Week 06 found us heading into the mountains of central Nevada, namely the Arc Dome Wilderness area and Jefferson Summit. The wet weather that took a break while we hiked across the desert returned to us in the mountains. The straightforward route finding was replaced by trails hard to find and hard to follow, and the day packs were replaced with full packs. As I reminisce about this week, what sticks out in my mind are three campsites and one very special day.
The ADT route suggested a jeep road into the Arc Dome wilderness, but our FS map showed a parallel trail. Hey! We’re hikers! We are going to hike on trails when available! That is when I received my first lesson about alleged Nevada “trails.” The trail petered out to nothing, leaving us to traverse the rugged side of a ridge like billy goats. With evening approaching we headed down to a willow-choked creek for camp.
The next morning made this campsite memorable. As a light sleeper I am awake at first light. Around 6:00 am, when Cindy first began to stir, she asked me if I heard two women talking as they walked by our tent.
I pointed out the folly of how we arrived at our isolated campsite, literally as far off the beaten path as possible. Could she imagine two women choosing a route that traversed steep, rocky ridges and/or slashed up through willow choked creeks for miles as part of their daily morning walk? We both had a good laugh at that. I sometimes share the story as an amusing anecdote, while yet wondering whether Cindy’s condition accounted for such a hallucination.
The next day we made our way back to the official ADT route, which now followed a trail, a designated National Recreation Trail in fact. As we hiked up through a narrow, V-shaped valley the trail doggedly stayed in the creek bed. The overgrowth of willows and other vegetation suggested the trail had not been maintained for years, maybe decades. The frequent crossings of the creek, a definite hindrance to hikers, suggested the trail was created for horse riders.
We crossed the creek almost twenty times in just three miles. The water was often knee high or higher due to all the wet weather the west had been having. Eventually we just left our boots on for the crossings, instead of wasting time constantly taking them off and putting them on. The wet vegetation soaked them anyway.
Rain came down intermittently while dark storm clouds blanketed Arc Dome and the high pass towards which we were heading. We stopped hiking early when we hit the upper limits of shrub sized vegetation, avoiding the exposed higher elevations before the impending storm let loose. That turned out to be the right call as thunder exploded around us that evening and during the night. In the morning we awoke to ice and snow outside the tent.
A few days later we camped just below a pass near Jefferson Summit. After a long day of ascending out of Carvers we stopped at a high altitude grassland, near a small stream and with an open view towards the setting sun. I spent the evening taking pictures of the scenic panorama while Cindy wrote in her journal, sitting comfortably amidst the grass.
Our campsite embodied the purpose of our trip, providing a stress free environment for Cindy, surrounded by the natural beauty and wildness she loves. I suspected this campsite would rank in the top five for our trip; in hindsight I was right. Yet in order to write in her journal Cindy needed my continual input as to what happened the past couple days. In essence I was writing in her journal for her.
Our route the next day followed dirt roads up over the pass, down to a high desert and on to a campground. As the day was Saturday, July 3rd we encountered a surprising amount of recreationalists for backcountry dirt roads in Central Nevada. As the day came at the tail end of a heat wave, the majority of those recreationalists stopped to offer their assistance.
I subsequently referred to that day as “Trail Angel Day” in talks and writings about the ingredients that elicit kindness. Backpackers across a desert on the last day of a three day heat wave engages people’s empathy. People recreating on a Fourth of July weekend were not too hurried by their busy lives. As they encountered us separately from each other there was not the diffusion of responsibility that occurs in mass societies and urban living. The result was gifts of water, food, smiling encouragement and even a monetary donation!
My intestinal problems that day may have contributed to a pathetic look that invoked empathy. I believe in the well-supported hygiene hypothesis, which essentially claims that the immune system benefits from a workout like other parts of our body. The hygiene hypothesis provides an explanation for why the Spanish flu perplexingly ravaged younger adults instead of old and why hygienic city folk have more allergies. The hypothesis explains why people get sicker when they drink bad water the more they try to prevent the possibility through filtration.
In 1975, the year of my first long distance hike, my “filtration system” was dipping a Sierra cup into whatever lake or small stream I encountered. No one filtered back then, yet no one in my circle of hikers became sick. By the 1980s the comeback of beavers and the increase of a bacterial infection known as “beaver fever” led to the common practice of filtering water. For many hikers this meant filtering all water; for me that meant assessing the surroundings and filtering only when I thought prudent.
Over 20,000 miles of backpacking later, after drinking from countless sources of unfiltered water, I have felt ill three times from bad water: once on the Continental Divide Trail in 1985; once on the Wonderland Trail in 2005; and now on the ADT, likely from water in the Arc Dome area. Two of those three times I suspect, from the symptoms of extended lethargy and diarrhea, that I had “beaver fever.” However, each time my symptoms were mild enough to allow me to continue hiking without any medical intervention or prolonged rest.
Upon looking back, I now realize that Cindy was with me on each of those occasions, drank from the exact same unfiltered sources and never got sick at all. I realize as well that Cindy seldom suffered from colds. Her immune system appears to be mightier than mine, yet not mighty enough to ward off dementia.
Hi Kirk, I am really enjoying reading each chapter as you send it along. Thank you for sharing.