After nearly 3 months without a single Wilderness Expedition, I felt it was time to get my gear back out again and get away for the weekend. As it turns out, I really needed to get away and remind myself of what I was really doing at UWC. The expedition served as an excellent chance to remind myself.
This expedition was different from the previous three that I have been on. Rather than peel off into separate teams for the whole expedition, we had a specific location where we would all meet up--the yurt. A yurt is a circular building that has a pagoda-like roof on top of it. The plan for the expedition was to leave on Friday evening, spend Friday night at the Yurt. We would then spend all of Saturday at the yurt, learning to cross-country ski and then hike down on Sunday. I was pretty excited for my first expedition since the Grand Canyon!
But, as with all things at UWC, the trip didn't run to time. On Friday Evening, we were supposed to leave at around 8 PM, but a presentation ran over. Thus, we didn't leave until 10:30 PM. The drive to the trail head was about 2 hours...I wound up sleeping for most of it. We arrived at the Taos Ski Basin (our trail head) at around 12:30. By this time, it was pretty cold outside, but we all ran around unpacking equipment and preparing to leave. Unfortunately, this unpacking took quite a while. As a result, we didn't actually start our 2.5 hour hike up the trail until 1:30 AM. It was REALLY cold by this time. Fortunately, I had invested in some really good skiing gear the year before, I was pretty warm, albeit very cozily wrapped up.
The hike up was actually pretty fun. Night hiking is a really cool way to experience the outdoors. It's when the forest really comes alive. We could only see as far as our headlamps could reach, but the sounds of hiking through a forest covered in snow is almost magical. All in all, it was a pretty fun experience.
Once we reached the yurt, however, the fun was over. By 4 AM, it was absolutely frigid outside. It was so cold that the drops from my hydration pack froze on my jacket within 30 seconds. Rather unfortunately for us, we were one of the teams selected to sleep outside for the first night. The yurt could only accommodate half the UWC students at any one time, so teams had to take turns sleeping outside. Rather reluctantly, our team left the warmth of the yurt (we were allowed inside to warm ourselves) and set our minds towards setting up the tent.
Setting up a tent in a snow-covered forest is a very different proposition from just setting up a regular tent. Setting up a tent in a snow-covered forest at 4 AM is just asking for disaster. We didn't quite reach the disaster level, but we definitely teetered on the brink. To prepare a tent in those conditions, one must first dig out the area around where the tent is going to be set up. We brought a shovel with us for this express purpose. It was really hard work shoveling the snow out of the way, but by the end of the job, we felt the area looked pretty good. Next, it was time to set up the tent. We had to set up an inner "core" and a fly that insulated the core. It took us about an hour in total to set up both the tent and dig out the area. By 5 AM, we were all REALLY cold. (Or, at least, I was). While Kathryn, our team leader, set up the inside of the tent (we layered the floor with a groundsheet, followed by a space blanket, followed by an ensolite pad, and finally a sleeping bag.), I headed back to the yurt to warm up. It's always a wonderful feeling to feel the circulation rushing back into your extremities.
At 5:30 AM, I finally collapsed into my sleeping bag, inside the tent. It was absolutely incredible to finally get to sleep. There were four of us in the tent and we all cuddled up to each other, trying to get warm. The only problem? Daylight was only an hour away. When your sleeping outside, you usually wake up with the sun. Fortunately, I was so exhausted that I slept for about 3 hours before waking up. After waking up at 9 AM, I dozed for about two hours. I hadn't realized that my core body temperature had also dropped during this time, so I was shivering uncontrollably. It's a weird feeling to be so cold that your body spasms and you can't do anything about it. At around 11 AM, Tom (our Wilderness Director) finally came around to wake us up. Feeling very groggy, I crawled out of my sleeping back and started getting ready for the day. I didn't need to get dressed, having fallen into my sleeping back fully dressed. The day just got better, as I crawled out of our tent to find my backpack from solid. It seems that the residual moisture in the pack got so cold that it froze the pack. Wonderful.
Despite these setbacks, I carried on with the day. I headed over to the yurt to find out what was going on. It turns out that there were two options--snowshoe or cross-country ski. I chose the latter, having never had the chance to XC ski before. It proved to be a mistake. Tom took us out to a pasture and got us oriented on skis. After a couple of hours of practicing and realizing that cross-country skiing is NOT the same as downhill skiing (aka, you should try to use downhill technique while going downhill on Cross Country skis), we started to head up a trail towards Bull of the Woods Peak. It was really hard work. The school doesn't have enough "skins" to go around. Skins are important because they provide XC skis with grip to go uphill. I wasn't one of those fortunate enough to get a pair of skins, and so going uphill was slow and painful.
Eventually, I decided to turn around. It was getting pretty late, and so I decided to call it a day. Turning my skis around, I started to head downhill. Unfortunately, I hadn't really mastered the technique of going downhill on XC skis. Thus, I ended up wiping out at least 6 times, many of them embarrassingly. It was definitely a blow to my confidence, given that I'm decent at downhill skiing. Fortunately, however, I eventually reached the bottom and the yurt. At this point, the trip started to improve markedly. I sat inside the yurt and began to build up the wood fire. I've always enjoyed building fires and this one was no exception. Within an hour, I had a pretty good fire going, and I turned my attention elsewhere. As the yurt began to fill up, I started chatting to people I don't normally talk to. It was at this point that I really started to think long and hard about why I'm at UWC. Meeting and chatting with people I would normally never talk to is a reason I came here, and that evening gave me a chance to reflect a little bit.
After a very pleasant evening and dinner, I settled down for a long winter's nap. We only had to spend one night outside, and believe me, I was very grateful for the second night indoors. The yurt was relatively warm, and the quiet crackling of the fire was very soothing. I slept for a solid 12 hours, which was absolutely wonderful. After the previous night's escapades, it went a long way to correcting my massive sleep deficit.
Sunday began at 8 AM, when I was woken up by Tom. We packed up the yurt, had a quick breakfast, and prepared to hike down. By contrast with the hike up, the hike down was beautiful (because you could see everything) and very quick. It took us 50 minutes flat to hike down. We were the first team down, and it fell to us to organize packing up the bus, which we did we great gusto. Finally, we climbed aboard the bus and relaxed. It was a wonderful feeling. After being outside for nearly 3 days solid, sitting down on a bus was lovely. We made our way back to campus, but not before stopping to pick up some sodas. Tom treated us all to a lovely, cold can of soda. It was wonderful. Finally, we arrived back at campus, unpacked, cleaned up, and headed back to our dorms.
This trip was, in essence, a lesson in sleep deprivation while working hard. I got a total of about 5 hours of sleep Friday night (or rather, Saturday morning), yet I still went about the day as if I had gotten a full night's sleep. (A full night on wilderness is at least 8 hours). All in all, it was a successful trip that I ultimately enjoyed.
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