Category: Travels

Please read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8.

I moved on after having a much improvised lunch.

The Sun was getting more and more unbearable as the time passed by. Needless to say, the air was getting thinner and thus further reduced my lung capacity. I wished could just sit and take a very long nap instead of walking. However, I need to go on simply because it was the most beneficial option. Without food, the benefit of reaching my checkpoint, the Tuolumne Meadows was multiplied, causing it to have an exponential effect.

The journey to the top of the California Falls was tiring. The trail was tough to handle since rocks instead of sand made it up. I wonder how Leman could hike with only a pair of snickers; even with my toughened boots, blisters plagued me. Things seemed to be hopeless and hapless but I had no choice. I kept saying to myself that this will pass, like other unpleasant things in the past. This too will pass.

Despite feeling generally depressed, the wall of the mountains offered a great sight. I took the liberty of observing the wall expression and swore that I thought the mountains were smiling at me. I was bewildered and laughed for the first time in days. Looking at the sides of the canyon was really like looking at the clouds; you could see almost anything as long as you have a decent imagination.

After a light moment, I knew I was hallucinating. And generally, hallucinating beside a ledge of a trail, with one side falling down more than a hundred feet is not good. So, I garnered my concentration and stared at the mountains and unfortunately and humorously for my sanity, the mountains this time seemed to laugh even harder. Comforting enough, after a few minutes of tries, I assured myself that the mountains wall was just some unusual rock impression.

The sensation of seeing smiling rock wall had a positive effect on me and I began to believe Mother Nature was giving a hand. She played a trick on me but in doing so she lifted up my strength and spirit. She gave me hope by giving the impression things were not as grim as it would seem. For that, my love for her grows even more.

Hours into the day, I had finally outperformed myself. I was finally on top of cascade of falls. Dropping my backpack to the ground, I went to a boulder located in the middle of the river, overlooking the whole cascade of falls. The sheer height of the fall would have taken a life immediately out of a hypsiphobic. With a clenched fist, I smelled a scent that I haven’t smelled for years – victory.

I stood on the rock for a considerable amount of time, with the wind and the water vapor blasting against my face. There was just me, up high in the mountains overlooking the whole canyon down below. No wonder John Muir’s heart was broken when Hetch Hetchy was condemned in the name of progress.

At times, I wanted to jump, ending everything at that moment so no more will the excruciating pressure of life pressuring me. It takes courage to jump and frighteningly, I had the courage to make that jump. Luckily, I remembered a word of wisdom said to me a long time ago – it takes greater courage to live a life than to end it. In addition, there are just too many things need to be done. I concurred at the end that I need things to be done before I die.

I turned my back and only to be stunned by Gaia again. In front of me, the river was flowing towards me with a narrowly long, flat valley dwarfed by the Sierra Nevada in the background. The valley was not simply a valley. Conifer trees conquered both sides of the river. It was as if an elongated football field was present up high in the anything but flat mountainous area. The oddity equals to seeing a patch of green earth in the middle of the Antarctic.

I wonder why I didn’t notice the grand Sierra Nevada when I first reached the top but this was one of many reasons why I do not regret my decision to hike more than 50 miles with a 50 lbs burden on my back in California.

The sierra was beautiful beyond words. To try to describe it here would do great injustice and more, an insult to Mother Nature. But yet as Human, I can’t resist the temptation to describe such sight to friends later after the expedition. She was terribly beautiful and if she were the fairer sex, I would strip myself of my entire ego, fall to my knee, begging for her love.

Farther up front, about an hour worth of walk, Glen Aulin was in sight.

To my delight, there was a small sign indicating my goal, the Tuolumne Meadows was just over five miles away. Yet, the length doesn’t describe the true dimension of the path that I needed to take. Hundreds of feet needed to be swallowed to accomplish the five miles.

If I was given the chance, I would camp at Glen Aulin, be in the small grove in the petite valley. Alas, time was not my ally. I need to hike as much as I could if I were to catch up with Epol and Leman. Though it was merely a hunch, I believed that Epol and Leman should be waiting for me at the Meadows. I was betting on luck but my bet was a calculated one. True enough, as it turned out later, it wasn’t vainly made.
The Sun was setting when I was somewhere near the heart of Glen Aulin; the sky was turning red as the white moon rose to claim the heavenly throne. Yet, I headed on, struggling for the Meadows.

The thought of food, clean water, hot shower and all made me to ride on a faster pace. I hiked until it was dark and cold. Exhausted and hungry, I finally had to give up the game of catching up and camped. Up high, the wind was merciless, blowing as strong as a storm, giving me a hard time putting the tent up.

Once that done, quickly I changed my clothes and engulfed myself in the sleeping bag, hoping the mighty wind won’t be able to undo the tent, hoping that all this will pass swiftly, hoping no bear will come to my path.

Please read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.
Another day had arrived and this one had promised me an adventure that I will never forget.

Leman as usual was the first to wake up and I was the second. At that time, which was between 0700 and 0800, the Sun had already hit the sky and so it was sufficiently bright to force anybody to wake up.

Gradually, everybody lost their sleepiness and started to move on a speedier tempo.
The dying bonfire was again lighted, this time for breakfast. Breakfast was generally okay, some sort of soup eaten with few bagels though I was already missing West Quad’s scrambled eggs with well-cooked tots eaten with ketchup. And who could forget, before hitting the eggs and tots, huge hot bagels with blueberry stuck in between them. Along with the dishes, chocolate milk and orange juice to sweeten up the watery mouth. Lastly, a Devil’s chocolate cake as dessert. In the middle of nowhere, that luxury could only be dreamed of.

After breakfast, I don’t know why but there existed a quiet and strange atmosphere. All three of us were keeping to ourselves, packing all of our belongings carefully into the backpacks. I was the last to completely pack my stuffs. In reality, I was among the first to start packing but on that day, the sleeping bag was being naughty and as stubborn as a mule. I took me more than ten minutes of trying before I finally gave up and asked Epol to help me out with the sleeping bag. Thanks to Epol, shortly it was compressed into the lower part of the backpack smartly.

And so we left the spot behind at roughly 0900 hours. The awkward silence was still there and it continued – well, you might say till the end of the journey.

The three of us walked together, with Leman for the first time in the hiking trip took the lead with an incredible pace. With that, Epol and I were left behind together. I was in between Epol and Leman; in fact, I was considerably away up front of Epol. I hiked to a point where I exhausted and took a long rest. Minutes later, Epol joined me on the dirt, trying to catch up a few breaths. Once satisfied with the short rest, he got up a called for me to walk with him but I simply said you go first and I’ll catch up later. If bool is applied to the “you go first and I’ll catch up later” statement, it would not pass the and statement. This was going to be the last time I would ever see any one of the team members for about another 36 hours.

Some time later, I got up and hiked, hoping to fulfill the “I’ll catch up” promise to Epol.

I was hiking really fast hoping to catch up with Epol but along the way, the scenery was beginning to take my breaths away with every step that I took. Of course, the 50 lbs backpack also took my breaths away.

The trail started to go uphill almost radically and the rise won’t stop for more or less another 5 miles, of which in the metric system is (1.6 * 5); approximately 8 kilometers.
Among the wilderness, it was funny that I didn’t feel any fear. By any standard, I would be more scared of being alone in New York City or Los Angeles in the middle of the night than being stranded in the middle of the wilderness.

The view was magnificent. As I said before, I was hiking uphill. The canyon system was born roughly a few miles ahead, carved by the Tuolumne River and its sisters. As the river flows down, it formed a cascade of three main falls. The first fall was the Waterwheel Falls. From down below, the fall was majesty. With tons of water falling at such height, the fall was exerting an incredible amount of force to anything unfortunate enough to meet the water head on.

I stopped here due to both exhaustion and the wanting to savor the fall. Never in my life have I seen anything compared to this. In Malaysia, the falls are merely cascade of streams of which hardly noticeable from the air. On the contrary, the Waterwheel Falls would be impossible to miss. The only way to miss it is to be blind. Of course, the Niagara Fall is bigger but Waterwheel offers a different kind of impressiveness.

To explain the kind of impressiveness Waterwheel gave, Bob Burd’s Sierra Travels sufficiently quoted somebody – “The water dashes 600 or 700 feet down a surface inclined at an angle of 50 to 55 degrees, a mass of foam and spray. At intervals … the water is thrown out in columns fifteen to twenty feet high, and in huge waterwheels of fantastic forms”.

From the fall base, I thought that the view from the top of the fall would be far more exciting and so, I found a new motivation to get up and walk all the way up to the top. But yet, I can’t help but notice that the trail up to fall top was as tricky as the trail leading up to Upper Yosemite Fall of which I had conquered on the first day.

On the top, I found myself meeting some new acquaintance, three Americans guys. We sort of walked together to the Meadows. To be accurate, we were racing and I was foolish enough to race with them. I was already exhausted at that time and the racing made me almost immobilized.

It took me an hour or two to reach the top. The Americans were the first to reach the top though the time taken by both of us was roughly the same. When I was somewhere in between the top and the base of the fall, I gave my poor muscles a treat. While resting beside the narrow cliff, a man in his 30s or 40s came across me from the opposite direction. As soon as he got me in his sight, he conveyed to me that he saw someone from Michigan way up behind, waiting for me. I asked “way up there huh?” with a stress in the syllable ‘way’. The man replied “Sorry for being so discouraging” and so I just smiled back and thank him for the information.

Looking down from the top, I couldn’t believe at the height that I had just climbed. And the falling water was simply beautiful. The water just before the fall was surprisingly calm as there was simply a mass of flat land at the top. Also, I found the three Americans to be resting under a huge pine tree. We greeted each other.

Climbing up the fall was tiring and so, I made a couple hundreds meters from the Americans before putting down the heavy backpack for another rest. During this time, I took the liberty of replenishing my water supply.

At first, I thought there was only one fall to be beaten but upon reaching Waterwheel’s summit, I found out that this is not true. Immediately, I lost my motivation to hike. When I saw the next falls, which was La Conte Falls, I felt a surge of anger and slammed the stick against a huge boulder on the side of the trail. As a result, the stick broke into two. I was disappointed upon seeing that because the stick would still be a kind of a help in climbing the falls. Therefore, from here on, I would be hiking only on my two weakening legs. With crumbling enthusiasm and lack of choice, I continued my climb.

Slowly but steadily did I climb. At last after hiking and cursing my depleting stamina, I reached the birth place of Le Conte Falls. I was about to celebrate my victory in conquering it when I realized, a few miles ahead, the next challenger was California Falls.

With low morale, everything started to go wrong. In the end, I finally felt being abandoned by the other team members and started to curse them in my heart. Anger started to burn me off but the worst thing that could hit any person stuck me in the middle of literally nowhere. It extinguished the increasing flame and replaced it with a hard cold fact – the realization that I had no food inside of the 50 lbs backpack with me saved two cans of mushroom soup of which probably took too much room in the backpack.

With that newly realized knowledge, my stomach was growling. And guess what?

A new knowledge struck me; the can opener was in a bear can, carried by Epol in his backpack. Though I had a knife, with the knife alone could no way open up the can. The can seemed to be made out of carbon alloy instead of aluminum.

The only word I could muster upon that cruel enlightenment was “holy fuck”. I repeated that phrase about five or six time before I started laughing at myself. You have two cans of food in front of you and you couldn’t eat because you can’t open it.

Immediately after I was done laughing, my mind was set to survival mode. I dropped my pack and started to look around for anything that I could find. Unfortunately, there were nothing much around but trees, rocks and of course the abundant water. However, one thing managed to attract my attention – a sort of berry plant. Though the berry was far smaller than a grape, I gave a thought of consuming it. It could be poisonous but at that time, I would rather die trying than dying miserably out of hunger. I had a few dozens of it and it turned out that it was not poisonous at all. In fact, it has no taste at all but left an aftertaste worse than that pinkish antibiotic syrup.

While eating the berry, I played around with my knife and got into thinking.

Can = fucking can.
Knife = not good enough.

And I saw some small stones. So…

Stone = useless bitch.
Knife + stone = huh?
Stone + can = destructive = no good.
Knife + can = no good either.
Can + knife + stone = hmm…
Can + knife + stone = food?

And so I tried. I held the can appropriately with my feet, a dagger in my left hand and a stone on the right to act as a hammer. With a considerable amount of force, I hit the knife with the stone against the can and voila! The knife went through creating an opening.

I kept on hammering the dagger, imagining myself pathetically back in the Paleolithic age.
From here on, I relearned an old lesson. Never become dependant on anybody. Not your parents, not you friends, not even God. The only one that you could count on is yourself.

p/s – The lack of photo is due to the separation. Epol had the camera and he is a lazy guy in photography term.

Please read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.

We slept like babies that night but woke up easily the next morning. I was the last to wake up. By the time I opened my dreamy eyes, the breakfast was served and it was great.

Once the stomach was filled partially, I undid the tent and prepared myself for another day. We were ready to leave the place by 0900 and left we did.

The day started easily as the path stayed flat. In fact, it stayed flat for another 10 or 15 miles. As in the previous day, the path followed the river jealously and so, the sound of the roaring river screamed at my right ear all day long. Furthermore, the trail was covered by tall and bushy trees, making our journey less painful.

Throughout the day, we didn’t talk to each other, perhaps each of us was trying to concentrate on our footing or just didn’t have the mood to talk. I myself rather be left alone most of the day. Nevertheless, there were times when we exchanged some thought, asking for help but never starting a conversation.

At one point, I was so bored and I sang Row The Boat for more than an hour, repeating the rhythm over and over again until my boredom reached another level. The only thing that prevented me from dying out was the sight of the river and the mountain on both of my sides.

While singing, a group of hikers came from the opposite direction. One of its members was a girl with black hair, wearing a blue top and carrying a small backpack on her back. Boy, she was an angel. She smiled at me and I simply melted away. At that time it seemed, even my weariness melted away. He girl face stuck in my head and thus, I stopped singing Row The Boat and be with myself.

We hiked for another three or four hours before we reached a great place to take a cat nap in the heat of the afternoon. Immediately after freeing our shoulder from the 50 lbs burden, Epol and Leman went straight to sleep. I however, didn’t quite feel sleepy though no doubt, the rest was needed by me. I laid on my back with my head on a clean whitish stone, eyes wide opened singing old songs that I used to hear when I was a child. Later, I fell to sleep joining the others in slumberland.

The rest took longer than we had anticipated, more than an hour or so. And so, we took off quickly and quietly.

There was nothing worth mentioning in the second part of the day hiking. We simply hike all the way till about 1800 when we found a fantastic camping spot. There were a few tall confiner trees there and thus keeping the place sufficiently shaded. With the river a few meters from the camp site, it was cooling as the air was rich in water vapor. The river was filled with rapids, making the water looked white. Across the river, just after a companion of trees growing at the edge of the river, there was a rocky hill with the height as tall as the Dragster rollercoaster in Cedar Point.

Now, last week, I went to Cedar Point, just a day before the biggest blackout in North America happened. Though I went to a few crazy rides, I still can’t believe I took on the Millennium Force, the once tallest rollercoaster in the world, with the maximum height of 300++ feet. The first drop felt like terminal velocity; I actually felt my body wanting to get out of my seat. The only thing that had prevented me from flying without wings was the safety strap around my lap.

It took considerable amount of my courage and patience to get on the Millennium Force ride. It was fun but Dragster was something else. No matter how hard I tried, I could never garner any courage at all for the fastest and the tallest roller coaster in the world. I dare to drive 110 mph but driving a car and riding a roller coaster with a maximum speed of 120 mph and as high as 420 feet, are two different things. Call me a coward, call me a chicken but before that, I just need to challenge you to stand outside the track and see how the train sped faster than you could say holy fuck.

Enough digression.

We stopped at the said camping spot and just sit there. We had not even planned to stop but somehow, we couldn’t resist the temptation to stop and savor the pretty sight.
At this time, the Sun was still high and we could have just hiked for another hour or two. Leman and I were in favor of walking but Epol suggested that we camp here for the night. Nevertheless, Epol somehow managed to convince both of us to camp here tonight.

By far, this was our best camping spot ever for this trip. In addition to God’s gift, the ground was not hard because white soft sand made up the earth. Standing on it was like standing on a thick expensive Persian carpet. And since we had lot of time, we properly planned the layout of the campsite.

To celebrate the sight, we built a huge bonfire relatively to the others that we had made earlier. Even dinner was comparatively more luxurious than the days before. After dinner, we exchanged some jokes.

The best joke of the night was about a refrigerator, an elephant, a giraffe and King Solomon. The first question was how to place a large elephant into an incredibly small refrigerator. As stupid as the question is, the answer is to open up the fridge door, push the mammal in and close the door. The second question was how to get a giraffe into the fridge of which the elephant took the whole fridge space. The answer to this was to open the door, get the frozen elephant out, push the giraffe in and close the door. The final trivia was when King Solomon calls up all the animals, which would not come. The answer is the giraffe because the giraffe is stuck in the fridge still. It is an old joke but it never fails to crack me up.

That night, before going to bed, I raised my head up and marveled at the heaven above. I didn’t see any constellation that I recognized but there were countless of stars decorating the dark sky. Imagine what the others in the cities, full of light and other kinds of pollution, are missing. By God’s name, even the mystifying Cleopatra cannot possibly be compared to the alluring Milky Way.