Call Me Chaps, Part 1

On Monday, May 18 I met up with Dick, Linda and Anne at a Park-N-Ride in Conifer, Colorado.  Dick had arranged a MeetUp group for a four day, three night hike along sections 3 and 2 heading East along the Colorado Trail.  I joined in at the last moment wanting to get a few hiking miles in, hoping that Dick, Linda and/or Anne weren't serial killers.

They weren't.  Aren't.  At least as far as I know.

Dick and I drove in his car to our end point with Linda and Anne following in Linda's car.  Once there, we all transferred to Linda's car and drove to the start point, dropping off a few gallons of water at the halfway-ish point. It had been raining and snowing an unseasonably large amount for weeks.  The trail was going to be sloppy, we knew that, and this would be a good chance to work out the kinks in my kit in less-than-favorable conditions.  When we arrived it was drizzling so we put on our rain gear and headed out.  It was already pretty late by then so two miles or so in we found a place to make camp in the light drizzle.  Dick sleeps in a hammock, which I had never seen before, and Linda and Anne set up a little tent city with a tarp between their shelters.  I pitched my tent without much drama but noticed that that ground was saturated and that my little tent stakes didn't hold very well, so I tried to find the sweet spot between a taught pitch and not putting too much tension on the stakes, crossing my fingers that they wouldn't lose their grip in the middle of the night.  My tent is not a freestanding tent.  By that I mean it doesn't have those bendy poles that criss-cross the top and support it no matter what.   Mine is a lightweight tent that, when pitched correctly, can take  a lot of mother nature's abuse, but when it's not pitched right, doesn't.  It uses trekking poles as its support structure.  If the stakes connecting the guy lines to the tent don't hold, the whole thing comes down.

Dick brought an extra 8' x 10' tarp for the rain and we all cooked our dinners under it while getting to know one another a little bit.  Dick has been a hiking and camping junky for 50 or so years, ever since he was in the Boy Scouts.  He's older and slower now, but he knows a lot about the forest and I could tell he would be a fine group leader.  His trail name is Ring Tail because, evidently, many moons ago while he was sleeping away in his tent (when he slept in a tent, ages ago, when he was a savage like Linda, Anne and me) his hiking buddy noticed two Ring Tail cats making sweet, sweet forest love just outside his door. 

Anne was the greenest of us all.  She had done a lot of day hiking but not so much in the backcountry.  Her pack was 50 pounds for three nights.  She never said a word about her burden and was always cold, but she muscled through like a boss.  

Linda was an experienced hiker and camper herself, having camped in remote places all over the country.  She once told a black bear to fuck off when it was trying to smash her tent down.  She wasn't in the tent at the moment and the bear did not fuck off, but still...gutsy. 

Note to self:   One and a half cups of water for the chile con carne is too much.   One cup should be fine.  The cheddar Goldfish was an inspired addition as far as adding extra flavor, calories and texture.

After dinner I walked a few hundred feet from our campsite, dug a hole, pooped in it, then covered it all up.  At nightfall, about 7:30 pm in the mountains, we strung our food bags from the trees (in case bears were around) and hit the hay not so much because we were tired but because we brought a limited amount warm clothes.  The coziest place to be was in our sleeping bags.   In my bag I realized that I had a left an emptied cheese and crackers plastic wrapper from earlier in the day in my backpack, and the backpack was just one foot away from me in the tent vestibule.  Not wanting to attract bears, and really not wanting to go through the trouble of searching out my strung-up food bag in the near-dark, I got out of my cozy sleeping bag wearing only my thermals, grabbed the poop trowel, walked about a hundred feet from our campsite and buried the cheesy plastic a few inches down in the dirt, burying it back and marking its resting place with twigs and stones.  Back all toasty in my sleeping bag the rain continued down all night.  My tent, which was sagging pretty good with the extra burden of water, held acceptably well.  A small amount of condensation formed inside the "ceiling" throughout the night and a drop or two fell now and then, but overall I was happy with how it held up to the rain in a sloppy pitch.

When I woke  the next morning snow was everywhere.  My snow-laden tent couldn't have been but a few moments away  from  total collapse.  I punched the ceiling and watched the silhouette of snow slide down the tent's sides.   I turned the knob on my inflatable sleeping pad and settled onto the ground, then packed  everything into Kermit II: The Reckoning.  I emerged from my saggy cocoon, made some coffee under the tarp where Dick was already into his second cup, ate a couple of Pop Tarts and packed up the tent.  I retrieved my cheese and crackers plastic and remarked silently what a wonderful human I was at that particular moment. (As a gross, mostly selfish species destroying the world a little more each year, we need  moments like these to keep from falling into complete despair.)

The place where my tent once was.

Linda and Anne were just starting to get packed up by the time Dick and I were almost finished.  This was a leisurely trip and we were in no hurry so we hung out under a large pine tree taking shelter from the light snowfall while waiting for them.  Anne was half in-half out of her tent door pulling on her rain pants.  I heard her cuss some G-rated cussing and asked if I could help with anything.  

"No," she said. "I just put my dang pants on backwards."

If you suffered through the 1990s and somehow, despite your best efforts, remembered some of the less immortal parts, you may guess--with help from the picture below--the trail name that I gave her right then. 

If you guessed Kriss Kross you win. Or maybe not exactly win, but something.  Anyway, Anne laughed and decided to accept her new trail name. 

Here's the thing with trail names:  Only losers give themselves a trail name.  The truly bold accept a trail name that is given to them, and it is rarely flattering.  The trick to giving someone a trail name is to find that perfect balance between embarrassing and relevant.  Since no hiker is obligated to carry on the trail name you have given them, you want to create one that is just embarrassing enough to them but still amusing enough that they will take it with them and tell others what they have been named.  I can't imagine that anyone is going to carry on with the name "Dances with Farts" or "Tickletoes."  You've got to play it cool and funny. 

As the sun worked its way up in the sky the snow turned to rain and we had little choice but to slog through it.  We walked in the rain, we rested in the rain, we ate lunch in the rain, we filtered our drinking water in the rain, we told stories in the rain, we walked silently and wet in the rain, we munched our snacks in the rain and finally we made camp two in the rain.  All I wanted to do was get out of the rain so I intended to pitch my tent fast, now that I was highly experienced in these things.  I spread my tent across a flat parcel of mud-dirt and squatted down to poke the first stake into the ground when "Sssshpliiiiiiiit," my rain pants split clear from front to back.  I stood and looked down at the split disappointingly.   

"Goddamnit!" I said.

Anne, who was making Tent City II with Linda saw it all go down.  Dick turned  from his hammock-making and saw me looking at my pants.

"Hey, Hamilton:  Looks like you're wearing chaps," he said.

"Ha!" Anne said, clapping.  "That can be your trail  name:  Chaps."

Kinda pissed, but not really, I considered the situation.  Yeah, these cheap rain pants looked like chaps now, alright.

"Okay," I asked, "Gay-biker-bar-assless chaps or macho-Western-pioneer chaps?"

"You choose,"  said Dick.

So you can call me Chaps, now.  But only on the trail.

The rain stopped a few minutes later.  It didn't rain again until a few days later when we were all in our cars driving home.  For now, though, we assumed the rain would  come back soon so we hustled  to make dinner and do all of our end-of-day stuff.  Dick later introduced  us to the Geriatric Hiker's Fuzzy Navel--a novel, lightweight solution to drinking complicated cocktails on the trail.

Geriatric Hiker's  Fuzzy  Navel

Combine in Nalgene container:  Tang, 2 T

                                                Metamucil, 1 t

                                                Water, 1 C

                                                Peach Schnapps, 1 oz plastic airline btl

Shake well.

Drink up.

Poop later.