A few buddies and me, we’ve established what now can reasonably be described as an annual tradition. Every June we head out of town for a weekend. The locale usually varies but the constants are: an all-day hike, good food and lots of male camaraderie. I think I can speak for the others when I say it’s become a major highlight on the calendar.
I’ve known the other three – Arthur, Edwin and Marco – for varying amounts of time and through differing connections, and I’d been happy socializing and even hiking with each of them before we started doing these wilderness pilgrimages, but it soon became apparent that we’d stumbled onto something special after the first trip together to Yosemite. Actually, Art didn’t make that one, owing to a bicycle accident, but since I’d hiked Half Dome with him once before, it seemed like he was present. We rectified it the next year, though, with a less strenuous but still beautiful hike in the Sierra south of Yosemite with our full compliment of four.
The original idea, I think, was something closer to camping. Maybe not full-on backpacking, but at least cookouts and sleeping bags. Somehow it has morphed into staying at rustic but nicely equipped vacation rentals, with real beds and a kitchen. I don’t think any of us minds. We’ve all roughed it before and, speaking for myself, I’m unashamed to admit that at my age the creature comforts suit just fine.
That first year was the oddball, since we stayed in Curry Village tent cabins, which is neither fish nor fowl – you’re not really camping but you can’t cook for yourself either. Which was just as well, as anyone who has climbed Half Dome knows. You rise before 6 am, eat your own hastily-prepared breakfast in the dark (since the cafeteria isn’t open yet) then start hiking up. And up. After five hours of nature’s StairMaster and if you time it right – and we did – you’ll get to the cables before the crowds and then summit before noon. Eating lunch at the top, almost 5000’ above the valley and having survived (at least one-way) the infamous cables, can’t be adequately described. You really have to do it once, especially since there are routinely calls for the Park Service to impose restrictions on hiking Half Dome whenever some unfortunate climber tumbles off the cables to his death. The hike down is long, hard on the legs and around mile 14 exhaustion sets in. I don’t ever remember pizza and beer tasting so good, or sleeping so soundly.
Don't look down!
Since then, however, the vibe has been more easy-going and less focused on the hiking. Perhaps a bit too much, as we discovered to our chagrin last year. Everything was great – we’d found this amazing little slice of heaven in the Trinity Alps – but we’d started our hike without a real trail map (very uncharacteristic of me) and missed the trailhead altogether. It was, in retrospect, an honest mistake, since the signpost was missing and the trail seemed to logically be an extension of the fire road that departed the parking area. If we hadn’t been talking and laughing and generally having so much fun, however, we might have noticed earlier that this “trailhead” didn’t exist. When we were already a mile in and the fire road petered out, we were left with two choices: backtrack or try to bushwhack up and over the mountain’s shoulder to our alpine lake destination. We chose the latter.
Bushwhacked
I don’t believe we were ever in jeopardy, but it was an object lesson in preparedness. Not only were we not carrying a proper trail map with contour lines, but I had foolishly neglected to bring my water pump that filters out bacteria and other nastiness from streams. After slogging it upward for several hours and finally throwing in the towel in an impenetrable Manzanita grove, we scarfed our sandwiches clinging to the side of the mountain, then retreated back down. But we’d used a lot of the water on the way up and the day was only getting hotter. Thank goodness we have a good collective sense of direction and no one had gotten injured. After (mildly) kicking ourselves, we especially enjoyed those first cold beers at the cabin and vowed to return to finish the hike the next year.
Which we did. Partly this was to complete the hike, but – to be honest – we’d enjoyed the place so much that we figured, why not? Cooking and eating hearty-gourmet fare (steak and potatoes figure prominently on the menu), swapping stories we’ve probably told before but don’t mind hearing again, and generally relaxing in the midst of friends who can be counted on to laugh at our dumb jokes, while returning the same in kind – this is what our guys weekend is about.
It's Not About the Hike
It’s interesting. We all love being with our significant others and kids (we can now add Art to this category, and Edwin in the kid department), but there’s something to be said for reaching middle-age and hanging out without females in the mix. This isn’t to say women don’t work their way into our conversations, but not in any manner that our own ladies would find problematic. It’s guy talk. Healthy doses of sports, politics, history (you’d have to know the players), career musings and just general bullshitting.
I once had a seminar on medicine and philosophy in college that included a visit with Norman Cousins, the late editor of The Saturday Evening Post. Cousins had just survived a serious illness and had written a book called Anatomy of an Illness about the mind-body connection and how (in his belief) laughter had healed him back to health. He told us how he’d bought videotapes of every Marx Brothers movie available and then watched them over and over in his hospital room. It’s become a cliché but only because it’s true: laughter is the best medicine.
I remembered this after watching a video Art recently assembled from stills and footage he took on this year’s trip back to the Trinity Alps, where we finally completed our hike. The soundtrack (recorded on his innocuous-looking, compact digital camera – incredible!) included some of our laughter and I realized how much of the weekends are spent… laughing. No wonder it feels so good.
We haven’t picked next year’s destination yet but I’m not too concerned. We might not finish the hike we intend but we’ll have a hell of a lot of fun.