Earlier this month I went on a day climb with nine other Mountaineers. The objective was well within the technical capabilities of the party, of which the majority were capable leaders. It was a beautiful sunny day and we headed up the trail for a couple of thousand feet before we hit the snow, and later the tree line. From there it was a straightforward snow climb over easy terrain with a short stretch of glacier and a moderate gully and slightly steeper ridge to the summit. The views were breathtaking and frivolity and food reigned on the summit. Six hours, car to summit-an excellent time for a party that size and an hour less than expected. We should be back at the cars no later than 3:30. After lunch we headed downhill, glissading and following tracks in the snow all the way down to below timberline.

It is at this point that Pooh enters our little tale. For those who don't remember, in one of Pooh's many adventures he heads out to hunt for Heffalump. After walking a ways he discovers track...clearly a sign of Heffalump. After a while he sees tracks showing that the Heffalump was joined by another, and later yet another, and yet another...why, he was following a whole herd of Heffalumps! It took Pooh a while to realize that he had been circling a berm and each new set of Heffalump tracks were, in fact, his own. "I have been foolish and deluded, and am a bear of no brain at all," he sheepishly concludes.

And so there we were, nine experienced Poohs and one beginner, following tracks in the snow until, to our chagrin, they petered out. Having already gained 7000' that day, no one in the party was motivated to regain 500' to get back to the last place where our location could be visually fixed. Instead, we all agreed that if we traver sed right we would intersect the trail. And so we traversed through open forest, and pretty soon were looking to cheer ourselves with some confirmation that we knew what we were doing. Happily, my Garmin 12 GPS was able to acquire more than the requisite number of satellites twice during our forest jaunt, to give us fixes. Together with another party member who served as map reader, while I dealt with the GPS, we fixed our position. The only time it gave a false reading, the coordinates turned out to be off the map and it was obvious that the reading was inaccurate.

We only had about 1/3 mile to traverse to meet up with the trail--that is, 1/3 third mile of getting up close and intimate with the diversity of Cascade flora; b ushwhacking a steep, thoroughly overgrown hillside; interspersed with gullies; and, as icing on the cake, a final 200' stretch of slide alder and devil's club. It was slow, arduous, bloody, and demoralizing work: as I recall, a variety of other adjectives were used to describe it at the time. Though we were concerned that darkness might force us to bivy before we could regain the trail, we managed to make it to the cars by 6PM. Based on the time it took to cover such a short distance, per mile we spent more time bushwhacking that day than anything else. The good news was that we were experienced, well equipped, ahead of schedule, and lucky. The bad news was that we were "foolish and deluded, and...bear(s) of no brain at all."