IN PRAISE OF ZERO DAYS
By Mark Neikirk
There is, in backpacking as perhaps there is or should be in life, a thing called a zero day. It is a day when you don’t hike. You stay put. You hit the pause button to savor where you are and how you got here. Pressing on to the next someplace must wait.
Maybe you sleep in or, after you get up, you linger over a cup of coffee. Or get decadent and have a second cup. There is nowhere to be today. Kick back. Relax. Chances are, if you are taking a zero day, you earned it. The trail had perhaps been long or steep or rocky or all three. Maybe it rained. Or was hot and unbearably humid.
A zero day is a choice to be existential, if only for the time it takes the Earth to circle the sun one more time. What a pleasant choice it is.
We took our zero day at Thousand Islands Lake, which is a High Sierras postcard. The lake, expansive, is crystal clear and pocked with small islands of varying shapes, as if Jackson Pollock had been given creative authority to sling granite across the lake however he saw fit. And I’m not making this up: This crazy beautiful scene is located in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, as if it were Earth’s tribute to the late master of the photographic arts.
At the lake’s south end, its water empties into a meandering freestone stream. Were you born a trout, you could do worse than to live here. At its north end, Mount Banner rises above everything.
The lake is at 9,833 feet of elevation. Mount Banner’s peak is at 12,942 feet. High enough that the mountain has spots of snow here and there. On the mountain’s west side, a deep V marks Island Pass around the mountain to the next breathtaking place.
Mount Banner exceeded the Weather Channel at providing near continuous reminders of the planet’s atmospheric varieties, its towering profile stark and stunning against a cloudless sky by morning, but shrouded in cloud cover later in the day — a mystical sight.
When rain came, you could see it arriving from behind the mountain, approaching with the certainty of fate. And as the clouds parted to allow sunlight again, you could also see that. The rain would be brief this time.
By evening, with the sun setting, the light against the mountain’s rock illuminated the distinct parts of the mountain differently as Mount Banner’s face went from two dimensions to three. Full light flattened out the face. Fading light caught protrusions but lost its way in the crevices, where shadows took on the visage’s lead role. Colors also mutated. Grey turned to blue, blue to grey, and in one spot a gold flume plunged as if the planet’s richest minerals had assembled right here and were tumbling down toward the lake. And then the light changed again. With that, the brilliant stone blended back into grey
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I am, I suppose, ahead of the story, as this is how the zero day ended. How it began was, as I have suggested before, with each of us arising at our respective leisure. It had been a rainy night, and it the middle of it, I awoke to voices outside my tent. Our campsite was tight, and fitting nine tents meant keeping them near one another. Bryan Jones had found a flat spot just behind the main site, where the other eight of us were camped and cramped — Jon Stratton, brothers David and Ken Heidrich, Rick Rafferty, Mark Shields, Randy Wilson, Mark Goetz, and me.
Jon was camped next to me, and it was his and Bryan’s voices I was hearing. A puddle was forming at one end of Jon’s tent. I got out to have a look, too. “It’s getting close to yours,” Jon pointed out, and it was. If much more rain fell, the puddle would be under the foot-end of my tent, sorely testing whether it was waterproof or not. Jon’s tent was already undergoing this test, and so far was passing. How much longer?
The decision was made to wait it out and hope the rain stopped rather than try to move one or both tents in the dark to higher ground.
Our luck held. The raindrops — once steady, frequent, and dense — began to fall more lightly until they stopped. By morning, the sky was without clouds. Jon moved his tent in case the rain returned for our zero day.
It did return, a touch before dinner, and we each climbed back into our tents to wait it out and take naps. Lying in a tent when it is still light out is very different from doing the same after dark. The tiny world inside the tent is tinted to the color of the tent, or more precisely, its rain fly. My world was orange.
There is not much to do in a one-man tent during a rain spell. There’s barely more room than a coffin and no headroom. One lies on one’s back and stares up at the ceiling. Some people can read in this position, holding a book overhead, arms extended. I cannot. So I stared up, scouting for leaks I hoped were not there but weirdly hoping to find a drop seeping through just to break the boredom. Fortunately, boredom won.
As it had the night before, the rain ended again. We got out of the tents, ignited our campstoves to boil water to reconstitute freeze-dried dinners and ate the likes of Pad Thai, Chili Mac and Buffalo Chicken. Cardboard, from which I believe freeze-dried food is fabricated, never tasted so good. A Nalgene bottle of Maker’s Mark made the rounds, post-dinner. It tasted grand.
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Again, I got ahead of myself, leaving out the middle. The actual zero day. How was that spent?
The Heidrich brothers along with Rick and the other two Marks went on a day hike, leaving with water and snacks and walking up to see a neighboring mountain lake, Ruby. She’s a little smaller than Thousand Islands but also a little more alpine and remote. There was, no doubt, something pleasant about climbing to see another Sierra highlight, and made all the more pleasant without 25 or 30 pounds of gear on their backs. It’s earned relaxation, shared with friends. A zero day’s gift.
Bryan and I stayed at Thousand Lakes to fly fish, and Jon came along to watch. Randy, who had a calf muscle screaming at him, rested at camp.
I can provide a more authoritative account of the little fishing expedition, since I was on it, than I can of the expedition. Bryan and I both brought Reyr fly rods, which are sort of like Tenkara rods but with reels. A Tenkara rod is the minimalist approach to fly fishing. It is not much different from fishing with a cane pole. A Tenkara rod is nearly weightless, which gives it an advantage in backpacking . The trade-off is no reel.
The rod is sort of like a telescoping car antenna. It pulls out to as long 12 feet. A thin, braided line attaches to the tip, and to that line a length of monofilament is added — a tippet. The fisherman casts this much the same as he or she might cast a fly rod. If a fish is hooked, it must be landed by lifting the rod to pull the fish toward the shore. With no reel, there’s no drag to adjust to counter the fighting fish. For Tenkara fans, that’s part of the fun, part of the challenge. Tenkara people tease traditional fly fishers, saying reels are training wheels. But let’s be honest with each other about this: a reel is a good idea.
A Tenkara rod’s casting distance is limited by the combination of the rod’s length and the fixed length to the line attached, which means a cast might make it 25 feet from the shore. Unless the trout are feeding shallow or unless you find a deep pool near the shore, you are screwed. Tenkara works best on tiny mountain streams, like those you find deep in the Smokey Mountains. It’s far less at home on a big alpine lake in the Sierras.
This is why you will find Bryan and I — the two in our group who fly fish — with Reyr rods and reels, Normally, I would not mention brand names, but this product is unique in design and ridiculously affordable. A 9-foot rod with a reel that comes spooled with floating line and backing case costs $299. Compare that to a high end rod that might set you back $1,000 or more, plus a reel for $500 and good line for $100. Such a rod needs to be carried inside a heavy tube to prevent it from breaking and the reel packed safely away. Then, before fishing, it must all be assembled. Lotta work before you get a line in the water.
A Ryer setup is not the same quality. But what it gives up in quality, it gains in packability and convenience of use. It has a telescoping rod, like a Tenkara rod. The reel stays on when packed away, so when you get it out, you just pull the rod to its full extension, then pull out the line (which is threaded through the inside of the rod), and you are good to go. You can put it away with fly already tied to the tippet, so you are ready to fish quickly.
When it is time to put it away, it collapses back and all fits into a soft, foam case — which I store with my rigid tent poles that, in turn, project the collapsed rod from getting broken. And while not as a light as a Tenkara, a Ryer rod comes with a reel and comes in under 10 ounces. End of commercial.
Fishing on Thousand Islands had a particular challenge. The trout were active, eating bugs off the lake’s surface. But they did so about 15 or 20 yards beyond our casting range. There, the lake’s color changed to a deep green, confirming the existence of a shelf there beyond which the lake deepened.
A benefit at Thousand Islands Lake was its soft, sandy bottom, which made it easy to take off your shoes and wade toward the shelf. The water was about 60 degrees, making it cool enough for trout but not too cold for prolonged wading. So, Bryan and I could walk toward the deep water and cast into it toward rising fish.
We started our zero day doing that along the beach by our camp. Then we walked with Jon toward the northern end of the lake where the arteries of water coming off Mount Banner fed the lake. Hiking in, a person coming out and with a fly rod informed us the trout active in the lake’s headwaters. So we headed there but didn’t find the trout. Just beauty.
There was a little drama on the way back to camp. Zero days are better without drama. But, as existentialists like to say, shit happens.
I had stopped at a bend in a stream where the water pooled up a little. It looked like a perfect spot for a trout. After about 10 minutes, Jon arrived. I asked about Bryan’s whereabouts. “He stopped back there. I guess he’s fishing,” Jon replied. No worries. We were fully in zero day mode. Stop, cast, enjoy.
Some time passed. No Bryan. We walked back to where Jon was last with him, following a skinny trail around boulders the size of a house that kept us from seeing far. No Byran. We walked on. “When I saw him last, he was bending over — like maybe he was tying his shoe,” Jon said. Later, we both shared that the thought had crossed our minds: Did he collapse? A heart attack? Will we find him keeled over. That thought was easily pushed aside at first, but with each step it seemed to linger in our respective minds longer, even if unsaid.
Finally, we decided to hike back to camp, assuming — hoping — he was there. Jon took the trail along the lake and I took the higher trail. That way, we covered the two main routes back.
Enough suspense. Bryan was at camp, wondered what happened to us. The main stress of the zero day had passed.
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The bookends for our zero day were the getting to and from Thousand Islands Lake. Both ways were mostly uneventful with a few highlights.
On the way in, we camped at a trail junction above a river that tumbled over a succession of high waterfalls. They were gorgeous and dangerous, and campsites beside them benefited from the glorious sounds of rushing water. We had to split the group in two, three of camped on a promontory of rock that pointed toward a stair-step waterfall, and the other five on a plateau alongside another stair-step falls.
Before sunset, Forest Ranger Katie came by. Thin, sinewy, and cute in a sort of Jennifer Aniston way, Katie had carried her backpack and a sign that read, “No Fires Above This Point.” The sign was a heavy wood plank about 8 inches by 14 inches. It was mounted on a fence post about four feet in length. Two feet of it Katie would bury in the ground. The sign had been higher up the mountain, but with drier conditions, Ranger Katie was moving it lower to announce tighter restrictions.
Katie checked our papers. All good. She asked us to only pitch tents on “dirt or rock” — we had to move two tents to comply. She told us that once we got to Thousand Lakes, we would be in the presence of great meadows — “Don’t camp on my meadow! Rocks and dirt only.” She said it warmly but you could damn well tell she meant it. She is the meadow’s caretaker and she took her responsibility seriously.
The meadows were indeed stunning, as we would see for ourselves once we got there the next day. When we set up camp chairs on the lake’s edge at sunset, Ken, this being his first full-on backpacking trip, was appreciative—of the scenery and of coming zero day. “You mean we can just sit here for a day and look at this? I’m liking backpacking.”
Life is a beach, and then you die. More existentialism.
On the way out, we retraced the route to Ruby Lake that some of us took the day before. From there, we continued to climb and came to Garnett Lake, which is just about as beautiful as an alpine lake can be. No one thing makes it so. It’s just the overall look and feel of a lake surrounded by steep, tree-lined mountains, the trees giving the lake a deep green color of nearly gemstone quality. It feels like a place no one has been to, isolated and unappreciated until you arrive to see it. There is magic when a place feels that way.
The lake ended at a waterfall, with a wooden bridge over the stream’s headwater. The lake emptied itself over a moderate falls. Water pooled below, then twisted around a bolder before the stream straightened out for a bit, then dived over another waterfall. Here, Bryan and I got out the fly rods. I have never fished in a more beautiful place. We got lots of bites, and each of us landed a brown trout. These fish were magnificently colored. It was hard to leave. We gave the others an hour’s headstart, and bought a little more time to fish, then hustled down the trail toward our last night’s camp.
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Another important aspect of this trip was not the scenery or the fishing or the weather. It was the reality of us being in our sixties or, in my case, my seventies — “I feel a breeze from beyond the trees, and death is watching me.” That kind thought crosses one’s mind from time to time, as existentialism gives way to thoughts more eternal.
This phase of life comes with the loss of friends and infirmities. Among this hike’s crew, one of us had just lost a friend to pancreatic cancer and another friend was just diagnosed with another deadly cancer. Another of us was losing a brother. And another knew this would be his last trip with us as his own health challenges were catching up with him.
As eternal as the mountains seem, we are reminded, even in their presence, that we are not, and so the being here is worth every minute and most certainly worth a zero day. Here’s wishing one all, many more zero days to come.
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