My First "50-Miler" - Part I - Are We There Yet?

My brother’s and I were active members of one of Livermore’s Boy Scout troops.

For those of you who have little to no experience with Boy Scouts, it might be useful to know that it is in essence an organization of young “criminals-to-be” that the stalwart men within the community attempt to outwit (a conundrum in itself as it assumes the boys have any wits in the first place) and keep so busy that the boys never really accomplish anything criminal, regardless of general inclination.

One has to marvel at the men’s continued confidence in their own abilities, especially in light of over-whelming evidence (at least back then) that every boy was naturally drawn to the “dark side”.  

Certainly, the idea of a Luke Skywalker living among us was beyond our imagination before George “Goodie” Lucas came on the scene.

Being the youngest of the brother’s I’d had to wait ever so impatiently for my chance to join the gang on my first 50 mile long backpack trip.  That trip was into Kings Canyon National Park, out of the valley, up along Bubb’s Creek, through Garner basin, and around and out.  And while I have hiked many beautiful and inspiring “50-milers” since, that one, that one and the memories it calls up remains on top of my “Hikes” list.

The planning was done, the food was bought.  We young boys had humped around town, up creek and down dale trailing the older boys getting into “condition”.  Packs had been filled to the seams, weighted, loads reshuffled, and lists checked.  

That first morning of the trip dawned bright and clear.  All the boys gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in town and dumped everything out of their packs, emptied pack pockets and pants pockets, and placed everything that they would own for the next week plus neatly out on the ground to be checked and double checked, first by the patrol leader, then by one of the senior boys.  A system, tried and true to assure that no one was able to forget anything of importance.

Packs carefully reloaded, patrol by patrol loaded our gear into the cars and trucks that were to carry us from Livermore up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Once the gear was loaded, we boys were parceled up and assigned specific cars and seats for the trip.

I was lucky enough to be assigned to Scoutmaster Lasher’s pickup truck.

Now, for most boys, that may not have seemed much like an honor.  Pickup trucks back then even ones that weren’t already 20 years old, were not the luxury yachts that they are today.  And Mr. Lasher’s, well, you could say it was past its prime.  Worn red paint, gaps in the floor that you could see the road through, drafty, noisy, with over-stuffed bouncy front bench seat.  

Pure heaven for a guy like me; after-all, just about that time I had bought my first car, a 1935 Ford Pickup that came home in pieces.  In fact, more pieces than it needed, but that is a different tale.  

I can’t say I remember a lot about the 240 miles and 5 hours of sun baked travel from Livermore to Kings Canyon.  At least not until we were rolling up the last of the uphill grades on the way into the park and Mr. Lasher said: “Uh Oh, almost out of gas”.  

For those of you who have lived all your lives in relatively conquered terrain, a word or two about the Sierra’s around the area of the park.  Those mountains are high, and steep, and rough.  During the nice comfortable days of summer, you have to drive 85 miles north, or 115 miles south of the park entrance just to find a place tame enough that man could build a road across those mountains.  

And we were about to run out of gas.

I learned a good lesson about not worrying about what you can’t change that day.  In a cracking voice I asked Mr. Lasher what we were going to do.  To which he responded; “Well, assuming we can top this rise right in front of us, we’ll just coast downhill into the campground and worry about gas next weekend when the trip is over”.

And we topped that rise.

And we ran out of gas.

And we coasted downhill.

About half way down, on the right shoulder of the road, squeezed up tight against a granite wall that must have gone straight up about 500 feet, there was an old two-pump  gas station.  One with very old and very tall gas pumps.  Getting out of the truck, Mr Lasher looked at me and said; “You pump”.

And that is what I did.  You see, those old pumps were literally just that.  On the upright pump body, hinged at ground level was a long handle with a rubber grip.  You grabbed that thing and pulled it out towards you, and pushed it back in, over and over, and while you were doing that you were manually pulling gasoline out of the tank in the ground and filling a tall clear glass jar that was the top of the pump.  The side of the jar was marked in ½ gallon markings.  From 0 up to 15 gallons.   

The gas in the jar “gurgles” as you pull the handle out, and gushes upward as you push the handle in.  Sunlight fractures and sparkles, and makes wavy undulations and rainbows on the ground.  

I’d like to pump a tankful of gas like that again someday.  A wonder it was, sure enough.

Once I had pumped the gas level up to 12 gallons, Mr. Lasher told me to stop, and I watched as he inserted the gas nozzles into his truck tank and pulled the grip handle.  Down dropped the slightly redish, honey hued liquid level.  The falling gasoline quickly set up the first whirlpool effect I think I had ever seen outside of grungy bathwater slurping down the drain after a much hated bath.

The rest of the cars had headed on down into the campground to begin setting up, so Mr Lasher and I jumped back in his truck and we coasted the rest of the way down to the valley floor before he started the engine and we set off in search of the rest of the troop and our campsite for the night.

 

© Copyright 2015 Marty Vandermolen, all rights reserved.