Stevens Canyon 2009 – Day 3

Charles adds: With Reid and Andy well ahead of me, I took to hanging around the back, because by that time I could tell that Katie and Ben wanted to move slower than most of the party. Given the strenuous nature of the previous two days and our likely proximity to camp, letting them feel comfortable taking it easier seemed important to their overall enjoyment of the trip. I’ve known Reid to be very good at pacing trips with a variety of natural speeds in the party, and that letting people go at about 90% of their maximum pace makes them much less crabby than if they get pushed to 100%.

My idea was to stay ahead of them, but make visual contact at every big turn in the canyon. At one, about 1/2 mile from our eventual camp site, they didn’t show for about 10 minutes, so I went back to look. They were stopped at the exact point where I had last seen them, treating a minor but necessary-to-treat injury: a nosebleed. Because of the time taken to treat this, the three of us ended up a good hour behind the bulk of the party.

Fortunately, it didn’t create a dangerous situation, because the injury was very minor and the injured party had the necessary first-aid supplies right there. It did make me think that if the injury had been more serious (say a sprained ankle) and I hadn’t been back there, it would have led to one inexperienced trip member having to leave another inexperienced trip member alone and injured and face an unknown distance and time hiking alone to summon help. In contrast, if there is an experienced person within a sightline, help can be summoned with much less uncertainty and a lot more speed.

I think it would be a good idea to mention to people in my position (generally experienced but not necessarily knowledgeable about nor responsible for the specific route), that the “hanging back and watching to make sure everyone is progressing” duty will fall to them periodically and it is necessary that someone other than the trip leader be paying attention to this at all times. I don’t think it is necessary to tell everyone something like “Joel/Charles is the sweeper and everyone has to stay in front of him” becuase that leads to overly-regimental trip dynamics, which most of us don’t enjoy.

I think it is a good idea to avoid a situation where inexperienced people might be forced to rescue other inexperienced people. A good way to do this is to tell everyone up front what level of experience each trip member has rather than letting everyone figure it out mid-trip.

Andy Exley adds: At various points this day and the day before, claims were made about how someone had found an area with a jacuzzi on one of their bathroom trips, and encouraged others to go look. The claim was repeated other times by other hikers. Much to our surprise, we were able to find a campsite with a jacuzzi! Not surprisingly, the water was very cold. But that suited us just fine.

Katie adds: By Day 3, Charles had been promising us a Jacuzzi and women to fan us and bring us grapes for several days. This is the bribe he would use to keep us moving down the trail if we were slow or made a comment about the heat or being sore. We’d been scorning him and making fun of his supposed backpacking knowledge as so far we’d seen no Jacuzzis.

Imagine our surprise when we turned the corner into our (eventual) campsite to find a string of potholes, one of which was immediately designated the Jacuzzi. While it definitely was lacking in heat and jets, it was very deep, cool, and relaxing. Therefore we concluded that Charles wasn’t completely lying, although the women and grapes never materialized. That was probably for the best, as we wouldn’t have shared our chili and enchiladas with them anyways.