Full Moon Lunacy

Last night was a full moon, so clearly a full moon hike was in order. I had planned to go to the same meadow that I usually go to and have a fire and even cook some food over the fire. I knew that things would be different this time because of the snow, but I thought we could make it work.

I started at the trail head at about 7:30, so I thought we had plenty of time. My friend Heather came with me, she was all sorts of excited for a good adventure. We hiked relatively quickly since the trail was well packed down and it wasn’t too hard of a trail. Half way though, however, we went off the main trail and only had a couple of snowshoe tracks that we were walking in. The hike got considerably harder at this point because we didn’t have snowshoes and we would fall through the crust of the snow often. We kept going even though the trail just seemed to get more and more difficult as we continued on. After what seemed like an incredibly long hike we finally reached our destination—and that is when things got dicey.

When we got to the meadow we had to go off of the trail we had been following. Since there was more than three feet of snow every step was very difficult. I had planned to find firewood by either digging some up or tearing them off dead trees. This task seemed like it was a lot harder now that I was actually there. I asked Heather if she thought we shouldn’t have a fire and we should just go back down. She asked if I thought I could start one if our lives depended on it. I told her, “Of course I can.” Then she said that we came for a fire, we should have a fire.

I then spent 20 minutes breaking off tree branches and even digging some wood from under the snow. It was both difficult and dangerous. I was pulling dead trees on top of me, it wasn’t fun. Once I thought I might have enough for the evening I went about starting the fire. This part wasn’t very hard. I started the fire quickly and we had a hot fire to warm us up. After I made sure both of us were warm I started cooking some taquitos over the fire. Then I started cooking the piece of chicken that I brought.

The fire turned out difficult to maintain because it kept burning lower and lower but the big logs didn’t sink with it. So I had to readjust the fire several times and every time I did I got more snow in the fire which made it hard to keep it going. We did manage to keep the fire going the whole time we were there. It finally melted down to the ground and then we just didn’t get very much heat from it because we were three feet above it.

When we decided to go we kicked some snow on the fire (not that we were actually worried it would start anything else on fire). Then we continued down on the hike. I was difficult going down, but we had a great time. It was one of my best adventures in a long time for several reasons. I enjoyed the challenge to start a fire in a meadow covered in snow. I enjoyed the great conversation around the campfire. The mountain was incredibly beautiful last night. Also, and perhaps most importantly, I felt that Heather, my adventure buddy, fully appreciated each part of the adventure. She really appreciated the difficulty of starting a fire, and the beauty of the mountain. It was a great adventure and I hope to continue to have wonderful adventures in the future, after all, this is 2009.