North Rim/North Plateau Trails - Savage Gulf Natural Area

There are two sides to every story, this one being no exception. This particular story involves two people, Tara and myself, each with a mutually exclusive set of expectations in the days and hours leading up to this hike. Because I didn't know about the thoughts and images racing through Tara's mind prior to our departure, I will start with a complete examination of my own thoughts:

Thursday: Because I'm off tomorrow, today is my Friday - yea! My throat's a little sore, but this is an exciting game 6, huh?!

Friday: My throat's still a little sore, but I'll be ok.

Saturday morning: Oh, I'm not feeling so good. Tara, will you get a thermometer?

Now, all the while and unbeknownst to me, Tara's having some gruesome daydreams and terrifying thoughts of danger at the campsite. Her premonitions were so horrific that she had prayed Friday night for me to become too sick to hike if this trip wasn't meant to be. You can imagine her state of mind when I woke up requesting a temperature reading! She confessed this to me shortly after we discovered I had no fever. I thought about it and asked why didn't she just pray for herself to become too sick and leave me out of it!

Having been enlightened as to the events transpiring in my periphery, I knew there was no way we weren't going on this trip. And so at 10:30am, we finally set off from the trailhead at the Savage Gulf Ranger Station. The rain from the previous day had moved on, leaving us with a clear day for hiking. We came across several overlooks, where we enjoyed the splendid views and warm sunshine.

We made it to Hobbs Cabin Campground at 3:45pm and busily prepared our site. On my last backpacking trip I had turned my truck around twice to retrieve forgotten items. This did not happen on this trip; in fact, after we filled our packs, I gave the contents inside nary a thought. That is, until supper time. Tara was walking the dog (I guess the 8.5-mile walk to the camp wasn't enough for her) while I proceeded to assemble the stove. I pulled out my bag of noodles and noticed I didn't have a spoon. I looked hopefully over at Tara's bag of food but saw no spoon there, either. Without spoons, Tara suggested we slurp our noodles out of our coffee mugs. A terrific idea, indeed! I grabbed the mugs out of my pack and reached for the mess kit, which I suddenly realized. . . was still in the gear bag at home. Well, at least I remembered the stove! One out of three ain't bad.

After a dinner consisting of crackers, granola bars, peanuts, and Snickers, it was time to warm up by the fire. Though I was very comfortable, Tara was hunkered over with her shoulders raised and arms folded. I asked her if she was cold, and she confirmed she was. When I saw her shoe beginning to catch fire, I asked her if she was warming up any. She replied that her feet were starting to warm up. I bet they were!

A few minutes later we saw a light in the distance. At first we thought it was somebody walking to the privy. Then the light turned in our direction, so I figured it was the friendly park ranger. As the light makes its way into our site, we see it's not a ranger but a fellow camper, who asks me where he might find some firewood. Kind of a bizarre question. I'm thinking, um, we're in the middle of a forest; dead wood is, like, everywhere. I try to give him some kind of answer, but I don't really know what to say. That's because now I can't think straight - I'm thinking about Tara's visions and her prayer from the day before. After he left, I turned to Tara and said, "You're not going to sleep at all tonight, are you?"

We hear the guy going at it with his axe for some time afterward. The following morning we see him on the camp trail with a bundle of wood and his axe in his arms. He wasn't very friendly - he must not have liked my answer from the night before. For some reason, we were slow breaking down camp and didn't get on the trail until 9:30am. We passed one more scenic overlook before the trail took us off the rim and into the woods for the remainder of the day.

We had a long way to go and a short time to get there, to paraphrase the Jerry Reed song. Stopping only a few times, we averaged between 2.3- and 2.4-miles per hour on our 9.4-mile hike back to the ranger station on Sunday. At one point, we came along a sleeping bag neatly rolled up alongside the trail out in the middle of nowhere. I asked Tara if she expected somebody to emerge from the woods, axe in hand, asking us if we knew where he could find some firewood. No, she replied, though she did admit to hastening her pace for the next little while.

We made it to the van by 1:30pm, fairly exhausted and hungry. Despite the setbacks and trepidation, it was another successful backpacking adventure in the Savage Gulf. Total 2-day mileage = 17.9.