I Am A Real (Wet) Backpacker Now

This past Friday afternoon I became a for real backpacker: It was a baptism by water.

I have crossed over many a stream in the past five years of hiking. Hopping from rock to rock, or carefully picking my way over a downed log. A few years ago I even crossed over the scary Sandy river on the PCT....on a log.

Last Friday was different. It was my first over night trip out for the 2010 Backpacking season, and I was trying out some new gear. It was three in the afternoon when I stood on the bank of a stream that was more than a stream...but not yet a river.

The water was cold....snow melt off Mt. St. Helen's to be exact....and I needed to get to the other bank where my campsite for the night was.

My first attempt to cross failed. Once I got out to the depth of my upper thighs, I knew it was going to be too deep and too strong to cross there.

I backed my way out of the water, and walked up stream a bit, until I saw a place that had only one deeper spot that I would have to get through...so in I went....again.

Everything I had ever read about crossing water came into my mind~

Face up stream: check. Unbuckle the hip belt on my backpack: check. Trekking poles in hands: check.

You can't imagine the force of water rushing at you until you are standing in it with a thirty pound pack on your back and your feet braced on slippery rocks. When my trekking poles started to whine with the force of the water hitting them, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears over the roar of the water. Time started to stand still, but I forced my feet to keep moving...slowly but surely looking for places to land.

Then a huge rock was in my way, at the deepest point in the crossing.

I managed to step over, but than to get my other leg over it meant that I was going to have to take the full force of the water onto my one leg while I swung my other leg over the rock. Now my heart was really pounding!

I am not a young thing. I am a great-grandmother standing in very cold, swift, water almost up to my waist. WHAT AM I THINKING? But it is at that moment I realize that I must not panic...I must will all my strength into my one, fat, pasty white leg, if I am going to get across safely.

So will it I did, and took the full force of the water onto my one leg.

I was wet, tired, and amazed at myself when I got to the other side!

I did it.

I am a real backpacker now.

I have lived to tell the tale.

Buckle on your pack...and come and backpack the 2010 season with me!