Note: This story was published on the website for the periodical: "High Country News: For People Who Care About the [American] West" in April, 2014 as part of their "Travel Horror Stories" contest. Since it's travel related, I wanted to also share it here.
It was supposed to be my comeback trip. A boyfriend of nearly seven years and I had called it quits, and sometimes it felt like I didn’t know how to do anything by myself anymore. I wanted to re-establish my wild, feminist spirit, and reclaim backpacking for me, on my own terms. So I got a map of Yosemite National Park and a permit for a four-day loop around the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir area.
I swear I checked the forecast and saw no risk of rain. But on the first night, an hour after I nestled triumphantly into my new one-person tent at Rancheria Falls, it started to pour. And it didn’t stop for 20 hours.
When morning arrived and the sun didn’t, I packed my drenched gear and went to confer with my neighbors. Someone with a radio reported that the trail back to where I'd started was closed, the waterfall crossings lethally high.
I couldn’t just sit in the rain-drenched camp, so I resumed my route. I hiked through Tiltill Valley, mud past my ankles, shimmied along a wet log stream crossing, and powered up 2,000 vertical feet of switchbacks. Only once, when I tripped and was being pressed face-first into the mud by my heavy pack, did I wish I wasn’t alone.
When I reached the summit, the sun came out. I spread everything out to dry while I boiled water for tea. That’s when the salamander-monitoring crew arrived. They had been radioed to return to Rancheria Falls, where a boat would evacuate everyone the next morning. They strongly suggested I join them, lest I become the last person marooned in this area of the park. For a glorious moment, that sounded like a real opportunity to up the ante on my solo survival quest.
Hiking out through the night with the salamander crew felt like unraveling a sweater I’d worked hard to knit. There I was, back at camp, waiting to be rescued by a boat. Who gets rescued from backpacking by a boat? Certainly not strong, single women of the wilds. But as I enjoyed a unique view of Wapama Falls from the skiff on the reservoir, I realized that my disastrous attempt at independence had yielded an unexpected tale of multifaceted adventure. Who gets rescued from backpacking by a boat? I did. And it’s a great story, all my own.
