"This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it." I kept repeating the verse over and over as I drove to this week's hiking destination. I had an idea for this week that I knew would either be terrible or brilliant. I didn't know which way it would go, but I had my suspicions. Nevertheless, I was determined to enjoy the time away in the wilderness and by the mountain I love. I was determined that the girls would have fun and I would get some great exercise. I was determined that God would enjoy a funny show watching the three of us!
So for those of you who have been following along, you know that Josie is Arctic Wolf mixed with the Iditarod Alaskan Husky. This means that she has been loving all of our winter snow hiking, but her true passion is to pull!!! When I am hiking in winter boots with spikes or even snowshoes with spikes, she cannot pull me. She tries of course, leaving me feeling like I have about been torn in two since she is always attached to a tactical belt at my waist. Her most joyful moments are when we find hills to glissade down. When we do this, Nova always sits by my side and Josie is out in front pulling with all her might. She will repeatedly look over her shoulder at us and as we gain on her, she runs faster and faster. She truly smiles from ear to ear in these moments!
When you hike alone as much as I do, you have a lot of time to think. I go down an enormous number of rabbit holes in my mind as we go along all day. I talk to God, I work out all of life's problems, I think about other hikes I want to do, I do my best to not think about my work so I can get a break from the stress of that life, and generally I explore a lot of rabbit holes. They are deep and varied I can tell you that! Two of my favorite topics to explore are math and gear. I love to calculate miles...how many I have gone, how many are yet to come, how far I think we can go, distances between landmarks, how long it will take us, what time it will be when we get to XY and Z. I don't know why, but I can really obsess about numbers when hiking. I am constantly recalculating in my brain and testing my senses. Then, when not doing that, I love assessing gear. What do I have with me, what would be better, what might work differently for different situations.....I go through all things gear related. This is the rabbit hole I was down when I planned for this week's hike.
You see, I had to come up with a way for Josie the Wolf to get to pull us, while still allowing for freedom and exercise for Nova and I. At first I thought about an iditarod cart. I could put my pack and Nova in it and let Josie pull it. But it would be heavy to lift in and out of my truck, would not be very mobile on the trail and I didn't feel like I would get the exercise I wanted with a cart. Then I thought about cross country skis. I have never been on skies in my life, but I can easily see that they are too long to work with Nova. When the snow is deep, my little Princess needs me to break trail for her and she walks right in my boot steps. She couldn't do this with long skis and still stay leashed with a reasonable length tied on. Also, long skis would be terrible to carry on my short frame if I didn't want to ski all the time. I knew a basic kid's sled would work well, but it would be no exercise for me if I just sat in it. After much debating, I finally had the idea that a snowboard was the way to go. It would be mobile and easy to strap onto my back. It would be short enough to break trail for Nova. When I rode it, I would still be getting great exercise at least in my core. So I went to a used gear store and bought a youth board figuring that at under 5 feet tall, I could be considered a youth in size. I wanted as lightweight of a board with bindings as I could make work for packing.
Realistically I knew we had a lot to work through. I had to train the Wolf when to start, and more importantly stop. I had to figure out a way to steer her in all circumstances and keep her from pulling me off a cliff if she saw a woodland creature running. I had to learn balance on a small board that I have never in my life attempted to stand on. I knew this would be an adventure and was so excited to hit the trail. We got to my new favorite snow park on Mt Adams and parked near the emergency shelter there. It looked to almost be buried in snow and I could barely make out the chimney on the top.
As I geared up and strapped that board to the outside of my pack and attached the spikes to my boots, I was feeling tough and confident. The plan was to hike as far out as we needed to until all boot prints, snowshoe prints and ski tracks ended. Then go another mile or two and find a big hill just to make sure there would be no witnesses. We only had to go about 5 miles until all signs of humans were gone. Perfect I thought. On the way we saw a sign on this closed forest service road. I felt it was the perfect time to converse with the Wolf about how fast she would be allowed to pull me. She listened intently and focused on that sign like a good girl.
Once we found our big private hill, I took my pack off to get the board ready. As I traded the spikes for the board, I remembered the kid who was running the sporting goods store, who looked to be about 12 years old, had told me if you are learning for the first time, it is best to only put the front boot in the binding and leave the other foot loose. Okay, I thought. I will give that a go. As I got my left foot strapped in and my gloves back on, Nova was the first to start pulling. I watched that board go flying toward her down the hill with my left foot attached. However my right foot was staying behind with the rest of me and before I knew what was happening, I was doing the splits and sliding down the hill in a very uncomfortable manner. I had to roll out of that position onto my face to stop the descent. Now that I was fully coated in snow from our warm up, I figured I would give it a go again. Over and over and over again, I did the splits. I lost track of how many times, but it was surely more than a dozen. Truly feeling a level of hatred toward the kid at the store, I decided to strap both feet in the bindings of the board. I stood there not moving. Both dogs were staring at me. Since I didn't seem to be walking, they thought we were taking a break. "Let's go" I said! Nothing. They just stared at me. I tried again...."let's go guys!" as I made a little jump with the board to show that I was ready. They both took off in slightly different directions to each side of me. BOOM! That board flipped from parallel to the run to perpendicular and I face planted right into the powder at my feet. Well, at least the snow is soft today, I thought. Josie thought I was surely down there to play with her and started pouncing on top of my body and licking my face. "Stop!!" I cried while laughing. We were all so completely covered in snow! I started to think that this was my new favorite position on the trail....flat on my back with a board partially underneath me. More comfortable than the splits though!
By this time, you can see that Nova was concerned about me, but Josie just wanted to eat snow. We tried again and again. Getting off the ground when tied to that board was even harder than getting up with snowshoes attached. But I was determined to give this a good trial. The biggest challenges were being tied to 2 dogs....one 60 pounds and one 35 pounds. Either was strong enough to pull the board on the snow with me in tow, but they kept going different directions and were not working as a team. Each time they did this, I would either fall on my back or my face. Balance on the small board was way harder than I thought it would be especially with my full pack and with the dogs pulling from my side and not my front. But at one point, I finally got a good run going! I was so excited! The board was sailing smoothly on top of the snow (we were finally off the hill and that helped with control) and I was balanced with both feet strapped into the bindings. But then I made the mistake of apparently squealing (didn't know I could make that sound) and this was some unknown form of communication to the Wolf to start jumping up and down doing belly flops in the snow in front of me. So down I went. Well that was a truly brilliant 10 1/2 seconds of my life!
Just as I got back up on the board and was ready to go again, Josie smelled something in the snow and decided she needed to dig down and explore this. She loves sticking her entire head as deep down as she can in the powder! I was just praying she was not going to come up with another deer body part! Who knows what was down there.
After over an hour of trying to kill myself on that board I finally decided that this has to be a young person sport and it was just unreasonable for someone at almost 50 years of age to do it with 2 dogs attached to them. Even Nova agreed and hoped I would leave it in the woods behind us. We never needed to fear the 35 mph speed limit that is for sure!
But I strapped that board back onto my pack and we snow hiked out the way we had come in, just not nearly as tough and confident! As the day was stretching out into dusk, I realized that the peaceful large snowflakes that had been falling all day were turning more violent. It was really coming down and the wind was whipping the now smaller and harder ice pellets into my face. As we put our heads down and headed toward the truck, I went back down the rabbit hole of what would work to make that Wolf happy. I started thinking about taking snowboard bindings and attaching them to a small kid's sled so I could stand on it and at least face the dogs while they pulled me rather than trying to stand sideways to them. The sled would need to be light weight and small enough to strap on my back though. As I debated these design ideas, another idea hit me! Even though today was a bit of a failure when it came to snowboarding with Beauty and the Beast, there was a way that I could salvage the day with a Tupperware moment. You all know about Bucket list moments. Well, when something isn't great enough to make the Bucket list, but is still cool, I call them Tupperware moments. We could spend the night in the shelter back at the snow park if no one else is there! It had a wood stove in it and I had firewood in my truck. I had plenty of gear and food with us. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. I have this thing that I do when I am debating a plan. I ask myself if when I am eighty years old, resigned to a rocking chair, (if I can even remember this,) will I regret not doing it? If the answer is remotely yes, then I have to do it. We hiked with new purpose to that shelter praying we would find it vacant.
There is one problem with this shelter. One wall is missing and it has those long vinyl slats like you expect in a meat-locker. The first time I approached this shelter I had this terrible and unreasonable thought that I would open the slats to find human bodies hanging by chains inside. I don't even watch horror movies, but my mind made one up all on its own!! But luckily there were no bodies inside. However, while we are on gruesome thoughts, the ancient cast iron wood stove just off center in the room is large enough to easily shove an entire human body in without even needing to cut them up. So I dubbed it the "Crematorium" and started work to get a fire going inside her. I had to climb halfway inside her to get that fire started. The stove was so old that the dampers were rusted open on the bottom and I struggled a fair amount to have enough wood to keep the thing going and not fill the room with smoke. The smoke didn't always want to get up that chimney and would back out to us, burning our eyes and making us cough. Now I know wood stoves very well. You could say they are a talent of mine. We heat our log cabin that we live in with only a wood stove and a pellet stove, so I have been starting fires for decades!! But this beast was very temperamental. In the morning Josie posed next to her. We all had a love-hate relationship with the Crematorium that night.
I am not going to lie that spending the night in the middle of January in a snow and wind storm up near a mountain did make for a cold night even with the shelter and the stove. But I had lit up some festive candles and pulled out all my bedding from my truck. I heated our food on the wood stove, wishing I had brought a frying pan and eggs for breakfast!! I have had colder nights in the woods, but this night was very sleepless since the wind kept making the vinyl slats slap loudly together startling us all. I also had to keep feeding the stove every hour or so all night long. But I always say no rest for the wicked!! Nova made herself right at home though.
After a long and cold night, Josie volunteered to show off the great shelter when the light of day came through the wall of slats and the windows the next morning. We will miss this room with all its log beams, rafters and benches. Better than any hotel room I would want to stay in! I know some women love a night out on the town. They dream of going to fancy restaurants, theaters, casinos, hotels, whatever people nowadays like to do. But shelters like these are the kind of places I dream of!! It was a great Tupperware night if you ask me! Now I just have to figure out what to strap on my feet next week to let the Wolf have her own Bucket List Day! Stay tuned my friends.
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