I took a few days off this week to relax and unwind with some friends who own a cabin in the mountains, not too far from where the Donner Party got stranded back in 1847 and wound up eating each other. I brought my GoRuck along. What’s a GoRuck? I’m glad you asked.
A GoRuck is a small but extremely sturdy backpack designed to hold heavy weight, like the iron plates you’d find in a gym. According to Michael Easter, who wrote extensively about rucking in his terrific book, The Comfort Crisis, you can burn a LOT more calories rucking than you can walking, or even running. Now, I’m a rucking devotee, having rucked eight miles every day for the last month, and losing ten pounds for my trouble.
Anyway, yesterday morning, in an effort to atone for the excess of the prior evening, I loaded up my GoRuck with a 40-pound iron plate and went for a two-hour hike through the backcountry. Did I consider the fact that I had not yet acclimated to the elevation in South Lake Tahoe? No, I did not. Did I map out a specific itinerary, or tell anyone where I was going? No, I did not. Did I prepare in a way that was consistent with my rank of Eagle Scout, an honor I proudly received four and a half decades ago? No, I did not. I just headed west like the Donner Party, with 40 pounds on my back and a single bottle of water.
Things started out well enough. I barely felt the extra weight, or the ache in my shoulders and lower back, to which I’ve become accustomed. The scenery was so damn pretty, my discomfort barely registered. I was on a trail, of sorts, so I didn’t pay much attention to the twists and turns that took me deeper into the wilderness, and higher into the hills. I just kept on rucking, pausing only to tighten my hip belt, readjust my shoulder straps, or marvel at the rugged beauty all around me. Then, about an hour into my hike, with the sun high overhead and the weight on my back suddenly feeling a lot heavier than 40 pounds, I stopped to drink the only bottle of water I brought before turning around and heading back. It was at that point I noticed that my phone had a signal. Weird. I hadn’t had a signal in two days and thought it might be a good idea to see if everything was okay at mikeroweWORKS. So, I called the office from the middle of nowhere, and sure enough, there were some issues that needed my immediate attention. The connection was spotty, however, so I left the trail while I talked, and went looking for higher ground, which is easy to find when you’re in the mountains. When the call finally ended, I was at the top of a ridge that would have taken my breath away, had my breath not already been taken. So, I took one more photo, and backtracked down the steep decline to the trail, only to find that the trail was not where I had left it.
I didn’t panic because I wasn’t lost. I knew that I was in Northern California, in a place called the Desolation Wilderness. And I was sure that if I kept walking down the slope I’d eventually hit the trail I’d been on. Unless of course, I’d already passed it. Hmm…Could I have already passed it? It wasn’t much of a trail, but still, I couldn’t believe I’d walked right over it. So, I trudged back up the steep grade just to make sure I hadn’t missed it, huffing and puffing like a 60 year-old man with 40 pounds on his back at 7,500 feet. There was no sign of the trail. Well, shit. If it wasn’t in front of me, it had to be behind me. So, I headed back down. And down. And still farther down, only to wind up at the bottom of a ravine twenty minutes later, with no sign of a trail anywhere. What the hell?
I didn’t panic because I wasn’t lost. I knew that I was in North America, and that civilization, or something like it, was four or five miles away. I just didn’t know what direction. At this point, however, I was no longer enamored with my fancy backpack, or the 40-pound plate therein. So I did something I never do when rucking at home – I took my GoRuck off, and rested for a minute. It’s a personal point of pride with me – no matter how heavy it starts to feel, you never remove the GoRuck until you’re back home. You suck it up. You embrace the discomfort, as the Navy SEALS do when rucking a dozen miles at a time with a lot more than 40 pounds on their backs. But this was different. My workout was officially over. I was badly winded and seriously turned around. I needed to think about what to do next. I recalled some very good advice I heard from a professional sailor, who told me once to change the outgoing message on my cell phone if I ever got seriously lost. “It doesn’t matter if you have service or not,” he said. “Just change your greeting to an SOS. Tell the caller where you are and what condition you’re in. It could save your life.”
I didn’t think my situation was dire enough to warrant a new outgoing message, but I did think about those poor bastards in the Donner Party, and wondered about all the things they tried before resorting to cannibalism. And I wondered too, what they would have thought about the Eagle scout at the bottom of a ravine who lost his bearings and was now considering the wisdom of abandoning his weighted backpack, just when the going got tough.
Believe me, I thought about it. If I was going to be found days later, decomposing in a place called Desolation, I didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who died with his ruck on. “Here lies the Dirty Jobs Guy,” someone would write. “He rucked himself to death.”
Ultimately, I decided to abandon my beloved GoRuck and change my outgoing message, if I didn’t find the trail in the next half hour. So, I kept on rucking, and a half hour later, just when I was about to let the heavy load slide off my sweaty back for the last time, I stumbled across a completely different trail, that got me back to a completely different road, which I followed back to civilization, or something pretty close to it.
Back at the cabin, I made myself a G&T, and reflected on the virtues of discomfort. I thought about the things we carry, including the dead weight, and considered the Donner Party once again, and the lessons we ignore. Then I dove into the 55-degree lake, to reflect some more.