Trompe la mort!

A year ago around labor day weekend, I blogged (predictably) about a fishing/backpacking trip; and on that occasion, I uploaded (lamely) photos from another guy's trip to the same area. As explained in that post, this was necessary because I had decided not to take a digital camera because digital cameras are "heavy" -- at least in a backpack context -- and not really "necessary." Not necessary? That turned out to be a rather strict opinion in the end.

This year I must be feeling a bit more liberal, because I went ahead and carried a digital camera around at altitude in the exact same area for 40 or so miles. It is perhaps not all coincidental that I am feeling in a whole lot better shape this year, too, for the climbs and slogs and slides-through-softball-sized-talus of this particular trip seemed a whole lot easier. I suppose it's also not coincidental that last year my typical summer day involved sitting on my ass in an office and eating three-item bentos from Ranch 99 for lunch before imbibing Belgian ales at the Refuge in the evenings instead of the things I have been up to this year: walking for a month in New Zealand, fishing my ass off in Baja, and paddling 250 miles in Alaskan lakes and rivers. Not to mention walking 40 miles or so in Emigrant wilderness a couple of weeks ago. Conditions this year are right for camera-carrying.

In addition to the complete set on picasaweb, I offer these exact replacements for the lame, not- my-own photos posted last year. First, the photo of one of the region's lakes:


(a different lake, yes, but a better one, I think)

And second, a picture of me (not some other guy's hairy-ass hand) holding a golden trout that I caught:


The fishing was good. The backpacking, all inclusive, was greater than Great. To do this stuff, if you have the legs and the pain threshold to do it, is to make magic, to weave spells, to cheat death. I walked the John Muir Trail at 19 in the usual daze people live in at that age. But I am even more dazed and confused to still be able to do it now. After a deep, terrifying scare from plantar fascitis a few years ago, I find that I can still walk where I want to walk, even with a whole digital camera weighing me down. So I do really feel like a "Tromp-la-mort" -- a phrase stolen from the novelette that made up my main tent entertainment, Balzac's Pere Goriot.

Which reminds me: take Balzac. Take a pricey stick of wine-infused salami. Take cave-aged gruyere. Take the best olive oil you know. Take a delicious toasted-sesame-seed rub for your fresh, sweet trout. Sure, take plastic-packaged udon and ramen noodles; but use little miso powder packs instead of the MSG packs in the packages, and add liberal amounts of fuere wakame. Since it is your own back and not a mule's, little powder coffee packs from Starbucks are acceptable for morning coffee. Certainly, take all the time you need in the morning, since dawn starts are for alpine climbers and slaves.

I need not even mention this, but -- take at least an ounce a night of single-malt scotch, and mix it with snow when your camp is high enough. If your first day is short, pack some "heavy" but "necessary" ass-kicking beer or wine. Do all this, and you will trompe la mort for sure, my friends. Here's some of the advice Trompe la mort gives to poor little Eugene:

If you were just a bloodless slug, there'd be nothing to worry about: but you have the wild blood of lions in your veins, and an itch to do twenty crazy things a day. You will submit to this torture, the ghastliest ever known in God's hell.

Submit to it like I do: go backpacking.

Trompe la mort!