It's still my favorite mountain
Two unfortunate stories of trail food on Glacier Peak
Dear Kula Diaries,
The first time that I climbed Glacier Peak, I shared a tent with a friend who thought that it was a good idea to haul a block of cheese and a massive stick of summer sausage. As I gnawed on my 3rd energy bar in a row, I enviously watched him slicing hearty chunks of creamy cheddar and sausage and devouring them. Later that day, our group leader would pull an entire box of Saltines and two cans of Cheez Whiz from his ancient, external frame backpack. Somehow I had missed the memo that I could bring more than just energy bars and dehydrated meals on this trip.
Unfortunately, the mouth-watering temptation to ask for a piece of cheese and shelf-stable meat was short lived — and quickly destroyed by the horrific events that unfolded while I slept. Later that night, snuggled up in my tent, I woke up to a near-suffocating stench. Let me preface this by sharing that as a part of my Park Ranger Law Enforcement Training, I was required to be sprayed in the face with pepper spray. The pungent aroma that was emanating from my tentmate was just slightly less abrasive than being squirted in the face with 10,000,000 Scoville heat units. I desperately fought my way out of my sleeping bag and frantically unzipped the fabric door next to me. Akin to the scene in Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are attempting to breathe the last remaining inch of water before the ship becomes submerged… I, too, pressed my mouth against the mesh door and sucked in a deep gasp of fresh air. Unfortunately, as my tentmate continued to sleep in a peaceful slumber, I was continuously subjected to wave after wave of silent but deadly digestive gases. I'll admit, sheepishly, that I often giggle — very predictably — at a funny sounding loud fart … but this was different. No sound preceded the tidal wave of gas… and so, like an unexpected tsunami hitting a beach without the warning alarms going off … the rancid aroma would forcefully deliver a blow to my senses, and in a sleep-deprived stupor, I’d poke my nose out the tent door. Towards the end of the night, even my eyes were watering — and I can’t be too sure if that was from the smell or from crying.
For the next few days, I’d watch every single time as he eagerly consumed his daily dosage of cheese and salami. Trying to be polite and respectful, I’d say nothing — but each night, I’d cringe as I hopped into my sleeping bag … hoping for the best, but anticipating the worst. By the end of the trip, I was miserable: I hadn’t slept in days, due to the aforementioned farting … and my feet hurt so badly that I was 100% convinced that I was going to find stumps on the end of my legs when we made it back to the trailhead.
And yet, my Glacier Peak climb would go down in history as my favorite climb ever. Glacier Peak, or Dakobed, is a 10,541’ volcano situated deep in the Cascade Mountains. To gain the summit, climbers must ascend 18 miles of trails and off-trail terrain — and almost 9,000 feet of vertical gain. I loved Glacier Peak so much that the only tattoo I have on my body includes a silhouette of the mountain. The smelly nights seemingly vanished from my memory — like gas, gently dissipating in the breeze. Over time, I even managed to forgive the horrendous route finding that happened on our ascent — our group leader managed to entirely miss the correct route up the lower mountain, which resulted in a 4-hour nightmare of a scramble up a loose and treacherous glacial moraine. Even now, almost fifteen years later, I can forgive the fact that I was told I wouldn’t need to bring crampons. “It’s just an easy scramble,” our group leader had told me. Later that day, as I attempted to cut steps into a section of solid ice above a crevasse that looked like it wanted to eat me, I looked up at the group leader with fire in my eyes and screamed, “I wish I had a pair of f*&%$! crampons!!”.
On the way down from the summit, we had opted for an alternate route Disappointment Peak, which avoided the treacherous ice section. Unfortunately, it did not avoid a treacherous scree section — with endless quantities of massive boulders that were eagerly awaiting the chance to tumble down the hill. As I carefully picked my way down the boulders, I suddenly heard some of my climbing teammates screaming frantically, ROCK!! ROCK!! I looked up the hill just in time to see a massive boulder bouncing wildly down the side of the slope — splintering into shards as it impacted other rocks on its violent descent. Quickly, I dove under a large rock and curled into a tiny ball. Tiny flecks of gravel pinged off my helmet as I lay crouched on the ground. I waited for the gravel rain to stop… I stood up and looked around at the seemingly endless wilderness surrounding me… and I kept walking.
Many years later, I returned to Glacier Peak with Aaron. I had told him that Glacier Peak was my favorite climb, and I never mentioned the fiasco with the summer sausage and cheese and the hot-boxed tent situation. In fact, it had been so long since I climbed Glacier Peak, that I had forgotten about it. I loved Dakobed because it felt more like a true wilderness adventure than most of the other climbs I had done. Many of the volcano climbs in Washington State start very unceremoniously at a parking lot, where you can see your objective from your car… but Glacier Peak is different. It’s a journey to get back to Glacier Peak — which sits nestled in one of the most rugged and beautiful basins, I’ve ever seen. After my first Glacier Peak climb, I posted a photo of myself in the White Chuck Basin and somebody who was unfamiliar with the area asked if it was a photo from Nepal — that’s how rugged it looks.
Instead of ascending Glacier Peak the standard way through White Pass and Foam Creek Basin, I decided to take Aaron on a more adventurous route: a trip up and over Red Pass, and then on a spectacular off trail expedition to reach the White Chuck Basin via an alternative route. This was the route that I had done many years prior on my first climb, and I wanted to share the experience with Aaron.
On the first night of our planned 3 night adventure, Aaron and I camped at a breathtaking campsite below Red Pass. Earlier that day, my stomach had felt a little ‘funny’ so I had taken a Pepto Bismol tablet prior to our hike. At camp, I felt great — and I was excited to eat our first dinner of the trip: a bring your own tortilla dehydrated ‘pizza’. Following the directions on the bag, we rehydrated the food and then added the included packet of olive oil to the mixture. We each took a tortilla, filled it with the pizza fixings and devoured our dinner while sitting on a log and looking out at a breathtaking view of Glacier Peak.
Within about 20 minutes of eating dinner, my stomach started to grumble. “Do we have any TUMS?”, I asked Aaron, as I feebly searched through my first aid kit. Finding a small packet of Rolaids, I quickly popped a couple of them into my mouth. The pain in my stomach was starting to intensify, and I was hoping that I could stop the discomfort before it got too carried away. “I’m pretty sure it’s just gas,” I told Aaron, even though I wasn’t sure at all.
Unfortunately, it was not just gas — and within minutes, my condition started to deteriorate. I scrambled away from our tent site and found a precarious spot that was on the side of a steep hill. I usually would have made much more of an effort to find a decent bathroom spot, but I had run out of time to search, and it was now time to let the demons go. I’ll spare the details of the next 30 minutes, but suffice it to say that I spent approximately that much time clinging for dear life to a branch while simultaneously pooping and puking more food than I think I had consumed in the previous month. If you’ve never pooped and puked simultaneously — it’s not pleasant at all. If you’ve never pooped and puked simultaneously while clinging precariously to a branch in the middle of the wilderness with no plumbing… please do not put it on your list of things to accomplish in life. The experience was humbling and painful and horrifying — it felt as if my body was something that was being done to me, rather than I to it.
When I felt timidly certain that I had expelled as much as any human can expel from their body in a single lifetime, I clawed my way back up the slope to find Aaron, who was rightfully very concerned about my well being. The pain in my stomach was so intense that I would have classified it as a 10 on the pain scale (with a 10 being the most pain I’ve ever experienced in my life). The pain was what I like to call transcendental pain — pain that pushes you beyond normal human consciousness. I couldn’t get into the tent, so I laid on the ground in the fetal position and I quivered. Aaron sat next to me, gently rubbing my back as I breathed through the waves of pain and nausea — nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and I started to leaf through the repertoire of ailments I had seen when I worked in the trauma unit: appendicitis… severe gas pain… a ruptured spleen… and then, in my semi-conscious state, I started to question the impossible… was it possible that an alien had invaded my innards? Had I consumed a vicious stomach-eating arachnid? Was I giving birth to a dragon?
After about one hour of the most intense pain of my life, I started to feel some tiny pockets of relief. Gradually, I felt these tiny pain-free moments start to melt into a sense of trust that normalcy was returning again. I was weak, but fine. “I have no idea what happened”, I told Aaron. I tucked my satellite messenger beacon back into my backpack with a sigh— it was the closest that I had ever come to needing it. I would later learn that what I had experienced that day was not some rare form of food poisoning. Instead, it was a gall bladder attack — an extremely painful physical event in which a gallstone gets squeezed against the bile ducts after eating a meal. As one doctor accurately describes it, “This usually leads to sharp pain, like being cut by a knife, under the rib cage in the upper right side or center of the abdomen. The pain can be so severe that it takes your breath away.”
The next day, I felt almost entirely recovered, and I decided that we could continue with our climb. We had watched Glacier Peak that morning while we ate breakfast from our campsite, and we noticed that a cloud had rolled into the summit around 9am. We need to be on the summit and heading back down before then, I had declared. The following morning, we headed out for our summit bid at 5:30 am, and within a few hours, we were standing on the summit of Glacier Peak. This time, I had followed the correct route up the lower mountain and had avoided the horrendous and pointless glacial moraine slog. As we transitioned from rocky slopes to glaciated slopes, we both slipped on our crampons as I laughed out loud and shook my head — I still couldn’t believe that I had climbed GLACIER PEAK without crampons! {note: if you are climbing Glacier Peak, please bring crampons, you will need them! } Aaron and I made it to the summit of Glacier Peak at 8:00 am. We laid down on the summit in the bright sunlight and we let it warm our faces as we took a short nap. Just before 9am, we started our descent down the mountain and we were greeted by a massive cloud that swirled in and completely obscured the view.
When I think about my Glacier Peak climbs, I don’t often think about the summer sausage and cheese incident… or the trail pizza turned gall bladder attack. And yet, those moments are still stored in an endless archive of memories entitled, The Way It Really Went. In fact, until I sat down to write this story, I had never made the connection between the gaseous cloud of my first climb… and the intestinal distress of my second. Two climbs on the same mountain — oddly connected by the strange miracle of the human stomach and colon. What does it mean? Well, on the surface it could mean that cheddar cheese and summer sausage is a really bad combination for some people. It could also mean that sometimes the timing of a severe gall bladder attack is really poor. But, I think maybe it’s something else — maybe something a bit more important than that — because when I look at the archive of The Way It Really Went, it doesn’t make sense to me that Glacier Peak could be my favorite climb ever… and yet, I know, without a doubt, that it is.
In 2013, I had two different surgeries — one surgery on my shoulder and another surgery on my uterus. I had these surgeries within a month of each other, and even though they were on entirely different parts of my body, they had one thing in common: Glacier Peak. When the anesthesiologists counted me down from the number 10 as they injected the sleep-inducing drugs into my vein they asked the same question, “What’s your favorite place?” Relaxation crept over my body as I sunk deeply into the surgical bed and whispered just audibly before slipping into a dreamless sleep, “The summit of Glacier Peak… standing on the summit of Glacier Peak… you can just see the whole world in every single direction…”
We all have different reasons for venturing outside and climbing mountains (or not), but we all accept that challenge is a part of the journey. The story of the mountains is a story of transformation and a story of overcoming difficulties to reach a specific point from which you can no longer go any higher, unless you suddenly sprout a pair of wings. Life is that way too — we are faced with an incomprehensible and unpredictable flow of obstacles and challenges and we can choose to let those moments define us, or we can use those experiences to help shape our lives into a story that is worth telling. Glacier Peak isn’t my favorite climb because I had forgotten that these things happened … instead, it’s my favorite climb because it included the whole mess: the smelly nights, the dreadful route finding, the treacherous ice, the clogged gallstone. These moments of feeling and smelling and touching and tasting remind us that we are alive. Life is not sterile — it’s complicated and messy, punctuated by moments of pain and beauty. It’s not that we forget that things weren’t perfect at the time… it’s just that we learn to see our lives through a new lens. It’s why, almost 20 years later, I still visit the summit of Glacier Peak in my heart. A place where, on two different occasions in the bright blue sky of planet earth, I could climb no higher. As I descended into the clouds with my heart full, I would go home to the rest of my life and tell people for the next twenty years that it was my favorite climb ever. Someday… I’d think to myself… maybe someday, I’ll tell this whole story.
Friends — thank you so much for reading my story about trail food — which, predictably, didn’t have much to do with trail food — ha! My sister once told me that I was the only person who could write a poem about poop that somehow ended with discussing the meaning of life. I think she’s pretty spot on with that observation.
If you want to submit a story or photo or poem or art … or anything else about Trail Food… I’d love to include it in our Trail Register! You can find the link to submit your ‘signature’ right here.
Have a beautiful week — you are loved so much, friends!
