Day 1 - stuck truck to big trees camp

The hike day 1

The hike started off normally. We walked along the road. Traction was bad, we had to stay single file on the high center of the road - anywhere else was slip and slide hell and I more than once touched the ground with my hands, catching slips and falls. Suddenly, we heard a large rumble. I mean big engine noise, no piddle 2-3 liter toyota. Heck, didn't even sound like a Chevy 3500 diesel. It sounded like... Wait, look back, holy crap, it's a Unimog! And it's fully loaded with porters. This must be a huge party coming up. We jumped into the forest to let it pass. Scary, it wasn't having much traction luck, it was just yawing left and right until a tire would hit the berm or the high center and that would propel it into an opposite yaw, wash, rinse, and repeat.

About 15 minutes later, we found where the Unimog couldn't go any further. I maintain that the Xterra probably could have beaten the Unimog... James says new tires cost at least $500 each, and that's why the Unimog also had crap for tires. Anyway, the porters and their clients had poured out of the truck and were starting to organize gear. 1 English guy (Jamie) and and his wife (Alex) and their guide, assistant guide, and 11 porters! Holy crap! And I felt guilty with my crew of 4...

So skip forward to the trail. They do not do switchbacks here. Many sections of the trail were as steep as any class 2 I've ever been on. Ad in big rocks and practically a natural stairway, and it was a pretty good trail! The rain came down on and off. BTW, my pack, while I was wearing very little clothing (most of it in the pack, with about a liter of water was 14.5 kg (32 lbs) including the world's largest avacado) - forgot to mention that. Once our porters caught us, I urged James to keep up with them. The muzungu (white man) pace was killing me, it was so slow. The guides are trained to encurage muzungu to walk slow and not overexert themselves... But his desire to chat in Swahili with his friends won out, so from then on, we booked. I think I'm pretty fast in general, but wow, it was tough to maintain balance in the mud river we were treking through, at the speed we were moving. Heh.. I asked for it!

But then, the rain forest and the start of monsoon season collaborated to really live up to their names. The rain started coming down to show me what 7 feet of rain in about 4 rainy months looks like. Wow. You know when you're driving and the windshield wipers can't keep up so you have to slow down? Now imagine its coming down so hard that at a walking speed, you can't see the guy right in front of you and it takes concentration to see the ground even! Amazing rain. Later, Jamie (Brit from Unimog) said he'd never seen such rain, and he's from the land of perpetually crappy weather!

And then a realization came over me as I walked.. The bivy is not the best idea for monsoon season. How do you get into what amounts to a sleepingbag cover in a storm like this, especially with a down bag that shouldn't get too wet? And what was I going to do with my sleeping pads which were on my pack, in the rain? Could I put my sleepingbag on the drenched pads? Wouldn't that be bad, too? As if he was reading my mind, my guide asked me why I wasn't using the umbrella I bought. Damn! I was thinking of it as a sun-blocking umbrella, not a rain blocker! Hahha, dummy!

I pulled out the umbrella and the storm became a minor inconvenience. The umbella is the geatest backpacking idea evAr! I was living it large from that point on. Nice! We pulled into camp and I saw a group of 4 whitey, so I ducked under their open mess hall tent and said hello. We started chatting - 2 of them had climbed Whitney as a day-hike recently and they were in their 50s. Cool! The discussion of porters came up, so I had to ask how big their crew was... Wow... So, I guess 2 needing a dozen is nothing! These 4 needed 44! I think I'm doing this wrong! Hahah... They showed me their kitchen (1 standup tent with covered chimney for smoke), mess halls (2 - whitey and porter), bathroom!?!? (a 7-ft tall walk-in restroom tent with a seat and a catch-basin that's cleaned daily for only the 4 of them so it stays clean), and their 4-person mountain hardware tents (3 - the couple shared one), and the various porter tents. OMG. For 4 people! Tent city! Porter city!

I then headed over to our porter/mess/kitchen 4-person tent in which we eat breakfast and dinner and the crew sleeps. I gotta send a pic of our propane tank... It's just like what you use for you gas BBQ grill except the date on it is 1989, it's iron, and it weighs 8.5 kg empty and takes 6 kg of propane, so when we weighed it, it really was 32 lbs... The big teams have many of these. Crazy (but cheap) way to carry cooking power.

Dinner the first night was deep fried. As in, these guys carried half a gallon of oil and they pour used oil back in to make it last. Speaking of which, they really don't believe in ultralight. They brought glass salt shakers, metal cans (for coffee, for powdered milk, etc), pounds of meat (fresh beef, chicken, fish, etc), etc. Anyway, dinner was deep fried tilapia, potato chips (fries), cucumber soup, sandwhiches, etc. I couldn't come close to eating it all, and then they cooked their own dinner. I told them I really didn't need my own meals, so they said I could have ugali with them. Turns out what they meant was I could eat with them after I finished all the food they made for me! Ugali is a cornmeal based sticky porraige that you eat with stew.

So, night 1. The rain died down enough that I could get into my bivy using my umbella to shield me. Unfortunately, the totally snow proof bivy which is descibed as waterproof, is not 100% monsoon proof. The eVent material allows a little dampness through. My sleeping bag was slightly damp. Damn. Oh well. I went to sleep. And during the night the rain died down and I woke a couple times when big water "clumps" fell from the trees above onto the bivy. And what I discovered was nicht good! My condensation (from my breath, on the single-walled bivy) was making a mess. The whole inside of the bivy was drenched, and the sleeping bag was noticeably less lofty. Argh. When I noticed the rain stopped, I opened the main vent and shoved the sleeping bag down (i was under it, not in it - too warm) and just accepted the big clumps of water in my face from time to time.

Overall, a very interesting day...