I don’t know how “awe-inpsiring” this is, but here’s a short essay I wrote after hiking in the Sawtooth Mountains several years ago. -Mike
Sidehill on Loose Gravel
One summer, a friend took me hiking in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. We started out at Redfish Lake, elevation 6,500 feet, and hiked up the backside of 10,700-foot Decker Peak.
My friend was once a Forest Service Ranger and part of his job then was to maintain trails in the 756,000 Sawtooth National Recreation Area—an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. So after all those years of maintaining trail, naturally the first thing he wanted to do was get off-trail.
It was what you’d call a strenuous hike. Very steep. Very thin air. Very slow going. Take a step. Inhale. Exhale. Take another step. Inhale. Exhale. All afternoon. Finally, about 500 feet beneath the summit of Decker Peak, we reached the Saddleback Lakes—two ice-cold, crystal-clear lakes that look like a saddle on a topographical map. That night, I camped out beneath a sky full of more stars than I thought possible.
The whole experience provided me with a profound sense of achievement. The solitude, the view and the cleansing effort it took to get up the mountain all combined to make the world seem much less complex. Things seemed more comprehensible. And it seemed that it might, in fact, be possible for a man to control his own fate. It was an intoxicating feeling that lasted until the next afternoon—when it was time to come down.
When you descend from Decker Peak, you have two options: You can follow the stream beds down as they merge into bigger and bigger streams and eventually lead you to churning whitewater of Redfish Lake Creek and then to Redfish Lake. Or you can go sidehill around the mountain until you are above the lake, and then head straight down the mountain. By the time we were ready to head down the mountain, we only had a few hours of daylight left, so we decided on the latter option. It would be faster. But it would also be more treacherous.
We started out just above the tree line. Above us were jagged peaks of granite. A few thousand feet below us was the fast-moving water of Redfish Lake Creek. Across the narrow gorge from us were more peaks, looking very dramatic at eye level.
We made good time—despite stumbling along with our 40-pound packs, right leg always above the left leg on the 30-degree incline—until my friend, John, suddenly stopped. Cutting across the route in front of us was a steep vertical strip of decomposed granite—nature’s equivalent of silicone-coated marbles. The strip was about 20 yards across and stretched from one of the old granite peaks above us to as far down the mountain as we could see.
“Do you think we can make it across?” I asked.
“I think so,” said John.
He went first. The decomposed granite required constant motion to cross it. As soon as you put a foot down, the granite gave way and started to slide down the mountain. The only way to avoid going down with it was to shift your weight to your next step and keep moving. Stopping or tripping in the middle of a patch of granite would mean a long slide down.
I followed John, and we encountered one patch of decomposed granite after another, going sidehill on loose gravel for the next few hours. At one point, I slid 30 or 40 feet down the mountain, but stayed upright and eventually regained control. Even moving as fast as I could forward, I typically lost a foot vertically for every foot of horizontal progress. It was dangerous, but I never had time to think about that. I just kept moving. When we finally got around the mountain and saw the lake below us, I was much relieved.
That night, and on many nights since, I’ve thought about that hike. About how the climb to the top takes so much out of you, it’s all you can do to think about your next step. About how your tenure at the pinnacle—brief as it may be—is filled with the intoxicating sense of omnipotence. And about how the descent occurs so rapidly, you’re lucky if you’re able to keep your footing. You don’t really have an opportunity to look back and contemplate the whole thing until after it’s done. If you’re not careful, you could climb mountains your whole life and never have time to think about what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.
I often think about that hike because when you’re a kid, you don’t control your own fate, but you temper that knowledge with the thought that someday, you’re going to grow up and be an adult and the world will be your oyster. But the older you get, the more you realize most of us are just a bunch of big kids. We do adult things—we work, we make house payments, we pay taxes–but control is an illusory thing. It’s like running sidehill on loose gravel. In the end, people seem much happier when they stop pursuing control and start seeking meaning because at that point, you begin to establish a foothold on solid ground.
