VIDEO HERE: http://youtu.be/dFIC9tWwK50

Its been  a long time since the day I promised my mom that I could take her camping with backpacks lighter than my laptop. Backpacks so light and so well fitted that she would forget she is wearing it and just enjoy the trip.

If you are unfamiliar with ultra lightweight backpacking you can read about it here: http://jonathandaar.com/science/?p=14 

But moving on, I got a message on my phone on January 05 2012 from my mother that she just got the last of her gear in the mail and she wanted to go tomorrow, I told her that I would run home and grab my stuff, she would then pick me up in an hour and half and tell me, me wearing a super thin shirt, lightweight and breezy boxer sized shorts and my toe shoes: oh Jonathan its going to be cold, oh ok I said, running back in to grab a pair of underwear and a pair of socks, “I’ll slip into these if it gets chilly, I said pointing to the underwear and I’ll slip into these when I go to sleep, I said pointing to the socks.

Its been so hot the past few days, I was looking forward to the cooler mountain air.

I packed everything but food and the next day I headed out with my stepdad Jim to gather supplies.

My mother is doing the whole 30 challenge, that’s 30 days of eating only whole unprocessed foods plus no grains or beans.

Me, already eating pretty close to this due to how great I feel on the drug of good health and my favorite foods am very happy for her.

So We , headed to trader joes and picked up  free range eggs, grass fed beef, Bell Peppers, Avocados,  Carrots, Broccoli, and Brussel Sprouts. Such a fine feast! I’m getting hungry writing this!

But Jim was not satisfied, we had to make a stop off at another market so he could feed his crippling addiction to power bars and M&M’s

So We, with all our food started heading out to some place none of us have ever been to before, some place in the Angeles Mountains that my mother heard about from someone working at REI.

Its supposed to be really pretty she said.

By the time we finally got there it was getting late into the afternoon, perhaps 3pm

So here we are setting off!

 

My mother liked my backpack so much she traded backpacks with me.

And so we were off!

Burnt Trees

A LOT of snow

As we trudged on it got colder and colder, far colder than I, valley boy had experienced in years. But I was moving and generating heat.

Once we got to the campsite my toes were starting to get cold! The ground felt like ice(perhaps because a lot of it was ice)!

But doing my best to tough it out we started the actual camping bit:

Here is Jim starting to boil up  a cup of water.

and here’s my mama setting up camp a hundred yards away(you’re supposed to do this for so animals don’t associate humans so much with food). We picked a dip between trees that seemed like it would keep us warmer.

So we cooked, enjoyed a hearty meal, put all our food in a bag and suspended it in the trees with twine and at 6:30 jumped into our sleeping bags in the icy dark, turned in our headlights and waited till sunrise.

I learned a lot,

I learned that cooking in a pot rather than a pan was much more efficient, and I’ve decided to start cooking all my meals, as soups.  They cook more evenly, faster, use less fuel and you can use your eating spoon for cooking that way. Up until now I would often try to cook conventional foods such as Burgers and even brought a tiny spatula with me. But now I’ll even be poaching my eggs.

I learned how fucking cold my toes could get. I’m going to try going up again wearing thin toe socks but I’m not sure how much that will help. I’ll likely need a special pair of trail shoes for super cold weather.    I’ve heard a lot of great things about innov8 and if I want to go anywhere super cold a pair of minimalist hiking shoes this will likely be what I end up getting.

I learned how important it is to angle your feet downward on even a slight slope.  Slowly over the night we all rolled down off our sleeping pads over the night. It was so freezing cold, and I was taking most of the light but chilling wind for our group yet we all made it threw the night ok in our sleeping bags.

I learned how important it was to plan your trip on not only the weather but the Moon! The moon was almost entirely full, illuminating our sky and preventing us from seeing the stars. Sure we could have hiked all night in that light, but with the cold we weren’t about to!

 

It was DEAD quiet that night. We heard not a single sound other than the wind as we layed snuggled next to each other in the wind. My mother told me that if there is anything I wanted to talk to her about now as the time, it was too cold for her to read a book, and we had all night to talk. But there wasn’t anything I wanted to say. I was unusually quiet, choosing instead to take all this time to think about my life instead.

I got up late in the night to take a piss. My shoes were ice cold and I didn’t want to have to take off the thin warm socks I did have, so I tried stepping into my stepdad’s size 11 boots, that’s one size too small and thus I ended up walking about with my feet pointed down and my heels on edge, I felt like a stripper. Tip toeing under the moonlight away from my family I started to get really tense, I kept looking around me, expecting something to start charging at me from any angle, at any distance. As I started pissing I looked down in dismay “ Yeah I’m still afraid of being alone in the woods.” before quickly bringing it back up and scanning the horizon for enemies.

As I snuggled back in to my sleeping bag I thought to myself that this is the greatest hurdle for me, the fear of being alone, truly alone, in nature. I still remember the last time I went hiking by myself I ninjaed my way threw the forest, walking on needles, quietly creeping while looking and listening for hidden foes. I felt that there must be a Rattlesnake, or a Scorpion lurking in wait for me.

In the morning I yelped as I slid my bare toes into my ice cold shoes which due to our rolling was no longer underneath my legs.

We went to check on the food to find that the twine had snapped overnight, dropping everything about 10 feet. We’ll bring proper rope next time but man EVERYTHING was covered in eggs. We cleaned it all off and packed everything back up in our last garbage bag and on my toes insistence headed home. I asked for the car keys because I new I would get there first and charged up the mountain, feeling better and better as my body generated heat. After 35 minutes I was at the top and in the car, already so warm that I was back in shorts and a t-shirt. After 15 minutes my stepdad arrived. 

We waited another 15 minutes and my mama still wasn’t there. Jim wanted to go down to look for her,  I  handed him a comic illustrating the adventures of Smokey the bear I picked up at the rangers station and told him to read it, as I would instead. 

I bounded down the mountain looking for her and cupping my hands  to shout like a boy who had lost his dog. “MAAAMA!” “oh MAMAAA!”

After I traveled down a few turns of the mountains I found her, shuffling her feet and looking exhausted.  I took her light pack off of her, placed it on my back and bounded up some of the slope. I then waited as she slowly walked up: “actually the pack wasn’t slowing me down, I don’t feel any better. Now my back is cold and I need my jacket.” She said. So I gave her a jacket and thought about what I could do.

“Well I can’t carry you up…” I said. but then I realized what I had to do! I gently bent down behind her and  put my hands on her back and started pushing her up the mountain. Now all she had to do was keep her legs moving. We got to a brisk pace doing this and eventually I had her all the way at the top!

Our trip was over, we were ready to return home.