Grit is a 4-Letter Word

Grit is a 4-Letter Word

The Psychology of Backcountry Travel

Ann Gimpel Ph.D.

Edited by

Diane Eagle Kataoka

Contents

Grit is a 4-Letter Word

Dedication and Acknowledgments

Author’s Note:

Book Description:

1. Introduction

Mary’s Story

2. The Allure of the Backcountry

Eve’s Story

3. Will the Real Trail Please Stand Up?

Michael’s Story

4. Who Are You?

Sarah’s Story

5. Solo or Not?

John’s Story

6. Anyone Can Be a Backcountry Traveler

Bob’s Story

7. When the Going Gets Tough…

Ann’s Story

8. Preparation for Backcountry Life

Bob’s Story

9. An Accurate Assessment

Gary’s Story

10. How to Let Things Go and Keep Moving

SP’s Story

11. Negotiations

Joe’s Story

12. Emotional Safety Net

Jan’s Story

13. About Journeys

Bob’s Story: A Unique Ski Buddy

14. Realistic, Balanced, Better

Appendix 1: Gear

Appendix 2: Backcountry Kitchen

Appendix 3: Resource Guide

About the Author

Grit is a 4-Letter Word

The Psychology of Backcountry Travel

By

Ann Gimpel, Ph.D.

Dedication and Acknowledgments

It’s hard to know where to start. My heart is full as I finish this book because the wilderness is an intensely personal place for me. It’s where I learned to believe in myself.

This book is dedicated to everyone who’s ever put a pack on their back and headed into the backcountry. Hats off to each of you. No matter how far you got, your spirits shine bright, lighting the way for others.

This book is also dedicated to my husband, Bob Carlson, mountaineer par excellence. He taught me most of what I know about self-sufficiency in the mountains, and I’ll be forever grateful for his gift.

I’d like to acknowledge those who helped pull the book together. In no particular order, they include the folks who offered up backcountry stories, the John Muir Trail Facebook group, the All Women, All Trails Facebook group, Diane Eagle Kataoka, my hiking buddy and a great right-hand woman since she edits as well. Michael Bodine was instrumental in gathering backcountry stories from our local climbing community, and he volunteered to copy edit. It takes a village, and I’m grateful for every scrap of assistance.

If I missed anyone, forgive me.

See you on the trails!

Author’s Note:

In wilderness is the preservation of the world. Henry David Thoreau

This isn’t a traditional guidebook. By that I mean there are no lists of things to do or buy. The main reason for that is we each bring something unique to the backcountry experience. Some of us are physically tougher. Some are mentally tougher. Some of us don’t soak up time over-thinking things.

I’ve seen very fit people melt down on the trail because they weren’t mentally prepared for stripping away the trappings of their normal lives. I’ve seen folks who weren’t very fit at all embrace the wilderness. Attitude is everything. Acceptance runs a close second. To the extent you can be flexible and roll with the punches, you’ll absorb the lessons that living with only the gear on your back can impart.

Just as therapy was never a one-size-fits-all proposition, neither is what you’ll find in the following pages. I make suggestions. What you do with them is up to you. If you’re looking for me to tell you how to navigate the wilderness, this isn’t the book for you.

That’s a path you’ll have to create on your own. I hope my ideas and suggestions will give you the courage to try new things. Be warned, though. The wilderness can worm its way under your skin and into your soul. Once that happens, you’ll never be the same.

Copyright Page

All rights reserved.

Copyright © February 2018, Ann Gimpel

Cover Art Copyright © Ann Gimpel

Photography Copyright © Ann Gimpel

Edited by Diane Eagle Kataoka

Copy edits by Michael Bodine

Several interviews conducted by Michael Bodine

No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, e-mail, or web posting without written permission from the author.

Climbing is an inherently dangerous sport. No part of this book should be taken as suggestion or permission for you to undertake any backcountry endeavor. The responsibility for determining if you have the necessary skills remains with you, the reader.

Cover photo taken by the author in the Royce Lakes Basin area.

Photography scattered throughout this book is from the author’s archives and may not be reproduced without her written permission.

Book Description:

Pioneer your own journey.

Part guidebook, part self-help manual, Grit is a 4-Letter Word covers mental preparedness for living with only the gear on your back and a nimble mind. But it isn’t a how to set of instructions, mostly because there are as many ways of enjoying the wilderness as there are backcountry travelers.

The beauty of wilderness travel is discovering what works for you.

Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist. She’s also a mountaineer and a vagabond. The wilderness has played a huge role in her life.

Stories speak to us at a bone-deep level, so this book is packed full of stories from the author as well as others. Read them with an open heart. It’s how they were written.

Appendices covering gear and backcountry kitchen ideas have been added, along with a resource guide, but this is only a starting point.

Read. Absorb. Ask questions. Live your dreams.

1

Introduction

Palisade Range from Dusy Basin

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." John Muir

Social media has made the world a much smaller place. My presence on a few Facebook groups convinced me a guidebook like this one might fill a niche for newly minted backpackers. Or those considering branching out into longer hikes.

I’m primarily a fiction author, but I’m also a psychologist, one who practiced for a quarter century. Psychology is like any other vocation. It takes the first five years after you get licensed before you develop a comfort zone and feel like you have something valid to offer and aren’t just blowing smoke. Not unlike backcountry travel where you figure out which things are possible, and which aren’t, practicing psychology is a matter of discovering which patients you can treat and which to refer.

Traipsing through the wilderness entails coming face to face with a series of choice points. Depending how successful you are selecting those choices, your journey is either fulfilling, a descent through the nine circles of Hell, or some experience in between.

The thousands of days I’ve spent with a pack on my back, sleeping in a tent, and eating freeze-dried food have brought me many things. Joy. Awe. A deep sense of competency and self-satisfaction on the one hand. On the other, I’ve experienced bone-rattling fear, soul-stealing doubt, and periods of abject terror where I was certain the Grim Reaper was standing by just waiting to dig his (her?) sickle into me.

Nothing much about modern life prepares us for self-sufficiency. Machines do everything for us, and we’ve become proficient at calling for help. (Plumbers, cabinet makers, snow removal, pre-made dinners, and the list goes on.) Backpacking is an activity where if you don’t have what you need with you, you need to improvise. Some people thrive in that type of environment.

Others don’t.

I’ve been part of two backcountry ski patrol groups, and I’ve been involved in rescue efforts. I’ve run into a whole lot of people who overreached their abilities. Many of them could have averted disaster had they made different decisions earlier in the process. Oftentimes, when things start heading south, our cool heads desert us. There are physiological reasons for that, and we’ll look at them a few chapters downstream.

This book will explore why (and how) some people play fast and loose with fate and come out with four aces, while others end up dead. Luck plays a role, but not as big a one as you might want to believe. And it’s not as simple as one big thing that does us in. Usually, disaster is a cumulative process.

Let me digress for a moment. Mistakes in the mountains tend to snowball. You can often get away with one—or even two—but after that you may pass a tipping point where survival could be threatened.

Here’s an example of how that happens. A couple of years back a man planned to summit Norman Clyde Peak, a rather challenging class three-four climb. He backpacked in with a group along the south fork of Big Pine Creek and got to camp around two in the afternoon. Mistake number one was his decision to knock off the peak that day. He did reach the summit around 8:30 that night. How do I know? Because that’s when he signed the summit register.

Mistake number two was instead of spending the night on the peak’s broad, flat summit pyramid, he decided to return to camp. Night was falling. Depth perception erodes after dusk. He misjudged on a whole lot of levels and didn’t make it. Fell to his death. Over-confidence was his undoing.

How do you strike a balance between staying put or pressing on? I’m probably a good person to write about that because there have been a whole lot of occasions when my husband (world class climber with nearly 800 peaks to his name) and I looked at the same vista and drew entirely different conclusions. Sometimes I let him talk me into something that scared the stuffing out of me.

But sometimes I put my foot down. What makes the difference? I’m hoping by the time I’m done writing this book I’ll have a better articulated response than I do at the moment.

There’s a nexus where you assess your skills versus what you’re facing and weigh your options. It’s not good enough that your hiking/climbing partner can do something. If you can’t do it too at the very tippy-top of your comfort zone, you have no business agreeing. Don’t be one of those people who doesn’t speak up.

Over 30 odd years, I’ve gotten better at knowing where I can stretch my limits, and when it’s a fool’s errand. One example that comes to mind is a backpacking trip when we went in over Kearsarge Pass with plans to exit over Shepherd, as an alternative to Trail Crest over Whitney. The weather was hideous, but we made it over Forester Pass handily. The next night was grim since we were camped above timberline (no trees for protection), and it rained, hailed, and the wind howled out of the north as if Odin and Thor had left Valhalla on a personal mission to flatten us.

We were up before first light. It was still raining, pouring actually. We skipped breakfast, packed our sodden gear, and trudged toward Shepherd Pass. It wasn’t far, less than two miles. We dropped over the lip and hit the first switchback. If you’ve never been there, the upper part of Shepherd Pass (a 6800-foot vertical gain pass that rises out of the Owens Valley to the Sierra Crest) is a very steep bowl. Cliffs rise on one side with a near vertical drop off on the other. It hadn’t been a particularly big snow year, but a snowfield stretched before us. More sheet ice than snow, it was maybe 120 feet to the other side. The snowpack dropped down far enough, climbing around it would have been quite difficult with a full pack.

Especially if it didn’t work out, and we had to climb back up that slope to get to the trail.

That was one of the times I took a stand, spoke up, and said no. We lacked crampons or ice axes. A fall would have been lethal. There were no good footsteps in the ice. And it was a long way to the other side of it. We had enough food, so we retraced our steps and went back over Forester Pass. It added miles to our trip and an additional 5,000 feet of gain, but we’re still alive.

Later my husband admitted he pegged our odds at something under 100 percent, which was why he didn’t dig in his heels when I said we were going around. It’s not a bad percentage, but the penalty for guessing wrong would have been steep.

Many of my stories, and those of others who contributed to this book, take place in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A selection of wonderful online maps is readily available. If you’re curious about the geography of John Muir’s Range of Light, Google Maps is a great starting point.

Here’s the disclaimer: Mountain climbing and travel in the backcountry are inherently dangerous activities. Nothing in this book should suggest you have the skillset or other abilities to take on a particular trail or off-trail hike or climb. Those decisions rest squarely on your shoulders.

Opinions in this book are mine and mine alone, gathered from my time in the backcountry. Another person living through the same experiences might draw entirely different conclusions. Chapters are interspersed with real life accounts from people who’ve faced adversity in the backcountry.

Take your time reading those stories and think about what you would do were you faced with a similar set of challenges.

I never realized how hard it would be to compile a nonfiction book. At the front end, I’d planned on it being longer, but I’m not a big believer in simply adding words to fluff up content. The book is long enough to say what it needs to. Long enough to give you a starting point to manage your emotions in an unfamiliar setting.

Let’s get cracking, eh?

Ready. Set. Launch!

Mary’s Story

Tolkien said not all who wander are lost, but I was both. At least I was at the time I had this experience. I managed to get out of the wilderness, but it wasn’t easy. Everything that happened was my own fault. I’d just broken up with someone, and I did this trip on a bet, but things kept going wrong. Not at first they didn’t, but after a while things went downhill. When I left the trailhead south of Yellowstone National Park, I figured I was ready for anything. I planned to hook in with the Continental Divide Trail and do a few hundred miles. I told everyone I’d exit around Durango, Colorado. Friends from college lived there, so it seemed like a solid plan .

I was done with my undergrad degree and taking a break before I started graduate school in the fall. I was ready for some alone time. It’s what I told myself. I’d done a little backpacking, a weekend here, a weekend there. And I was young and in reasonable shape. I researched what I’d need on the Internet and picked up the