Postholy Indeed

I am no mountaineer. Sure, I have a few friends that have all the mountain gear you could ever want. These guys camp for REI sales. I just don’t think I’ll ever get around to doing that. Going into the mountains with some of these guys can be very intimidating actually. I feel inferior because I have to mooch off of the pros for shelter, cooking supplies, and filtered water.

I use my dad’s 1970 Slumberjack when I go into the mountains. I have my own pack now, but let’s not get carried away. I don’t have climbing boots, hiking poles, or any sort of map of the backcountry. I don’t even know if those hiking poles have a special name. Oh, I just found them at the Mountainsmith website. They are called trekking poles. That sounds too fancy considering it is a hiking stick that just happens to come from a machine instead of a tree. Now to my point: when I went up to the mountains today for my first solo hike, that would last more than an hour, I felt really out of place.

My Mountainsmith backpack and my Camelback were the only things I had today that could possibly give someone the idea I was a regular. If it wasn’t for a hike years ago, during which I found a Camelback behind a pine tree, I wouldn’t have one today. There was no fooling other hikers on the trail today though. I had shorts and a t-shirt on, which were fine because it was a warm day, but I wore some Nike Air Pegasus running shoes for a fairly steep and very snowy hike.

Okay, I don’t have the gear, but I can still blaze a trail. I was making good time for a while. I even passed a dude that heard me coming and made his way to the side of the trail for me. I sneaked a glance at his getup. He had the light weight pants that can turn into shorts if you want them to, a set of expensive hiking sticks, and waterproof booties over his hiking boots. He didn’t say much as I passed and said, “How’s it going?” However, he did glance down at my shoes and probably thought I was a loony after he saw they were Nikes.

The deep snow right before timberline really slowed me down. With every step I was prepared to sink a couple of feet. The trekking poles would have been really nice in this section. There are slim pickings at that altitude for hiking sticks, but I found one that was about 2.5 feet long. It was good timing too. A few steps after I picked that up I sunk deep into the snow, almost to my butt. I could move my left leg out, but my right leg would not budge. The snow molded to my foot and ankle so quickly I couldn’t pull my leg up at all. I admit it, panic was not too far away, but luckily one end of my gimpy hiking stick was shaped like a shovel. I shoveled myself out of that hole in a minute and made sure to bring that stick along. I had an attachment disorder to that thing for the rest of the trek through the deep stuff.

Once above timberline the path was a lot less snowy and a lot rockier. I was happy to leave the deep, sharp snow behind that had me contemplating turning around because of scraped shins and hands that were cold from stopping falls.

Pressing on was worth it. The view was humbling. Twin Sisters is almost 3,000 feet lower than some of the peaks I was facing, and yet it almost sent me packing, and I was only halfway done with the hike. I got the shivers looking across the valley to much larger and darker mountains, the ones that don’t care if you have your trekking poles or not. They take whoever they want, whenever they want.

I spent no more than twenty minutes on the top. I had lunch, snapped some pictures, and called Kate. I had three bars up there, and I had taken my phone for a watch, not realizing I would be able to ring Wyoming from the mountaintop. I kept it quick because clouds were forming over Longs Peak. I at least know enough to start heading down when you can hear far off thunder. That is why I was surprised to see hikers still coming up on my way down. These hikers had all the cool gear too. That could be why they were still hiking up. One of them was punching the keypad of his GPS unit when I stumbled by him in the deep snow. He said the trail was “pretty postholy”. I had seen this word the night before when I did some reading on the Twin Sisters hike. A hiker wrote “the path wasn’t too postholy.” What the hell is that? I thought. I made the connection when the GPS dude mentioned it. Postholy describes the snow I really didn’t like about this hike. Any step could have me sinking butt deep and scraping ice and rock on the way down.

The postholiness resided and I was able to run down sections of the trail. I stopped on occasion to take a sip from my Camelback spout. Doing this made me feel so cool, and the water was good too. And when I got to my car I peeled waterlogged shoes and socks off my feet. They were pale and shriveled like prunes; slipping them into my Reefs, well worn by flat ground, had never felt better.