Today is officially Trail Mix Day. I don’t know if there is any other day that as a backpacker would be so near and dear to my heart. Back in the days I was actively backpacking I never planned lunch – not ever. It was always trail mix. I might add cheese or summer sausage, but lunch always included trail mix.
I’m fudging a little bit when I say lunch, others might call my style of backcountry cuisine the “noshing method”. For every hour I walked, I’d take a break for 5 minutes. I wore a watch and kept to that schedule 60 minutes on – 5 minutes off, as much as possible. I read somewhere it was a very efficient way to hike, and it’s worked for me since the 1980’s.
I really only varied from that schedule when hiking with a girlfriend I had for the better part of a year at the Grand Canyon. She didn’t like schedules, she didn’t like vegetables cut up a uniform size, and she didn’t like people who were overweight. There were a lot of things Nancy didn’t like. I might write more about her another time, but she isn’t a trail mix story.
Caving Rocks!
The trail mix story I have to tell is both funny, and not funny. Looking back it’s petty funny, but at the time it wasn’t perhaps so much fun at all. The very first backpacking trip I took with another individual person was a trip to Isle Royale in 1985. Our plan was to hike from one end of the island to the other, and then back. The second half of our food was to be carried out by my parents, who were vacationing on the far side of the island, at our final first half destination.
I was young, and thought I knew everything. So, when Jim and I took off for Grand Portage Minnesota, I wanted to travel differently than my parents. They always drove straight to their destination, and straight home. My Dad was a bit known for getting lost, so it just worked better if he took no detours. I decided to do it differently than good old Mom and Dad, so when we headed north, I set no timetable or agenda.
Not long after we got into Minnesota we saw a sign for a huge cave complex with tours, Mystery Cave, off the the side of the road. We stopped. We hung around until the next scheduled time, and then my friend Jim and I went on the tour. We visited Maquoketa Caves State Park in Iowa pretty regularly, where we would spelunk, rock climb, and rappel. So we considered ourselves to be quite comfortable underground exploring the dark recesses of our earth.
Mystery Cave
The cave complex was pretty awesome.
Aww hell, it was incredibly awesome.
Um, it was absolutely enthralling and it flat out blew our minds. Ok, I think that does it justice.
I was used to crawling around on wet, slimy, muddy rocks. I banged my knees up so badly that I resorted to using football knee pads, duct taped to a pair of army surplus olive green fatigues. I fashioned padding for my elbows too, and took to wearing leather work gloves. I also purchased a climbing helmet, because I was tired of nearly getting concussed by the tight unforgiving rock every time I lifted my head.
Mystery Cave in Minnesota was certainly not slimy. There were pristine clear pools of water, crystal clear, reflecting the cave’s ceiling and walls, as well as offering distorted views of the pool’s bottom. There were stalactites and stalagmites galore, flowstone, and if I remember correctly there was also a rock curtain on display as well. Did I mention that there were numerous fossils in the cave’s walls? Some of the fossils were very impressive.
What wasn’t impressive were my time management skills. We spent something just over three hours at Mystery Cave. We got behind schedule. Far behind schedule. I didn’t mind doing the driving to get there, but now we’d be setting up camp in the dark. We did without supper, grabbing a big bag of trail mix to tide us over. The next day my hiking partner put the trail mix back, we spent three more hours at one of Minnesota’s premiere parks – Gooseberry Falls State Park. Later, we arrived at our campsite after dark again.
In the morning we packed up and caught the ferry to Isle Royale National Park. The boat ride in was interesting to say the least. I decided to call the boat we were in a garbage scow, that was probably an exaggeration. We decided a garbage scow would have better engines.
Isle Royale
Eventually, we made it to the island, made the obligatory stop at the NPS Backcountry Ranger office and finalized our permit, and headed out. I made a mistake, I had not filled our canteens, so when we got to a stream I had to stop and filter water to fill our water bottles. About an hour later we stopped for our first real rest break, and I asked Jim to get out the Trail Mix (we called it GORP – Good Old Raisins and Peanuts.)
He looked at me with wide eyes but said nothing. I asked again. Jim offered that I should have it. I checked my pack. It was a top loader, so soon my gear was scattered all around us as I looked for the trail mix that seemed to be absent. I asked Jim to check his pack. He offered that I was carrying all the food. I asked again. Jim dug around in the pack with no success.
At this point, I had a terrible sinking feeling, so I asked Jim where he got the GORP from, and he offered “the food box”. I said there were two food boxes. He said there were not.
I said, “Jim, there were two fucking food boxes! I packed them!”
I think he said, “Oh…”
It was a quiet night after that, nobody had much to say. I had planned our calories pretty close, I knew we were going to be short for the next five days. It wasn’t ideal, but I pulled a summer sausage out of my hat (not my pocket!), and we got by. We spent the the better part of a week a bit short on food, to say the least.
Happy Trail Mix Day
That’s my Trail Mix story. It’s a sad tale of woe (and missed lunches). I learned to carry extra food, just in case. And, NEVER EVER let anyone touch my trail mix. That worked perfectly until the Camp Turkey at Phantom Ranch ate my GORP on Thanksgiving Day. I’ll save that one back until Thanksgiving, or perhaps Trail Mix Day next year…
Happy Trail Mix to you, until we meet again!
