Off The Map Side-Stories #11: A Momentary Lapse of Reason
“Do you know the way to Thompson Peak?” the hiker asked.
At first, it sounded like a trick question. There was only one climber’s trail a person could use to get to the highest mountain in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, and as far as I knew, we were on it.
The man explained that he’d lost the trail a short ways ahead when it crossed a creek, and he’d decided it was wise to retreat. I had no words of advice to give him since the directions I’d copied off the internet were fairly vague, so I wished him well and continued up the path. I held a high opinion of my trail-finding abilities, so I wasn’t terribly concerned.
Then I reached the creek. Windstorms had turned the region into a tangle of fallen tree trunks and branches. I crossed the most obvious log across the ravine, but upon reaching the opposite bank…. nothing. No sign of a trail. I went back across and chose a different log. This time, my feet nearly slipped off the bark. I almost fell ten feet, which could have shattered a femur or two, not to mention the additional bones that would have broken as I was washed downstream. A little discretion was probably in order.
Still, it was hard to remain calm and steady when being divebombed by flies. Most of my winged antagonists were harmless, but one out of every four was a horsefly, whose mouth parts could piece flesh and draw blood. When one landed on you, you had up to five seconds to notice the insect and swat it before it inflicted some painful damage.
I tried to focus on route-finding, traveling downstream in order to pick up the trail. There were no signs of human passage, so I followed the streambank up the side of the mountain. Nothing. Just a single rock cairn that pointed nowhere.
I crashed to the ground and placed my back against a tree trunk so that the flies would have a harder time sneaking up on me. “Face me, you cowards!” I taunted. They landed on my legs, and I finally took the offensive, swatting them one after another in an attempt to eradicate my assailants. But more flies appeared to replace their fallen comrades, and the commotion began to draw mosquitoes. I drank some water hastily and made a decision to bushwhack up the valley, trail or no trail. I had wasted plenty of time, but I still had a few hours before darkness could terminate the remainder of my plans.
Fallen trees made the valley rough going. I decided to gain some elevation along the right side of the valley in the hopes of finding some open terrain between the forest and the cliffs that protected the adjacent mountain.
At first, I was welcomed by a grove of young aspens that grew in the debris of an avalanche path. Their soft, circular leaves tickled my skin like the wings of butterflies as I strode amongst the saplings. But the route soon thickened and grew claustrophobic. Too many butterflies.
I forced my way to higher ground and found I had to hug the cliffs closely to keep out of the forest. At this point, I knew I had no chance of reaching Thompson’s summit, wherever it was. I suspected that the mountaintop might lie somewhere above the cliffs to my right, but the few maps I’d brought with me were too imprecise to provide any certainty. As a consolation prize, I decided to aim for a saddle between peaks at the rim of the valley. There I could claim a view of the jagged Sawtooth Range before bushwhacking back to the creek.
I stayed just above treeline, angling upward toward the saddle along with my insect entourage. I was growing weary, but the flies were like wolves nipping at my heels, making it almost impossible to stop. At the ridgeline, the winds would likely be strong enough to blow the bugs away, and I couldn’t wait for that moment. I paused one last time, sat down and drank some water. Now I was sure I had ended up on the backside of Thompson Peak, where the only routes to the summit required ropes and climbing gear. Another day, I’d rectify my navigational errors and reach the mountaintop from the other side. For now, the saddle would have to do. Another ten minutes, and I’d be there.
I stood and resumed the climb. It didn’t take long for me to notice that something was off. I felt strangely light-headed and unable to think straight. I tried to push through the sensation, but my mind warned me, “Stop moving… you’re going to pass out.” I paused, frustrated. The saddle was so close, and I deserved a reward for all my efforts.
I sat back down and pulled out my water bottle. Perhaps I was dehydrated after rationing my water supply too conservatively. Or maybe the thin air had afflicted me with altitude sickness. The relentless exertion might have also caused too much lactic acid to build up in my bloodstream. Whatever the reason was, I couldn’t ignore the symptoms. I had strayed too far from any known trails to be taking foolish chances.
After packing up my gear once more, I got to my feet and prepared to descend, but my boots immediately pivoted and I found myself hiking uphill again! It appeared that my instinct for peak-bagging was stronger than my instinct for self-preservation. Subconscious desires compelled me to see what lay beyond the ridgeline. However, the needs of my physical body soon overruled this compulsion. The light-headedness returned, and I marshaled enough brain capacity to force my feet to turn away… for good, this time.
Not far off, I reached a thin waterfall amid the cliffs of Thompson Peak, and I allowed myself to down the rest of my water. I refilled the bottle, but because I couldn’t eliminate the possibility of bacteria and had no way to treat the water, I considered it to be an emergency supply, to be drunk only when absolutely necessary.
The piles of rock talus at the base of the cliffs provided the quickest route back to the foot of the valley, so I rock-hopped through the debris pile, staying clear of the tangled forest beneath me. All went well for a while; I had decades of experience in choosing the right spot to place my feet so that rocks wouldn’t roll beneath my weight. But I didn’t anticipate that a rock might fracture instead of rolling. When my foot came down on an innocuous-looking boulder, the top surface cleaved from the underlying layer and slid forward. I’ve never slipped on a banana peel, but the mechanics were the same. I landed hard on my backside, while my hiking poles flew from my hands and skittered thirty feet down the mountain. At least most of the impact was to my gluteus and not my tailbone. I picked myself up, tended to the wound gouged into my left palm and went to retrieve my poles.
For the rest of the journey, I did my best to keep out of the tangle of the forest until I had no other option, and then I kept mostly to deer trails, figuring that the hooved creatures must be experts at outrunning the mosquitoes. In time, I regained the trail where it terminated at the creek, then proceeded toward the trailhead on firmer footing.
Less than a mile from my vehicle, I came to the trail junction that had thrown me off-course several hours earlier. I’d made a classic left/right misinterpretation of the directions I’d pulled off the internet, I now realized, and that mistake had caused me to follow a mirage of a trail up the wrong valley. At least I had a few decent pictures to show for it.
I skimmed through the photos later that evening within the safety of my tent. Beautiful images, yes, but in most of them, I could detect blurred streaks across the skyline. I had been photobombed by my fly entourage. Those little demons had found a way to catch up to me after all.