News from Jules | 09.12.2023 | Braving the Wilderness: Part 1
Two weeks ago, I traveled from Idaho to Wyoming for my next “ultimate” destination on my whimsy way through the West—the elusive Wind River Mountain Range.
According to a local tourism site, “The Winds” are the most popular section of the Bridger Wilderness of western Wyoming containing a unique combination of jagged granite rock, alpine forest, and open alpine meadows throughout 2.25 million acres in the Rocky Mountains and extending for approximately 80 miles along the western slope of the Continental Divide.
I knew it was supposed to be so beautiful, so wild and so remote. At least that’s how my brother, my Dad, and every other climber had described the Winds any time it came up in conversation since I started mountaineering three years ago. But that’s about all I knew.
That was enough to add it to my adventure bucket list.
So, of course, I said heck yes when the invitation arose to join the cute climber I met in Sisters, Ore. earlier this summer for two weeks of rock climbing in the Winds. And, sure I could learn how to multi-pitch climb in the two months before I got there.
There’s a popular phrase from a poem that we meet people for “a reason, a season or a lifetime.” But how can we know from the onset—what we’ll learn from them, when we’ll keep crossing paths or how long they’ll be present in our lives?
We can’t.
Because relationships—no matter how long or brief—are not a walk in the park. Relationships are the wilderness.
Not the “uncultivated, uninhabited and inhospitable” place or scary “wasteland” as humans define the wilderness, but “an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching” while we coexist together, as Brené Brown described it in her 2017 book, Braving the Wilderness.
According to Brown, “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”
How the wind blows, the thunder rolls, the lightning strikes, the snow falls, the rain drips, the sun radiates, the rivers flow, the mountains erode, the horses graze, the bobcats stalk, the birds chirp. Raw and real. Simply being.
So beautiful, so wild and so remote.
We entered this adventure as innocently as we’d entered this partnership.
Could we make the 30-mile trek at 9,000 feet of elevation with 40- to 50-pound packs full of camping and climbing gear? Could we handle 10 pitches up 1,000-foot rock faces? Could we spend seven days in a tent together? Would we pick up where we left off? Would we like where we ended up?
These were the big questions. Plus, there were a hundred other little assumptions that we eventually uncovered as unanswered questions about our capabilities, interests, expectations, desires, and more.
With my 10 years of backpacking experience plus his 10 years of rock climbing experience, we felt intrigued and a little intimidated but prepared enough.
We celebrated my birthday in Jackson, WY, and Grand Teton National Park that Thursday, Aug. 31, and then finished our preparations on his day off that Friday, including dropping off his trailer and my car at a storage facility before driving two hours on a very bumpy forest service road to camp near the Big Sandy trailhead. Due to the Labor Day holiday overflow of visitors, we were lucky to find a quiet spot off the main road to pitch a tent on Friday night.
On Saturday morning, we prepared our last “real” meal of fried eggs and bacon at the rustic campsite before loading up our gargantuan packs while making plenty of jokes about Cheryl Strayed’s “Monster” pack from her memoir, Wild, about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
The half-mile trek to the actual trailhead was a struggle and we’d barely started.
Our first reality check was just a mile or so in when we sat on a log for our fifth break in an hour and seriously discussed the pain in my legs. It would be the first of many critical conversations about whether to persist or give up. Slowly but surely, we hiked eight miles through grassy meadows, alongside rushing rivers and through gurgling creeks, far beneath the looming granite mountains and gratefully under an overcast—thus not hot, but also ominous—sky.
At Clear Lake, we met one of the few fellow hikers staying there who pointed out a beautiful lakeside campsite facing our climbing objective the next day up Haystack Mountain. And who mentioned a forecast of snow. Odd, that didn’t match the reports my Dad was texting us over the InReach Satellite device, I thought and made a mental note to text him again after we cooked our dehydrated dinners and settled in for the night.
On Sunday, we packed up and realized we’d forgotten the local climbing guidebook and a key piece of gear. Still doable but more challenging, we set out to hike and scramble up 1,500 feet of elevation to the start of the four-pitch climb. Once there, we discovered a fleece had also fallen off the pack on the trail below.
And up there at 11,000 feet, the winds had picked up to 15-20 miles per hour already chilling our hands and soon-to-be our feet without socks in leather and rubber climbing shoes.
With deep sighs, we quickly and unanimously decided to bail on the climb. It could only get worse and more miserable. There wasn’t snow in the forecast—or so we thought but later learned we were looking at reports for the right mountain, wrong state—but there was obviously some kind of storm brewing.
We descended back to our campsite, retreated to the tent before the rains came, and stayed put for the next 18 hours of reading, napping, snacking, massaging sore muscles, and playing Go Fish. While we were finally packing up our drenched gear around 11 a.m. on Monday to move on to our next climbing destination deeper in the Winds, I heard my name and the always foreboding phrase:
“Jules, you gotta come see this.”
Uh oh.
I stepped outside the tent to see snow falling across the lake from the thick blanket of gray clouds covering the sky. We reasoned if it was below freezing at midday, it probably wouldn’t get warm enough that day to dry our gear before another most likely wet and cold night.
It was obvious. We had to bail, again.
We hoisted our still gargantuan packs—perhaps even heavier soaked with rain—onto our sore backs and headed out. Slowly and silently, we hiked the eight miles back through now dewy meadows, alongside rushing rivers and forded now rushing creeks, far away from the looming granite mountains now hidden by clouds and sadly under a more overcast sky.
During a very quiet two-hour drive on the very bumpy forest service road back to civilization, we had our first true misunderstanding and disagreement. He said it was over. I said it wasn’t. I thought he was giving up. He thought I was being unrealistic.
In his book, Atomic Habits, former performance coach James Clear described how “‘the first time an opportunity arises, there is hope of what could be.’ The first opportunity. Or the first attempt. Or the first spark of a dream. This is where both the promise and the expectations form.”
Clear went on to say, “The second time around, your expectation is grounded in reality. You begin to understand how the process works and your hope is gradually traded for a more accurate prediction and acceptance of the likely outcome.”
See photos from our adventure in the Winds on Instagram.
Likewise, we were well beyond the sunny and carefree honeymoon phase of those first three weeks after we met in Sisters, Ore. this summer. This second time around was quickly becoming grounded in reality.
A reality beyond our control but within our reach.
We were heading back to town, yet we were still deeply in the wilderness—that untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.
How could it be over?
We’d barely started.
May you bravely be yourself this week.
Love,
Jules