Post-Mortem of an Abandoned Hike

While this is going to get filed under 'Trip Reports', what the following account amounts to is an autopsy of a failed trip. Now, before you come down on me here, by failed trip I am not dogging on myself... I am admitting that some (many?) of my plans and assumptions about this trip directly resulted in my need to abort it, and so I choose to look at this as a learning experience,

I've been planning to do the Tecumseh Trail for about 8 months. My target date was last week, but due to a new initiative at work, I had to reschedule for this week. That was both a curse (higher temps this week over last) and a blessing. I probably would have made it further along the hike before I had realized I was in trouble if I had went last week, which would have made bailing out that much harder.

Let's start with what went right.

1) I had a reasonable trip plan in place for someone new to the distance hiking bit. I had given myself the grace to do 8 miles to 14 miles on day 1, and as few as 6 on day 2, working up to 12 on day 3, and 12 on day 4. I still think those mileage goals were reasonable given my past performance in hiking, and I stand by those choices in the planning stage.

2) I was well informed about trail and weather conditions. Perhaps too well informed. Much of my critical thinking was put into weather and trail condition mitigation, and it may have distracted me from my focus on other logistics. That said, nothing was really a surprise to me when I encountered it.

3) I was alert enough to listen to my body and take stock of my circumstances and to have the guts to call it when I was confronted with the truth that continuing on was a bad idea. It's incredibly hard to be building up to doing something big like this, telling your friends, family, and co-workers, and then decide to bail about 5 miles in, but that's exactly what I had to do.

Trail Closed... no Detour Posted

Let's look at the trip itself...

After getting ourselves locked out of the house with no keys and delaying arrival at the trail head by an hour and a half, we arrived at the Orcutt Road Trailhead to discover signage saying that the trail was closed. This was a bit of a surprise, since the sign provided no redirection, as had been given on the phone when I had spoken to the Morgan-Monroe office the previous week. Given the way that cars were speeding down Forest Road, the idea of road walking down to the Low Gap Trailhead was not at all appealing, so we drove down to that trailhead, where the kids and the wife dropped me off, presumably for the better part of a week.

About a half mile or so in, an individual started to overtake me. He asked me where I was heading, which immediately started a conversation. The individual was a geologist who was most interested in talking to me about glaciation, John Muir, and many other topics. I had to pick up my pace to keep up, and he wasn't even breaking a sweat. This was my first sign of an issue. I have always had heat issues (can't stand it), but it was at some point just before the sharp left hand turn on the Rock Shelter portion of the trail where I was last dry... by the time I made it to Rock Shelter, I was soaked. I had been hiking for, perhaps, all of 30-45 minutes. I used the shelter as my excuse to separate from the geologist whose pace I could never have matched, and stop for a bit.

At Rock Shelter I ate half my sandwich and carrots, had some water, and went to tie my boots which had already come undone. I noticed two issues at this time. One was that my boots looked odd. I wasn't sure why, they just did. The second was that, as I bent over to tie the left boot, a chilled tingle passed through my ankle. I immediately stood up, more gingerly approached the tie up, and then hiked the next bit a little gingerly as a precaution.

After hiking up the steep incline after Rock Shelter, I was feeling much better. Food and water had helped... but as I hit the trail divide between returning to the Low Gap Trailhead and heading towards the backcountry, I was slowing down again. In particular an open hole in the forest canopy near a pond really slowed me as the heat just poured down on me. Turning towards the backcountry, the forest re-enclosed me, and my pace again slowed and, finally, I had to stop and sit down. I ate the rest of my sandwich and carrots, and just sat for a bit. There was no wind to speak of, the canopy providing a blessing and curse in that sense - blessing for no direct sunlight, but no wind meant no evaporative cooling. Sitting for 20 minutes resulted in no real cooling for me at all. Up and onward.

As I came to Low Gap Road, and the start of the Backcountry  area of MMSF, I was again feeling drained. I crossed the North Fork of Honey Creek, which had a bit of water coursing through it. Then another small footbridge over a boggy area led to some campsites. I passed them and approached the second creek bridge, this time over the East Fork of Honey Creek. Here I decided to test out my water filter.

At this point, I had emptied two bottles of water (probably 40 ounces) along with a liter out of my hydration bladder. I was sweating like a madman. For a filter, I am using a Sawyer Squeeze system, which worked great. Oh that water was cold and refreshing! I refilled both bottles, then filled the squeeze bag for the Sawyer filter and drank the entire 16 ounces in one long drag. I refilled, sprayed  bagful of water over my head to cool myself off, and then refilled and drank again - all 16 ounces. At this point, therefore, I had 34 ounces from the bladder and 72 ounces from other sources, for at total of 106 ounces of water in the span of about 3 1/2 hours. I began dillying at the creek, feeling a bit confused, but I remounted my pack, crossed the bridge, and moved on. It was at about this time that I began feeling hotspots and moisture in my boots, specifically where the outside of the big toes meets the boot. This is where I had noticed issues earlier back at Rock Shelter, but my thinking was already getting clouded, so I didn't really stop to think through what was causing the issue.

After the creek, the trail meanders a bit and heads uphill. I continued this way for probably another 1/3 to 1/2 mile before encountering a lovely assemblage of yellowjackets. As I stood there, I stood - not exactly frozen - but just at a complete loss about what I was doing, where I was going, how to handle the swarm, and trying to remember why I thought it was an issue. (I though it was an issue because, about 5 years ago, I got my legs stung but good by yellowjackets, but I couldn't even place that memory in the moment). I turned around and walked perhaps 20 or 30 yards back wards. Then I stopped and walked the other way. The yellowjackets were there. Where had they come from? I had to remind themselves that I had run into them before. But where? It was at this moment that I happened to look down and see that my right boot was starting to disintegrate, and that the stitching on my left boot where my toes were feeling wet had began to unravel. I knew this was decision time, and I was not going to allow the pride of 'overcoming obstacles' overcome the common sense of turning back to a safe haven and taking stock of my situation. I went back down the hill, crossed the East Fork bridge, and wandered into a camp that had been made a mess of. I went to another, that had people staying in it, and asked about other campsites. They told me there was a clearing behind their site, so I went there.

I decided to set up for the night. My next indication of a problem came when it took me an hour and a half to set up the same hammock and tarp that I had set up in 15 minutes just two days earlier. I wasn't thinking clearly still and my sweating, far from getting better, was getting worse. At one point, my shirt was steadily dripping everywhere. At this point, I had drank another 20 ounces of electrolyte-infused water, and 20 ounces of regular water. I went back to the creek, filled both bottles again, and brought back the filled bag as well for cooking water. I collected firewood, cooked dinner (Mountain House Mac & Cheese with Bacon Jerky) and ate the entire 3 serving bag of mac and half the jerky. The entire time, I never stopped sweating. My urine was dark in color, indicating dehydration. The temps were predicted to be in the 80's, and I knew they wouldn't be getting any better. By 7 pm, I had very spotty cell reception, and was able to let my wife know I was OK, but was going to need pickp the following day. It wasn't until about 10 PM that I got my location to her by text. After that, reception took a tank and I had no reception again until after I was picked up.

As dusk settled, I did get a nice fire going. I had hoped that might help to dry me out, but it didn't. Finally, about 10 PM, I changed shirts, but continued to sweat until about 3 AM.

Around midnight, some animal - I think a possum - climbed onto my pack (hanging from a nearby tree) as I was lightly dozing... that put me on edge. Not to mention the relatively loud and constant 'moo'ing coming from a farm down south of my location. Glowing eyes would look back at me in my hammock anytime I looked out. Yea, I was kinda creeped out.

About 1:30 or so, headlamps started shining into my hammock. That went on for about half an hour. The people at the next camp over had done a night hike and were doing privy business, so that explained that. Later in the night, however, the distinct sound of large animals again called me back to attentiveness... what sounded like two deer fighting, running around, huffing at one another. All I could envision was one of them running into my camp and sending me spinning in my hammock. I climbed out, rekindled my fire, hoping that would keep thenm away, and finally dozed off - probably out of sheer exhaustion - around 4ish. I was back up at 6:30, got some supplies from my pack, and laid back down in the hammock, dozing in and out until 8. It took me an hour to break down camp, and then Kristen came to pick me up at 10:30.

Now, let me share what went wrong.

1) I waaaaaaaaaay overpacked. And I thought I was being conservative! One paperback to read and a prayerbook - those were my luxury items. They never got touched, as did little of the packed food. My pack weight was 41 pounds. I packed way too much food for this trip. I could have gotten away with half of what I packed. Not sure on the water though.

2) Inattention early. If I had actually taken off my boots back at Rock Shelter, I would have noticed that the right boot sole had separated from the leather upper. That alone would probably have resulted in an abort, and such an abort might have been best. I also, in retrospect, realize I was somewhat disoriented on my stop at the creek to filter water. Could have saved myself an hour there if I had been more attentive and acknowledged my situation.

3) I overestimated the protection that the forest canopy would give from the heat. I am temperature sensitive, so I figured that canopy would help - which it did, but not nearly enough to compensate for my sensitivity. I was actively sweating until about 3 AM, when it was definitely down into the 60's. I think I need to confine long trips to spring and fall... summer is right straight out for backpacking more than a short distance. I have to acknowledge and own that.

That's about it for the moment. I am sure I will have more lessons to learn, but one thing I did take away from this experience is that while the elements won the day over my goals, I did not conclude my experience by wanting to drop the hobby as I did in the slog back from my Peninsula Trail hike. That is a step forward, and a positive one at that.