on self arrests with crampons where someone accidentally piereces their legs, or the crampons catch prematurely and breaks their ankles. And if I got injured, the 6 mile hike out would be really really long...

I figured that if I were to make ice travel a more common thing, I'll have to practice for any situation - even those that aren't optimal. So I slid down a few slopes always rememebering to pull my feet up and away from the ice while braking - forunately, I never injured myself. :)

I considered staying longer at camp and doing the things I wanted to do before I came here, but I wanted to take advantage of the icy conditions. In some areas, the snow has already thawed. I tried walking a few paces with the snowshoes initially, but instead, took them off and hiked with just my ice axe. I figured I could use the ice axe to help steady myself on the softer snow, use it to glissade when the slopes permit and as a self arrest tool if I slipped while glissading.

I started my hike away from camp - but before I went, I made sure to give a respectful bow to camp. I felt it was necessary - something zen taught me to do I suppose.