vendredi 4 janvier 2013

Une promenade de santé

Au soir du deuxième jour de ma tentative de parcours du Pacific Crest Trail, au début du mois d'avril, une tempête est arrivée.  Un coup de grisou de l'hiver qui refusait de mourir. Elle a fait de la troisième journée un parcours douloureux et dangereux dont je devrais me souvenir longtemps, du moins tant que je serai encore en vie. Cette journée est évidemment racontée dans ce blog. Une journée à crever de chaud dans le désert torride, le lendemain à un cheveu de crever de froid dans la tempête. Bienvenue dans le monde merveilleux du PCT.

Quelques jours plus tard, j'ai rencontré Rees Hughes, près de Warner Springs. Très heureux de le rencontrer, d'autant que je venais de lire le recueil d'histoires sur le PCT qu'il avait publié peu auparavant (Pacific Crest Trailside Reader). Nous avons discuté un moment, comme toute interaction humaine civilisée l'impose aux États-Unis, quand on n'a pas d'arme à feu pour se tirer dessus, et il m'a demandé de lui transmettre une histoire, si d'aventure j'en avais une qui fût intéressante. "You bet!" auraient dit les indigènes.
Rees a en effet un blog éponyme consacré aux récits et photos du PCT et il y a déjà publié quelques unes de mes photos du désert. Il vient de publier hier la traduction que j'ai faite à sa demande de mes mésaventures dans la tempête, en route vers Mount Laguna.

Allez, je vais tenter de gonfler un tout petit peu mon pitoyable et lamentable ego en reproduisant ici le récit en Anglais de cette longue et mémorable journée qui aurait pu très mal se terminer. Je vous invite toutefois à consulter le blog de Rees. Il en vaut la peine. Quant aux références de son superbe recueil, elles sont sur ma liste de lecture (Voir "De la lecture", colonne de droite).
Et puis, si vous ne goûtez pas l'anglais (vous auriez tort), vous pouvez toujours vous rabattre sur la version française (11 avril Mount Laguna)...    





‘Une Promenade de Santé’

Philippe Gouvet wrote this account in French and was kind enough to translate his story of being caught in early April inclement weather as he walked from Lake Morena to Mount Laguna.  It is a story of determination and survival in the most difficult of circumstances.  
Appropriately, as we slowly move through the winter months it is fitting that we have a series of stories focused on the challenges created by the early arrival or late departure of winter.  This is the third in that series.
I began a 150-mile walk south from the Pines-to-Palms Highway just after this storm roared through the southern mountains and encountered a steady stream of thru-hikers coming north with their memories still fresh and stories raw.


Just north of Kwaaymii Point (a few days later)


By Philippe Gouvet

Lake Morena, April 10, 2012. 

I hate those American weather forecast guys. Their reliability and accuracy is mind-boggling. Their forecast called for nice warm weather until Tuesday. Well, this I can confirm: the first couple of days to Lake Morena were stiflingly hot, a blast furnace for a French thru-hiker rookie not used to desert hiking. And a bad storm, with rain and snow, was said to be coming in Tuesday night. Until 6:00 PM we had bright blue sunny skies and hot temperatures at the Lake Morena campground. I spent the afternoon sweltering in the campground. I was starting to consider that forecast derisively, the way I would while watching French TV. But at the very instant the sun went overboard behind Morena Butte, the temperature abruptly fell, the wind rose, and a first cloud sailed in. A curtain had been suddenly drawn. I was shivering, and by 6:30 I was already lying in my sleeping bag trying to fight away the cold.

And guess what happened? During the night a violent downpour drenched our camp at Lake Morena. Yet I was lucky, at least I could keep dry under my tent, but some of my companions had less fortunate fates, with their sometimes sketchy tarps, hammocks, and bivi sacks. At dawn, in the cold rain, the main issue was to pack up while keeping most of my gear dry, in a tiny, very wet tent. I did my best and ran to the restroom/shower block to reorganize, and attempt to dry my soaking tent.

In hindsight, I realize that was the moment when things started going wrong. Murphy’s law. I lost way too much time and I wasn’t on my way after 8:00. The accepted wisdom is to take it easy during the first weeks of a thru-hike, not to push too hard to avoid getting injured. Yet, at Lake Morena I was contemplating a very long hiking day to get to Mount Laguna, 23 wet cold miles away. That is a LOT on a third day. And yet, in Mount Laguna a motel beckoned, and a shower, and laundry, and a warm bed, and hot dinner. Mt Laguna is in the mountains, as the name suggests, far, far away from the desert ground of Lake Morena. This is the reason why most thru-hikers will split that stage in two and spend the night in Fred Canyon, where there is a water source. 

Yet some of the hikers were thinking of pushing it to Mount Laguna to get away from the nasty weather. Not very difficult to understand. In such appalling weather, with a soaking wet tent, you would be hard put to fantasize about a night in Fred Canyon. 
I hadn’t made up my mind yet. I was tired, my pack was way too heavy, but thinking of a night under a wet tent in the rain was not particularly exciting either. I gulped down a cereal bar, a few vitamin pills, and I was on my way. In heavy, cold rain. 

For the first few hours, I felt good. My impression was that I was able to hike efficiently on that pink quartz sand trail, between two blooming hedges. In the rain.
But then, my GPS batteries started playing tricks on me. By midday, I realized they were dead, and the data my GPS had supposedly recorded were obviously wrong. Most importantly, the distance I had hiked. My morale collapsed. I was dumbfounded. I thought I had hiked a decent number of miles, but my GPS seemed to disagree. Or did I try to convince myself the GPS was wrong? And the weather was so bad I didn’t feel like getting my Halfmile’s maps out and doing the math.
Keep hiking, that was all I could do. The weather had deteriorated again. A polar wind was blowing in that steep ascent towards the Lagunas and I was freezing. OK, I can imagine that reading this in a comfy armchair, you will wonder why I didn’t stop to put on some more clothing. Well, because I was too cold, because it was raining, because I hadn’t much in the way of winter clothing, because I would have had to stop, take off my backpack, and undress to put on new layers. In the driving rain. So, you’re apt to think you will be ok, you will eventually get warm if you push on hiking hard enough. No, you won’t, because it was getting colder and colder.

I eventually reached Fred Canyon in the afternoon where I could have called it a day. I do not exactly remember what the time was. I had that weary feeling I had been hiking for days already. All was soaked, muddy, gloomy. Leaden skies in the cold mist. What should I do? I refilled my bladder in the stream, no shortage of water, for sure. I had one more look at my GPS. It told me Mount Laguna was 6.8 miles away. Now that was good news. I didn’t expect the Lodge to be so close. That was wrong, the GPS had gone berserk, as far as recording distances was concerned, but I didn’t realize it. Or my brain had already frozen and stopped me from reasoning soundly.  I was cold and soaked through, I didn’t feel like putting up a wet tent. The thought of a warm motel bed suddenly felt heavenly to me. OK, let’s go for it!

And then, for a few more hours, it was a roller coaster of emotions. My morale went up when the trail wasn’t too steep and I felt I was moving steadily, but then it collapsed whenever the trail shot upward or I could get a distant cloudy glimpse of a fir-covered mountain that looked like the pictures I had seen of Mount Laguna. No, it couldn’t be! It was so far away, much too far away! But I had no choice. Hike on. Laguna or bust. I was alone, shrouded in the mist and couldn’t see much. Maybe that was better for my morale, after all. I began looking for boulders with the right height and shape to lean back and have a few seconds’ rest, shivering, trying to catch my breath. Once, twice, a dozen times, but not for too long, because my muscles would get cold, because the diminishing light reminded me night was not too far off.

Lo and behold, in spite of my pathetic struggle to keep moving, night fell before I could make sure where I was. I had reached a mountain, I was among trees, but the lodge was elusive. That wet, cold, muddy, foggy hike seemed endless. The GPS seemed positive I was beyond Mt Laguna Lodge, a somewhat puzzling and depressing thought. I was in the midst of a dark forest (that was the good news: I was apparently getting closer to what I could remember the environment of the Lodge looked like), and I could hardly discern the thin ribbon of a trail in the undergrowth.

OK, time to get my headlamp out. I was about to lose the trail completely. I took my pack off, found the headlamp, turned it on (please, please, I need the batteries to hold on!). I was shivering and shaking, and now surrounded by utter darkness, of the moonless type. To further complicate matters, what had been rain at lower elevations was snow here.

In sum, I was in snow, in a pitch black forest I didn’t know, in a moonless foggy night, and I had no idea whatsoever where I was. Where was that d… lodge, for heaven’s sake?
What I didn’t expect, because I hadn’t looked at my maps — courtesy of the appalling weather — was that the PCT did not reach Mount Laguna Lodge. To get there, at some point in the forest, you had to exit the trail to get to a paved road and follow it. But when you are shivering in the dark on a foggy night, how on earth can you find that d… exit trail to the road? I was obviously on my way to severe hypothermia. I couldn’t stop shaking.

I tried not to be overwhelmed by the situation. My body wouldn’t get to be the one in charge. I had to make the right decisions. I asked the GPS for a bearing to get to the road. Great! I was supposed to climb cross-country up a steep snow-covered forested slope. In complete darkness. Another option, please? No, sorry, you are in serious trouble and no one will come to the rescue. I started climbing slowly and painfully among the undergrowth and downed trees, without even knowing whether there would be some way to reach the road up that steep slope. I could see no light in the fog, hear no engine noises, nothing. Maybe stumbling on a bear would make it even more funny…

After a long period of time, with numerous shivering pauses, bent double on my hiking poles to catch my breath, I looked up and caught a glimpse of a headlight glimmer in the fog above. The road was there, and I finally reached it. I could barely see the painted white stripe that showed where the roadside was. A deserted road, of course, in such weather, at night. Yet a few hundred yards further away, I came to a fire station! Can you begin to imagine how happy and relieved I was? One of the firefighters drove me to the lodge. It was 9:00. The lodge was dark and closed, but we rang the night bell, and Tom, the manager, abandoned his football game on TV and came downstairs to open the store for me. He told me there was a microwave in the bungalow he could let me have. I needed something warm, quick. I rushed to grab frozen food. Quite a paradox, I know.



When I got to the room, among the swaying fir trees, I started shaking even more violently. Uncontrollably. My body was letting me know it didn’t appreciate that very special walk in the park. I was shaking so hard I had a tough time taking my clothes off. My sore muscles instantly froze and I could hardly move. I had a quick look at my toes: two of them were black. Quick, emergency mode: I turned the room heating to max temperature, I filled the tub with hot water, and threw the food into the microwave. I knew I was in the danger zone, serious hypothermia and exhaustion, and I was glad I had not given up and had not decided to set up camp in the forest in my wet tent. I gulped down the food, and painstakingly attempted to thaw in the hot bath. No way I could stop the shaking though. I was almost paralyzed and yet my body was in spasms. I then swallowed nearly all the pills I had — Ibuprofen, anti-inflammatory stuff, and even cortisone — and collapsed into bed in a final attempt to stop the shaking.

It snowed during the night.

The day before, as if in a dream, I had hiked between Campo and Lake Morena in searing heat. Southern California desert, you said?




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