Irresistible Grace or Hefty Bag Versus GoreTex - Mount Baldy

Irresistible Grace or Hefty Bag Versus GoreTex - Mount Baldy

I awoke at 3:30 AM on Saturday 8/8/15, the morning after a board dinner in the white mountains.  Why was I waking up 6 hours earlier than a normal person on a Saturday morning? I had read about a trip up the second highest peak in the state: Mount Baldy. With plans to check out that day and thunderstorms forecast at 11, I had a narrow window to complete the 16 mile journey.  I checked the forecast one more time and double checked the math.  Maybe not enough time. I would likely not be able to take much time to rest during the trip.  When I arrived at the trailhead at 4:45, it was pitch black and raining. There was no moon, no stars. I was in an unfamiliar place, in the mountains, alone. It crossed my mind to punt on this one, but I immediately banished the thought.

I donned my headlamp, GoreTex boots and jacket, stuffed my pack into a Hefty bag I had procured in the hotel lobby the night before, and made my way out on the trail. I knew it could rain all day (forecast was 40% in the morning, then up to 60% with thunderstorms starting at 11), and it seemed as if the sun would never rise.  As I briskly walked through the wet, dark forest, water from the waist high grass sweeping my legs saturated my pants, which acted like a wick, transferring the rainwater to the tops of my boots. I could feel the water creeping down my ankles first. I rolled my socks over my boots in a futile attempt to arrest the process.  I tried avoiding the grass, but this was impossible.  Nature had defeated man within the first mile. Within a few more minutes my wool socks and insoles were saturated, my feet sloshed inside the now heavy boots for the next 15 miles.

The chatter of the rain on my hood caused me to turn and check behind me every few minutes, each time the headlamp slicing a white beam through the slightly diagonal profuse, tiny rain drops.

I took the solitude and lack of view (still dark) to do some introspection.  How did I get here? What am I doing? When did I start subjecting myself to these conditions when I could be taking it easy?  I pondered this as I sloshed down the rainy canyon. I could not identify a specific date that I went from sleeping in and playing Xbox on a Saturday morning to this.

While probably not frankly hazardous, there are certainly some elements of these behaviors that make them a not-so-common Saturday morning choice for most.

The realization that wet boots are also heavy boots set in. I thought about what I had read about the weight of footwear; they say 1 pound on your feet is like 5 on your back.  I suspect there is some truth in this.

Hiking down an unfamiliar rainy canyon prior to dawn alone with a headlamp with a 5 lb boot full of rainwater on each foot and sopping wet pants is just not most people's idea of a good time - generally not mine either.  I am basically a normal, frail, lazy, weak person, just like everyone else.  I don't like waking up early, walking in the rain, doing difficult, unnecessary things in general. I just want to live life, feel good, be happy, just like anyone else. Yet I pressed on.

It has been a slippery slope really (albeit, uphill).  I didn't just wake up today and decide to do this trip.  All I can propose is that I am chasing a feeling. It started small, and as a seemingly insignificant aspect of life -30 minutes here and there, a couple hours a few Saturdays a month. The more I experienced, the more I wanted to see. Now, it is much more.

That is when it occurred to me: this is analogous to Irresistible Grace. (Disclaimer: I am not here to debate theology).  My Christian friends may be familiar with the concept- some probably more so than I. But you don't have to read Calvin to understand Irresistible Grace in it's most basic sense (all that is required for my point).  Basically, this is a theological concept which puts forth that when God reveals his saving grace to an individual whom He has determined to save, He is able to overcome their resistance and bring them into faith in Christ.  There is little an individual can do to resist. In the theological domain, this point remains unclear to me, which is why I am reluctant to even bring it up (it gets back to an endless dichotomy involving the free will of man and the Sovereignty of God).  Anyway, I don't know much about that one way or another, but what I do know, is that I feel that I have been called, with an almost irresistible spiritual force go out and explore, the more remote, the more untamed, the better.

Finally, the ambient sunlight began to fill the canyon with a blue glow at first. At some point, the light became bright enough to render the headlamp pointless. The sun finally revealed its location through the clouds about 2 hours in, and the rain stopped by 8.  My boots stayed soaked throughout, but the contents of my pack remained completely dry under the Hefty bag.  In the end, I logged 17 miles, 2700 feet of total ascent on GPS, all before 11 AM, all without a proper break.  My legs and feet still reminding me as I write this post, that you shouldn't do this. But I did what I had to to complete the trip; no regrets. Sometime, I will go back and take a little more time in this amazing place.

The first light was blue. I think the white balance on the camera took a lot of the blueness out of this photo.

Blue, wet tree.

One of my first views down the links of the canyon. About a mile in and, it is still raining.

This is the headwater of the west fork of the little Colorado River.

Wild strawberries.

I ran into a herd of elk about 7 miles in. You can see one of them to the forest in this photo. Their size was impressive to me. I've seen them from the car many times but rarely on foot in the forest. In my experience, the animals always seem bigger in this situation.

This is about as close as you can get to the summit without written permission from the white Mountain Apache tribe. The summit of Mount Baldy is around 11,500 feet and is the second highest in the state of Arizona.

I was surprised to find this wing, apparently from a downed aircraft in the forest near the summit. On examination I found a star on the wing and I believe it to be from a World War II era US military aircraft. I took this as an omen that unwelcome visitors should not encroach on this traditionally sacred space. I found the thought that young the pilot had likely lost his life at this location surprisingly sobering given the years that must have passed between the event and my discovery of the remnant wing.

Newer growth in an area which has probably succumbed to disease or fire generation ago. I thought that this area look like a bunch of Christmas trees.

Big, old trees.

While mostly forested, there were openings in the trees offering long views.

I heard that this area was affected by some kind of a beetle .

Bear snacks

There were so many of these I thought that they may have actually contributed to the blue early light

The first raindrops fell from the approaching thunderclouds as I reached the car at 10:45; good thing I didn't take that break. I enjoyed my Hostess cherry pie in the car.