cuchillo

I should be going to bed right now, but I wanted to write about the weekend. I just got the photos developed.

Tina, Scott, Brandon, and I took a vote Friday morning on whether to car-camp or do some actual backpacking. We decided to backpack even though it would be cold and snowy. Before the hike though, we went with Zach, Rachael, and Rocky to cut some wood for a family in Stevensville. They wanted to give us a pig in exchange for cutting up some logs.

We got quite a bit cut in the few hours we were there. We had two chainsaws running and the others were collecting the wood and taking it to the lean-to. The people whose wood we were cutting were gone, but they left us some pizza to bake, and warned us not to let the cows out. One of the cows got out, but we were able to round it up and put it back in its pen.

After taking the edge off of our endurance, we headed up to Canyon Creek for the hike. The car couldn't make it all the way up to the trailhead due to the slick, and steep, mountain road so we parked it in a turnout and hiked the half-mile to the trailhead. We stuck our thumbs out to one guy who drove by, but he didn't pick us up.

We reached the trailhead at 4:30, which is not an ideal time to start a four-mile hike when the sun sets at 5:30 or so. We hiked in the dark for a while, and although we didn’t reach the lake like we had hoped, we found a nice little spot to set up the tents at about 7:00. It was getting quite cold at this point, so we build a fire and made some hot cocoa, hot cider, and hot food. Nothing beats a Mountain House meal in the cold. You can feel the ball of heat go down your throat, and into your stomach. We build what started out as a little struggling fire into a bonfire with six-foot flames. That warmed us up.

Somewhere around this point, we noticed that Tina was wearing tennis shoes and cotton socks. I said, “your feet must be cold,” and she said that they were very cold. Tina must never complain about anything, because she didn’t complain about the cold once on this incredibly cold hike. Scott gave her his extra pair of wool socks, and she dried her shoes out around the fire.

The next morning I woke up early, and headed up the trail for about a half-mile without reaching the lake so I came back to camp. Tina was up by this time. We didn’t have any water left so I went down to the creek and filtered three Nalgenes, which took about an hour with my incredibly slow filter. Thank God for Gore-Tex boots because I broke through the ice and planted a foot in the stream but didn’t get wet.

When I got back from pumping water everyone else was up, and we decided to forego making it to the lake because it was already getting late in the day. So after Brandon, who has poor circulation, finished warming his toes to a tolerable state, we headed back.

You know how nice it is too get back to the car from a hike, especially a difficult hike? It is really nice, but when Scott got back to where he parked the car wasn’t there. He had a conversation with a couple loggers that went something like this:


Then he looked over the edge of the road, and there was the old Subaru. The loggers wondered why there wasn’t snow on the ground where they parked. From the looks of the scene, someone broke the windows in the car, took it out of gear, and released the brake, and shoved it off the mountain. We called the police and began the wait. One guy stopped. He was hunting with his daughter. He asked us if we were okay, and if we needed a ride. We said thanks and asked him if he could take Tina and Brandon to town and Scott and I would wait. Then they guy said, “Oh, well I’m not going there. I’m just going over to the next canyon.” I guess he didn’t really want to give us a ride.

Later, another car came down, and a nice couple picked up Tina and Brandon. They waited at Perkins, and we waited for the Highway Patrol. Rocky picked up Scott and me after the car was out, and we met Courtney and Zach at Perkins with Brandon, Tina, and the nice couple who even stayed to talk to Tina and Brandon.

We got back to Missoula quite a bit later than planned on Saturday, and Scott left for Great Falls quite a bit later than planned. My truck is stuck at the guys, because my keys are in the car or on the mountain. All this surprised us, but it didn’t surprise God. We trust that he’ll take care of everthing.