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.
Thank you Sjakie!