|
Arriving at Logan too early Saturday morning, both Blanteev and McAnus have taken "red eyes" and are feeling the effects. None the less they load up the rental SUV and roll out to HAE Headquarters in Westborough, where Timur is apparently already packed and ready to go. With the usual pre-trip discussions taking place amongst quickly concluding last minute preparations, the team is fired up to hit the trail. It is clear that after HAE hikers sneaked a trip to NH last year when Blanteev was not around, that this year once again Maine would be on the agenda. Soon enough three HAE hikers with packed sleds are blasting up the highway toward Maine’s Bigleow Region, courtesy of Blanteev’s legendary lead foot.
Looking at this year’s gear set-ups, it’s clear the two pack system with plastic sled would be getting a real field test. Arriving at the crossing of the Appalachian Trail with Long Falls Dam road, the team piles out of the SUV to look at some signs. It’s a real winter day, with deep snow and frigid single digit temperatures. After the stumbling around pointing and yelling, everybody piles back into the SUV and the let’s go parking fun begins. Blanteev skids the vehicle to a stop at the crossing of the AT and some obscure looking side road, at the behest of the team saying we should park right there. As usual Vincentoli is not overly delighted with parking at such non-designated locations, but not wanting to belabor the point, promptly rams the SUV onto that supposed parking spot that turns out to be….a snow drift…again. Things are not looking so good when said snow drift seems to be comprised entirely of unpacked snow everywhere except under the body of the vehicle, where it was packed just enough to hold the vehicle off the ground, wheels spinning uselessly on ungrippable snow. Yet now an even more noticeable effect takes place. The deep Maine woods in January at 5° F is pretty much an empty place of course, and the crew had not seen a soul since arriving. But now here happens to be three peak baggers, walking past snickering about southern flatlanders (ed: the rental had Virginia plates), whilst Blanteev in the driver’s seat was looking like he was far more concerned with the radio station selection. After attempts to dig out fail, and attempts from the Insurance Deductible Group fail to convince Blanteev otherwise, he rigs up MacGyver style the pull rope from his sled between the SUV back door latch and the pull hook on a 4WD that has stopped to help. The driver, looking rather bemused at the HAE slapstick, mostly regarding the prudence of the “rope tied to rental” arrangement espoused by Blanteev, hits the gas right at the same time as Blanteev, and the SUV is out of the snow drift. “Hey look,” says Blanteev regarding the incident, “I yell like an idiot enough to get both Timur and McAnus to help me dig huge piles of snow then push the dang truck, and just then 3 day hikers walk by eyeing the situation.” Blanteev toggles his glasses and blinks, “I was trying to drive, but I have already ‘machined shopped’ the transmission and was laughing so hard at the gomer stare-down that I pretended I was looking for a bottle of water stuck under the chair rather than being stuck in snow. So those idiots are out there pushing the car, but I wasn’t driving at the time, right in front of them gomers!” Blanteev cracks up as he is just beside himself with such cleverness. While the HAE teams falls about the place laughing, blame storming & thrashing equipment for the eminent hike the 4WD disappears and then later reappears to report that decent parking exist just up the road.
The effort to hike up to the Little Bigelow Lean-to is greatly reduced by a packed trail, as apparently the passing-by hikers snickering at the SUV predicament had been up bagging the peak earlier in the day. Happy hour is on at the lean-to as the apple cider gets hit hard amidst camp being set up.. But maybe not all the apple cider, as soon was discovered by the team. Bruce McAnus confesses to losing one of the precious (2) two ½ gallon plastic bottles of real apple cider. Timur is beside himself with laughter as then he wants to get a video of that but only has some snow at the moment. Bruce is incensed that anyone would in the slightest way think such a disappearance would be his fault, “look the deal I made with Blanteev was that he lash that stinking apple cider to my pack!” Bruce fumed in retort to both Blanteev and Timur besides themselves with laughter over the “incident recreation” of a ½ half gallon bottle of the best local apple cider from the fancy supermarket being dropped on a snow covered wilderness trail.
Next morning it’s off to the summit and a regal view. The team attains the peak after an animated and rather uncoordinated, thrashing chuff session, where packs and sleds are lugged indiscriminately to the summit. It’s been years since HAE has bothered to haul camping equipment up a summit climb, but this year’s loop agenda required bringing everything up. But once on top, it is obvious that they have hit an amazing short lived weather time slot, with a crystal clear sky at a dead calm zero degree temps. This is a rare enough occurrence, winds calm enough to light a candle on the top of the Maine wilderness in January, visibility clear enough to see into Canada. Yet being so lucky as to actually be present witnessing such conditions is even rarer still, as the team exuberance and videos clearly show.
None the less this is still a remote mountaintop in Maine in the middle of January, and Blanteev, who is wanting off the peak in the worst way, is getting his survival panic buttons pushed hard. The climb to the summit was quite long & difficult, given the equipment load, and now in fading light the biting cold into sweat soaked clothing morphs into a dreaded feeling amongst the winter hikers. On top of that the hike was so arduous, and the rather temporary nice weather so temporarily nice, that McAnus was actually suggesting that the team camp right there, as if his legs couldn’t move another step. And of course Timur is having so much fun with all the camera work that more hiking seems bothersome. After some debate that consists of Blanteev pointing onward in the face of suggestions that “this looks like a nice place to camp,” the team shoulders up and heads on. The chaos is complete when the trail heading north off the backside of the summit first turns into deep unpacked snow. The day hikers have long seen enough sense to turn around. “Timur walked back to me and confessed that he had been packing trail now for quite some time and that the gomers had turned around long ago,” recalls Blanteev, “ I knew right there we were in proverbial deep snow.” Then as the day light starts turning into to evening shadows amazingly detailed vistas, the trail disappears completely under infinite shades of grayish red that comprise the snapping cold crystal clear sunset. The hiking is exhausting as the hikers are surprised by hard ascents and descents in cascaded orthogonal ridges, seemly all of which the AT designers have seen fit to send the trail up and over, such that the terrain must be painstakingly portaged with packs and sleds. Finally with daylight failing and no end in sight for getting across the ridgeline, the stage is set. This is northern wood death zone, too dark to find the trail forward, too exhausted to climb back up and over. It’s survival time, HAE style!
The number one requirement for survival in the winter wilderness is shelter, and over the years HAE has settled on the umbrella tent. With the Big Blue Top up and the team inside firing up stoves, the slow pull back from the edge is made. It is critical to get hot fluids and a meal, the team is so tired that they have to tell each other that they will get the job done. The apple cider goes untouched, the booze stays unpacked. Steam fills the tent as hikers act as human clothes dryers. Eventually everybody tiredly crawls into for their survival system and crashes out. In the morning it’s clear that the weather has changed and it’s also clear that the team has a choice. The sub-zero crystal clear sky has been replaced with a storm ridden front. And the team could play the “get out of the wilderness free” card and head back over the summit to the comfortable safety of the lean to. But they don’t. After an early morning scouting hike that finally finds the trail steeply descending around a cliff face, Blanteev and Novash are both sure that the endless ridges are over, that this is the actual decent they are looking for. Piece of cake, they think and it’s knuckles that they will be off the ridge and drinking from a fine mountain watering hole by lunchtime. As usual the AT is full of surprises. After hazarding the cliff section the team is fired up for a liesurely descent when Blanteev catches the sight of another huge ridge ahead, and another. As the day's hiking goes on for hours, he loses track of counting them, and has endless anxiety finding them as the trial is obliterated in many sections. “Hey I thought this was the AT!” Blanteev noted rather dryly to Timur. Vincentoli continues as if Novasch was personally responsible for the condition of the entire Appalachian Trail, “How are we supposed to get off this mountain if we have to find the trail every time we take a few steps?” “Yes, thats true, but Maine is big enough that there are gonna be sections of the Trail that need maintenance,” Timur points out. What New England mountain trail doesn't have to be well maintained to be easily found in the middle of the winter? It certainly doesn't help that the AT blazes are white! Eventually Blanteev hits the panic trail chuff button and really starts blasting downhill. Once again things were not adding up for HAE, specifically the amount of time needed hiking versus the amount of daylight left. That’s enough stress on the “Let’s Get the F Outa Here” factor that lunch goes uneaten as the Team just hammers away at deep untouched snow. The calculation runs out as Blanteev finally stomps into Safford Notch late in the afternoon and promptly loses the trail for the umpteenth time. But this time it’s snake eyes, and he is still looking into the woods at different directions when Timur is heard loudly discovering a sign: SAFFORD NOTCH CAMPGROUND 0.2 Miles Well it might as well have been 20 miles. The team is frantic, in the closing light of the day making difficult probing hikes in the general direction of the arrow yet seemingly doing little more than bush-whacking. “Dang!” Blanteev exclaimed “this is a genuine MATC campground, its gotta’ have a privy and a water source, which means they gotta have a trail better than all this here brush.” But with every idea of where to explore next, the light fades and soon they are both forced to backtrack to the apex of the notch where the sign was located. Blanteev and Timur have a quiet talk about the next move in light of the impending darkness and howling cold wind that surrounded them. To continue the search in the eminent total darkness would indeed be folly. Both know it. “No way,” says Timur, “No way we’re surviving any more hiking.” The next few moments seems like an eternity to Blanteev. He has finally stopping moving in front of the sign with Timur. Instantly he is squeezed by the elements, the absolute feeling of hyperthermia dread as your core temperature drops rapidly; desperately you know that you do not have enough energy on board to balance the equation. But this time there is no panic, just resignation to another brutal night on the trail. They are more sweat soaked and tired than yesterday but they know the formula. “We ain’t gonna make it are we?” Blanteev monotones over to Timur. “We are not going to be finding that camp tonight are we!” he now screams above storm winds echoing across the notched rock faces arising on either side, as if actually expecting that having a very ticked off attitude was sufficient to cancel another ice cold January night in Maine. “It might as well be minus 20 below,” Timur's wind distorted voice is heard above a horizontally blasting snow in the easterly direction “We are gonna have to survive here. It’s time to survive HAE style….again! Using the last strands of diffused storm light they bust into frenzied activity with the blue top and survival tent. Bruce has shown up, and the three sit lethargically under the top talking halting non-sequator trash about chairs and nearly burning down the camp with gas stoves. It is howling outside, dead quite inside, and not one is looking forward to the thought of actually stepping outside to relive themselves. Soaked, tired to the core, subject to bone shaking hyperthermia at any moment, the art of making sure you will not be stepping outside in the middle of the winter storm blasting night for what HAE would call a “frodo moment” is to regulate your intake. Not exactly what one should be doing when dangerously low on energy but that’s the bivouac situation. Blanteev drank snow melted hot water plain and a small amount of his rations for the night and then dived for his survival tent as camp crashed out.
But late, with early morning cold snapping around nylon, Timur knows the gig is up. “Damm!” he thinks crawling out of a perfectly good survival system to brave the elements. “Might as well bring the camera” and on the way back HAE cameraman Timur Novasch captures a classic HAE survival moment of all time. (ed: Blanteev can actually be seen in the survival tent of this famous picture). Next morning hikers are up early holding TP paks and jones-ing to case the joint. The promise of a purported MATC privy was incentive enough to bust out of the bag at that hour. In the bright daylight it only takes moments when snow muffled shouts announce the finding of some signs, and then later the trail. “Oh we would have never found this!” Timur exclaims as he crawls through a rock tunnel. Blanteev feels vindicated for all his foaming rants and is compelled to repeat himself, “look if all you slowpokes had just picked up the pace striking camp yesterday, there would have been enough light to see this trail because there it is plain as day!”
It’s a blustery cold and windy day in the mountains as the team exploits the amenities of the camp including several fine water sources and the privey. After spirited shovel & snowshoe sessions to set up platforms, the stoves are blasting and first on tap is the apple cider. “Dang!” Blanteev relates, “I stole Novasch’s plastic ice scrapper and scrapped a bunch of frozen apple cider off my sled pack where the cider was lashed all day then put the scrapper back too got away with it so we are going to drink all that cider right now!!” he directed, shaking a full plastic bottle of rum in front of everybody for emphasis. There does appear to be of plenty of pent up demand amongst the crew, as the last few days of survival hiking didn’t exactly lend itself to gloating and toasting in the snowy winter woods. So after days of rough treatment by the wilderness, HAE base camp is back on schedule, and “camp-on” has been called by the HAE Board of Directors Field Liaison, Notch Camp. As the consumable index is elevated in status the crew is once again falling about the place being in stitches over the nominations for the golden gomer awards. Blanteev had a few good nominations including “pulling the SUV out of a snow bank with his cheap sled rope in front of gomers.” Timur was nominated for “carrying a huge ass kite kit in front of the team under the presumption that he could actually fly a kite while winter hiking,” but the honorable justice Mount DaGomerly had a dissenting opinion, stating that “Bruce was caught on video busting up a sled due to negligence.”
The next day the team sets off down the Safford Brook Trail and right away the trail is a bit sketchy. The hike bogs down as the trail is regularly throwing the team for a loop. It covers a good piece of Maine flatlands, where both Blanteev and Timur agree that more than 2 steps the incorrect way would be trouble. So instead it’s time to goof around and do some video clips. Most famously Blanteev holds class filming a how to go hiking in the woods. Asked later about the bit, everyone wanted to know how he did it. “Were those trick packs? Or some trick video you guys have?” were the questions. Pausing Banteev looks up and says “it’s all about the weight of a pack on your back” “A 25 or so pound pack is unnoticeable while a 50 lb pack can be a back busting nightmare. So our system is based on about 25 pound back packs, and then a 25 lb sled-pack. That’s 50 lbs of stuff but it costs very little to move the 25 lb sled-pack, on a flat piece of snow the sled can be pulled with one finger. The effect is that you have a 25 lb backpack with sled-pack for a combined effective weight of say 3 lbs more or 28 lbs.” In past years HAE sled rigs were a hybrid between the old back packing style and sled system hiking. But this year the team has hit upon the two backpack style, essentially eliminating all the yard sale hanging off a pack in favor of just two packs. “All those sled photos in the archives?” Blanteev asks rhetorically, “leave them there, do not emulate.” “Instead look at the modern method employed this expedition by HAE. The backpack with sled-pack system worked great for everyone on the team.” He further elaborates, “So that new 2011 sled pack is trick. Bing bing bing we got a winner, trick sled pack. It’s a Gregory Whitney 95 Liter pack, the biggest ever. But the trick is that it’s full of foam, two foam rolls and a thermorest," that comprise Blanteev’s famous foam-air-foam mantra. The tent and down bag make up the bottom half of the backpack, and the down boots, vapor barrier and bivey are tossed in there too. At 42 inches, the loaded Whitney pack bungees perfectly low profile into the purple sled, the net result weighing under 24 lbs. Another 25 pounds or so is your backpack; food, fuel/stove/cook kit, booze, spare clothes & camp kit. “Toss in the snowshoes and you have the perfect integrated winter hiking system.” With filming over and the end of the trail dropping the hikers at Flagstaff Lake, once again HAE finds itself snowshoeing home along a snowmobile trail where moose marbles, high speed snowmobiles, and lake vistas break up the monotony of the multi-hour trudge. With Fully Loaded Sleds (watch video above) in tow, the team arrives at the SUV and heads off to the burger joint. Thus ending the most excellent Little Bigelow Adventure; the crew is on wrap-it up autopilot mode. As they stuff their faces with burger the team is quietly confident that they have the system that can handle anything. “We broke all the rules this year,” says Bruce, ‘and we still pulled it off.”
|
Little Bigelow - 2011
Copyright © 2011 Half Ass Expeditions