Jeff and I planned a hike in the Marble Mountain Wilderness for our first wedding anniversary. This was to be a three-day, eighteen-mile hike encompassing creeks and lakes and ridges. All the good stuff, really.
The hike started out well, if warmer than Jeff would have liked. We drove up to Yreka on Friday and stayed in a motel that night, then got up bright and early in the morning. We got on the trail at about 9am and trod gently uphill through woods, streams, and warm humid air. Jeff was miserable in the heat, though I was uncomfortable only in the direct sun, of which there wasn’t too much. The air did cool off in the higher elevations.
We didn’t see any animals on the trail, but there were many insects, including a dragonflies and a few gorgeous clouds of brilliant butterflies. I wish it were possible to capture those on static film.
Trouble hit when Jeff’s feet started hurting him. This is quite unusual, since usually I give out before he does. This time, although I was tired, he struggled even more than I. When we arrived at Lower Sky High Lake and made camp, the cause was discovered; the soles of Jeff’s boots were separating from the boots. Oops.
Jeff has had these boots for about ten years, and he had so far refused to replace them since they were apparently holding up fine until then. Obviously he had been proven wrong, but what to do now? Jeff had no spare shoes, and we had to get off the mountain one way or another. Jeff patched up his boots a bit with first-aid tape that evening while I made dinner and did most of the work of setting up the tent and sleeping bags. (This too was a role reversal, since usually I collapse briefly while Jeff handles the evening work.) We spent a warm and restless night.
In the morning we got on the trail just after 10am. We had decided to head back down the trail we mounted the day before; it became painfully obvious that Jeff’s tape-job would not hold up at all under trail conditions. I had the idea of wrapping Jeff’s boots with tape so that the tape would be able to adhere to itself and the physical strain would be borne by the physical structure of the tape rather than the adhesive. Jeff agreed to try this, and it held up fairly well.
We made it back to the car well enough, though not without soreness in feet and legs. We reached the car a little after 2pm, early enough in the day for us to toy with the thought of driving back to Oakland that day. By the time we reached Yreka I knew we wouldn’t make it home. All I wanted was a shower and a nap in a real bed, the sooner the better.
Overall it was a good hike, if shorter than we planned. The country was beautiful, and we’re definitely going back, but if truth be told I was slightly relieved to have an excuse to turn back. It was almost two years since our last backpacking trip, and I was pretty wiped out. In any case, the twelve miles we accomplished is nothing to sneeze at.
We are planning another trip in a couple of weeks, but not until Jeff buys new hiking boots first.
Flickr photo set for this hike: Canyon Creek Trail – Jul 2007.
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