Whew-hoo! I CAN'T Bathe for Three Days!

July 12, 2007 (Continued)

Once past the first thermal area of our journey, we gradually headed into another section of open fields, and then the trail led away into forest. The way remained mostly flat, with a few little rises here and there. Zach, who’s in excellent shape, soon outstripped Tim and I, and I watched as his figure, complete with his walking stick (a gift from his father in infancy) disappeared around various bends. Tim and I took up the end, and only spoke when we caught Zach up once so we could all apply mosquito repellant. Sad day, they’d started to swarm the trail, though they were nothing compared to the clouds that had engulfed us weeks before at Shoshone Lake, and a year earlier along the Lake Thorofare Trail. Mosquitoes suck.... (no pun intended). My pal Ken informed me that it’s only the female of the species that bites and draws blood.... He followed up that statement with a few more choice comments regarding women.... Ah Ken....

Along the way, I kept expecting to pass Andi and her group, which was composed of herself, Pilar, Andrew, and Steven, the latter of which was Asian. (Her expedition later joked that he was the first Asian to ever see a waterfall in the backcountry.... I thought it was pretty funny....) They had announced their return time at Canyon to be 5 pm. Should they not appear by the designated time, their emergency contact was to inform rangers. (Our expedition had left similar instructions with Zach’s girlfriend Amy and our friend Jessica.)

However, we didn’t pass their group, and about 2 ½ hours later, roughly around noon, we came to Moss Creek. We weren’t entirely sure if that was indeed our location (Tim initially argued that the creek seemed to be moving in the wrong direction and I had no idea what I was looking at, other than it did indeed appear to be a creek of some sort—my sense of direction is non-existent), but after an extensive perusal of the map and a walk further up the trail, which yielded the Moss Creek campsite marker, we decided that we were in fact gazing upon THE Moss Creek.

Our location having been established, we set about eating lunch and filtering water with Zach’s handy-dandy water filter (which was really old and sometimes gave us issues, but which was massively useful anyway). A little wooden bridge ran over the creek and our lunch spot afforded us a view of a yellow field on either side, and then an uphill further along the trail that led back into the trees.

We made a leisurely affair of lunch, as we’d made splendid time on the first bit of our day’s route, and we’d been chillin’ along the banks of Moss Creek for about a half hour when Zach’s head perked up. Since our arrival, he’d been under the impression that he could hear voices and movement coming from the trees, but nothing materialised or produced a steady sound until we heard, “Andrew!” break over the murmuring of the creek.

“That must be Andi’s group!” I said, and our heads swivelled in the direction of the forest.

Shouts of, “Andrew!” continued to echo through the woods, and at any minute I expected to see Andi’s expedition break throught the edge of trees and into the field. No such event occurred, however, and it was a few more minutes before we heard the calls for Andrew begin anew.

Zach got to his feet, jumped over the creek, and started off in the direction of the voices. He was soon lost to Tim and I, and disappeared among the trees.

“You don’t think Andrew died, do you?” I nervously asked Tim, but Tim had no more an idea of the current situation than did I. It seemed that our best course of action was to remain along the creek, rather than join the search and risk becoming lost ourselves.........

TOP: Zach and Tim eating lunch at Moss Creek

BOTTOM: Moss Creek, our first backcountry landmark!