Ben Lomond the King

I don't want to beat a dead horse, what with my facebook picture posting but wow. Today was nuts. My friend Courtney and I wanted to hike to Ben Lomond peak. So much.. that we ignored Pat's advice (Pat owns a little breakfast/lunch hut in Eden and is a really great guy) and set off on the trail out of North Fork-since the divide is still closed till the 15th, blah whatever, taking the canyon is soooo annoying. So we started off and it was still marginally cloudy, but decent. Just the right temperature for a half day hike-7.8 miles up and 7.8 miles down. All the bushes, trees and leaves across the trail were wet so we were staying cool, but our shoes were already soaked a minute into our hike.

La dee dah.. Anyway, about 5/8ths the way up the trail it starts to rain a little more than the sporadic light sprinkles we had hitherto been experiencing and so begins the random all-out downpours. At first we're like- "oh fun, let's put our hair down and it will get all curly, yay hiking is fun."

"It's fun to look like Zelda.. yay." Haha. Unfortunately, the higher we got, the more impassible the trail became. But due to the decreasing oxygen hahaha jk, due to us being stubborn (me) and the fact that we couldn't get much wetter, we continued on. The trail had become a small stream at this point; we crossed over fallen trees that looked like they had been struck by lightning, and the trail and the land started to mesh into one.
We came around a corner and it was foggy foggy, but we looked to our left and could see glacier-sized mounds of snow (where the h are we). We were in a meadow on the top ridgeline, and we were in the middle of weather warfare.

Don't let the smiles fool you, they fool even me now, but we were absolutely terrified! We learned later that today Ben Lomond received more rainfall than it has in one single day in some odd number of years, I can't remember. They also spotted a funnel cloud! Go figure.


Soooo.. We turned around right? No, we walk through this meadow (all the while I'm starting to shake for other reasons than just the mild hypothermia we were experiencing--lighting would strike us, we are the tallest thing for yards and yards). We are like .5 miles from summit-ing, so it really is painful to think of turning around. We start running up this rocky river that was a trail, jumping back and forth then we just look at each other and mutually accept there is no possible way for us to get to the top (Angels Landing much?)

If only that was where things got better for us... It was raining to the point where you can't see anything, you are as wet as you would be submerged in a lake, and we are tired and hungry. We find shelter-ish under this tree and tear out our PB&J's. Court owns hers like the crazy b she is and finishes in 5.3 seconds; and before I can even get mine out of my camelback, she's bounding down the hill. So I'm eating my sandwich while sprinting down this mountain, and the sandwich is either breaking off and falling or soaking wet when it gets in my mouth.. but we all know peanut butter can't taste bad no matter what and this is no exception-it was delicious. (Did you really expect me to not talk about food at all in a post?) There's a little lull in the rain and we manage to scrap a few photos like this pearl below.

"Hi I'm wet." We ran for at least an hour in this semi-conscious state, till we met something that roused us reeeal quick. I came around a corner and got 15 yards from a full-grown massive moose before I recognized up from down. A grand-daddy moose, but not old, just huge. I immediately feel my sandwich coming up as I motion to Court to back up the way we came. This beast of an animal is holding eye contact all the while (I didn't dare-I'm sure it would piss him off) and starts to move towards us a bit. We get around a switchback and I call my dad- he explains yes, they are confrontational (a lesson I learned 4-wheeling with a boyfriend in high school-they are not just like large deer) so we want to find a way around the trail and make noise so that he knows there's not just one vulnerable person. (Courtney). Haha but it was terrible, Court was crying, I was trying to remain calm but my voice was failing. We tried walking down through waist-high grass around him but he started to walk towards us when we did that. So we just went back where we came and waited-and waited- 40 minutes we waited, freezing cold for this mean moose to move.

Good news he did-so we had time for more pictures, not to mention a chance at life again

  
Hang loose guys.







So.. A few hours later we did make it to the bottom, I'm not sure how because my feet had been swollen with water for six hours but we arrived. And I haven't worn shoes since.

All joking aside, it was a pretty scary situation and I had a few minutes at the top where it crossed my mind we might not make it back down. It was a legitimate flash flood up there and the small rivers we had forded across at the beginning had become thick waterfalls. I was thinking fight-or-flight mode; weighing our options, planning our food-rationing and examining our supplies. And the moose was seriously too much. But I've got to say; I was running through the woods, soaked to nothing and I felt so good. It was rejuvenating to an extreme that I haven't really ever felt, I was completely confident in the fact that no matter how things turned out life is meant to be lived. Postcard that. I can't really explain it, but I'm grateful for the experience and grateful to be back in my apartment. Until some friends and I climb Timp on Friday :)