There is a faint line of orange building on the horizon. I’ve been riding for about 45 minutes leaving from the Lounge and pedaling to Tonaquint Terrace for a hot lap around Zen (trust me this is the best way to ride it). As per the plan, we should be somewhere on the last climb when the sun bursts above the skyline and gives us what we came for, Zenrise.
To catch the sunrise meant leaving the Lounge at 5:30 in the am. I am an early riser partially because I love sunrises. I get up, panicked by the prospect of having forgotten to ready something. Slowly do all the double checks as the water boils. I’m ready and have ten minutes for coffee and any fuel I plan to consume before I start.
I drink the coffee.
We have ridden lower Zen and begun the climb up when my tummy grumbles. I ignore it and keep smashing the pedals. A couple more minutes, a bit more elevation gained, it grumbles again. I try to ignore it, but my overstimulated brain is already in overdrive worrying about the impending bonk. The questions bounce around in my head. Do you have enough food? Did you even bring food? Ah, this is going to suck. I pull myself together and keep pedaling.
Dropping the Jacker Stacker, cleaning SOB Hill and Commitment Issues, we continue to climb. Maybe it’s the adrenaline from the rollers. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve only consumed coffee and water in the past 12 hours, but I can feel my body getting shaky. I’ve moved past a grumbly stomach and entered into the bonk stage.
At this point, there are two choices. Eat or don’t eat.
Deprivation – The lack of or denial of something considered to be a necessity.
It’s more difficult than most of us think to find or enter a state of deprivation in our current norm of being fat and happy. Everything we need is not only available, it’s readily available. Instead of worrying about our evolutionary problem of food scarcity, we are stuck on the other end with an overabundance of fuel and the inability to not eat all of it.
Over the years I’ve taken quite a few people on their first backpacking trip. Packing for a trip where resupply is limited or unavailable is the one way to truly know what one needs. On most people’s first trip, they overpack. Like way overpack. Like brought a whole loaf of bread, the family-sized can of beans and a 12 pack of beer, overpacked.
I’ve watched myself and others going through the motions of what to bring along. It’s not easy. It’s actually hard to not bring too much. How do you even define too much? If you prescribe to essentials only, then anything in your pack you didn’t use during the trip was too much. That’s a razor thin line to be navigating and it scares us. What happens if I don’t bring enough food?
Well, you go hungry.
There is one section of Zen I absolutely dread. Interestingly enough, from a group that has named almost every rock in this county, it doesn’t have a name, but I’m sure you know where I’m referring. It’s the steep little bitch of a climb between SOB Hill and the Grotto. The one you go around the big rock and then boom, it’s on and on is up. It always hurts and has zero reward. No view, no killer downhill after, it’s just an obstacle to get over.
There’s a short semi-flat section just before this climb. This is my recovery zone prior to hitting that climb hard (remember I don’t have gears, so there is only one way to get through it. Go hard). I don’t stop, but slow to the point that my heart rate drops, my breathing slows and my legs relax.
Joey and I have now reached this point. The question of whether it was adrenaline or lack of calories has been resolved. It’s the latter. I can feel my hands shaking and having been to this point many times, I know that if I stopped and held them out, they would be visibly shaking.
I slow down giving my body a reprieve and then, it’s on.
We blow past the top of that small climb, flow through the Grotto, clean the bath tub and pedal our sorry asses up to the view point.
Of course, we stop. I pull out my water and chug a bunch. For some reason easily accessible water isn’t a part of my riding kit anymore. The sun peaked out as we were pedaling through the Grotto and as per the usual, it was glorious.
Our last resupply on the JMT was on day 6 meaning we had to carry everything we would possibly need for 8 days. We failed.
Mama Bear and I began the trip with two 8 ounce canisters of fuel. We were certain we could make it to our day 6 resupply on that much gas. Our plan was to reanalyze how much gas we had and buy some as needed at the Muir Trail Ranch. Needing to know what our daily consumption was, we planned to use one canister exclusively to know how long it had lasted. Well, the canisters got a little mixed up. When hit the ranch, our packs were heavier than we wanted, our gas seemed to be barely diminishing and we thought we had almost a full 8 ounce canister plus 1/3 of the one we had been using “exclusively.”
Day 12 rolled around and our last canister of gas was feeling a little lighter than one would hope for with two days left. The last bit of gas was spent as I was boiling water for dinner. Our backup plan, eat cold food.
Luckily, the Knockers had met us on day 8 and had gas they could spare saving us from two days of food that was even less appealing.
The reason packing is so hard for the first trip is because you don’t know. Having food readily available at all times has made us ignorant of how much we actually need. As Henry Rollins pointed out, going without is how you figure out who you are and how much you need. To be deprived is the defining force.
After the obligatory pics at the top, we rally. The descent is what it always is, a ripper. With smiles smashed onto our faces by the speed and adrenaline, we drop into the final canyon on Zen and throw out the proverbial high fives that everyone needs (no high fives were actually had. Duh, COVID).
We retrace our tire tracks on the Casa Zen Trail and make our way back to Tonaquint Terrace. Maybe it was that ripper of a descent. Maybe it was the thought of high fives. or Maybe I didn’t really need anything to eat because now I feel fine. Joey returns home and I slowly, totally spun out, pedal my way back to the Lounge.
Always ride through the bonk.
P. L. and R.
