Yuck! I couldn’t believe why I signed up for a five day and five night backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada. I remembered back to the beginning of the summer of 2005, we had just gotten out of school, and my Boy Scout Troop had a meeting planned in a couple days. I had been wondering what outings or hikes we would be going on, I was thinking that we would go on some two night outing, but what really astounded me was this. “We’re going on a five day and five night backpacking trip in the Sierras!” And all of a sudden I sign up for it (what was I thinking). The same night I couldn’t fall asleep, for my mind was a whirlpool, spitting out ideas for what the trip would be like. It was only for a few more days before I realized what it would actually be like.
Many weeks before our trek, I had heard that in order to get to the trail we would need to take a ferry across a lake, would be wading through a stream, we would hike up to 12,000 feet, and the trip would be over forty miles! And even after I had heard about it from some of the older scouts, but I still couldn’t put into perspective the magnitude of how long and enduring this trip actually was. And as the days drew near to the date of the Sierra Trip, as we called it, I started to pack up with my tent buddy and talked to check if we had forgotten anything.
Finally, the day had arrived. I aroused slowly from bed, took a shower, and put on the clothes that I would be wearing for the next two to five days. The group of scouts and their parents all waited sedulously in the Turtle Rock parking lot for everyone to arrive. After the final scouts had arrived, parents and scouts both shared their heart-felt goodbyes and we were off.
And that leads me to where I had left off. It was the third day of our trek, and we had covered a little bit over twenty miles. I had woken up from a rough night of sleeping right on top of a rock, and was eating my oatmeal, when all of a sudden a mosquito bites me. I...