Wompus Trek

This weekend I participated in one of the hardest events I have ever partaken in.  In the past, I have done GORUCK events.  Which are definitely hella hard.  Pushing my body to its very limits, and then past them until it becomes a mental game.  The key to GORUCK is that the events have the option to drop at any time.  Hence the reason for carrying your I.D. and $20 cash.  You are also traversing within the known boundaries of civilisation, i.e. help (if needed).

On Friday, I participated in the 2nd Annual Wompus Trek.  The description of the event by the Event Organiser is as follows:

"We will be inserting in pairs into the Idaho backcountry at sundown on Friday, 15 July and extracting mid-day on 17 July (brief starts at 5 pm on 15 July in Boise followed by travel into the mountains). 

You and your partner will have a start point and a finish point.  There are no check-points or rules of travel--navigate as you wish.   If you can find a trail, feel free to use it, though the area being traversed has almost no usable trails.  You will be provided a Delorme sat-text unit for "safety", but you should know that the area is remote, and you will likely die before anyone gets to you.  We certainly take precautions to add to the safety and quality of this event, but at the end of the day, you engage in this activity at your own risk. 

Expect to be awake for 36-hours and travel over rugged mountains for 20+ hours, self-supported, before reaching a remote outpost of Vietnam-era Green Berets on Saturday evening.  They will give you a cot and feed you as many burgers and beers as you can consume before you fall asleep in your food.  (I think someone may have actually opened a second beer last year before succumbing to exhaustion.)  Sunday morning will feature a hearty camp breakfast and an additional opportunity to sample Idaho craft beers.  

There is no entry fee.  I’m not doing this for any profit.  We will tabulate and pool expenses (food, transportation, map printing, swag (hats) for us and volunteers, Delorme service)--expenses will come out to roughly $125 per person. 

It is my intent to only gather with people I like or respect—the invite list includes Special Forces guys, a few SEALs and a handful of Marines.  Please feel free to bring any partner you want, but I would ask that they have our skill sets, particularly in land navigation--this is a self-supported trek in every sense, and you will be in the wild."

I read this event on my Team RWB Facebook page and was instantly interested.  A new challenge.  Yes please!  Thankfully, I knew among my RWB friends, I could find an unwitting victim who would agree to be my partner.  And indeed I did find one.  And am so very thankful he agreed.

Laminated map of the lane we traversed in (black line is my estimate of our route).

We met with the Organiser and a local SF Veteran Group at the beginning of June to discuss event details and determine if we wanted to take the leap and agree to participate.  Note that the event description stated the event was primarily for active duty-veterans, especially those involved in SOF type activities.  Well, here you have me: a female, civilian, type 1 diabetic.  Yup.  It just may be a shit show.  But dammit, none of those things are going to prevent me from doing something that I want to do.

I would be lying if I said I was not nervous and a bit intimidated by the event and competition involved.  I also had little prep work put in to the event.  I was vehicle-less the month before that, which made traveling to hikable locations, quite difficult.  And the temps soared to the 90s-100s, which is just too miserable to spend a lot of time outside.  And, to top it off, I was in MN the weekend and a few days before the event.  The day of the event, I worked from 0700-1500h.  Yup, it would be a looooong day(s).

Everyone arrived at the Organiser's house where he fed us, we briefed, got our maps and found out where the event was going to take place.  Oh, yeah, that's right.  All of us signed up for a back country survival event not knowing where it would take place.  Awesome.

My goals for the event: finish, survive and, care of my Sgt and UMC, to beat any Force Recon guys.  Well, I accomplished most of those.

We drove out to Sagehen Reservoir area along FSR609, which was the southernmost boundary of our lane of travel.  There were 7 teams.  We were team #3.  They inserted us 0.25mi apart.  Team 1 was the northernmost group.  We were the southernmost group to go in on the West side of the lane.  They put us in at an ATV trail #398 at 2200h.  And so it begins.  We were to hike all night and most of the next day to make it to the finish point (11T 056857 493109) roughly 13mi-ish away as the crow flies.  But the area in between.  Ugh.  Fuck.  Talk about mountainous.  And brush-filled.  So much damn bear brush.  So much.

Riding in the back of the truck to the drop off point.  Thick ass forest.

We followed the ATV trail in the moonlight to save on our headlamp batteries.  We decided to head for Renwyck Creek since there was a trail that followed the north side of the creek.  To get there, we had to drop down a traverse of some distance.  Not sure how far down we had to go.  Our headlamps only went so far.  So we dropped down...into nothingness other than a fuck ton of overgrowth and fallen trees.  And it was steep.  We basically slid down on our asses when we were not caught up on the overgrowth.  We crossed the stream many times.  Usually via fallen trees.  And let me tell you, I was never good on a balance beam.  Well, I am much worse at night via LED headlamp over raging water (luckily not deep or overly wide) and avoiding getting caught up on branches and sliding bark.  Fuck me silly.

After a while I was starting to not feel too keen.  At all.  Nauseated.  I knew exhaustion would occur and felt that it was too early for me to feel that bad.  I tested my blood sugar.  It was between 400-500 mgdL.  Shyte!  I took correct dosing using my sliding scale and moved on.  

We checked in with our DeLorme units every 2h.  It was slow going.  Very slow.  And lots of work.  Oh boy work.  The trail would disappear and reappear.  There were so many game trails, too.  We would get off track by them.  Then decide if we wanted to back track or just bushwhack to get back on the trail we wanted.  Usually bushwhacking won out.

I tested my blood sugar again after still feeling very ill.  My mind was checking out a bit.  It was once again between 400-500 mgdL.  WTF!!  This was not good.  I had a feeling I was in the beginning stages of ketoacidosis.  I had been at an elevated blood sugar level for at least 4h+ by now.  I made the decision that we should aim for the early cut-off point (11T 05681 49203) rather than go all the way to the finish point.  I was worried that I was in a bad place physically.  This was around 0200h.  We still had a looooong way to go to get out and me the help I needed.

So we trekked on.  Following the creeks.  Crossing them back and forth.  At one point, there were few rocks to use to cross the stream.  My partner took leaps and bounds.  Me, in my ragged state, decided to take off my shoes and socks and wade through.  I was doing well.  Until I took a mis-step and faltered...and my shoes fell off my shoulder and into the water.  A loud "Shit!" was called out and my partner immediately grabbed and saved them from being carried downstream...or getting soaked.  The irony was not lost on us.  And thankfully, my shoes were not soaked.

Dawn finally came.  We were still schlepping away.  I felt my energy levels draining.  I felt I must be near delirium, I was so tired. I told my partner that I had to have a break to lay down.  We crossed a stream.  Hiked up a goddamned hill, bushwhacked a bit.  Cleared a spot near a fallen tree and set our shit down.  I tested my blood sugar.  50 mgdL.  Fuck me.  No wonder I was so tired.  My partner wrapped himself in his jacket and immediately started to snore.  I did the same and drifted off to sleep.  Albeit, I did not want to do a deep sleep since I was afraid hypothermia would set in.  The sun had not yet fully risen and it was cold and a wind was starting to blow.

View looking toward creek from where we rested and froze.

There we are, hypothermic and resting.

After I while, I was shivering so uncontrollably that I had to get up.  I woke my partner up.  We were most likely borderline hypothermic.  All of our clothes were wet with sweat.  And being still for so long in the cold and dark made it that much worse.  We stiffly got up and were on our way.  I ate 2 granola-pomegranate bars and had much better energy.  The part of my body that was the most sore were my toes from being stuffed into the front of my shoes for hours while descending steep slopes.  And my Achilles area, from being constantly stretched by the ascent and descents all the time.  Do not get me wrong, my body was tired.  But nothing screamed at me to stop.

We kept going up.  Bushwacking.  It was hard going.  We needed to get to the sun to warm up.  I was slow moving, but I kept moving.  Eventually we got above the poplars, fallen trees and general bear brush and into sage.  It was wonderful.  My spirits lifted immediately.  We were above the tree line (~7000' ele) and could see for miles to the west.  We could see the entire valleys and "hills" that we spent all night hiking.  All the way to Sagehen Reservoir.  But we still had so much more to climb.  And climb we did.  Up and up and up.  But it did not matter as much now.  The tallest plants were waist height and not densely packed together.  Wonder-fucking-ful.  The trail we were aiming for was on the ridgeline above.  This meant that we now had to hike up all the steep ass peaks to our NE.  There was no other option.  To go past them were sheer granite cliffs down to Blue Lake.  The other option was to sidehill it and that would have further destroyed our ankles.

Our first view out of the brush, looking west.

No more bushwhacking.  Thank you sage!

So peak climbing it was.  The views were astounding.  I felt so full of pride for what we had accomplished.  Even though we were going to early extraction, we still worked hella hard.  I kept using the DeLorme to check in and communicated with the crew at early extraction letting them know our progress.  I tested my blood sugar again at another rest spot and was 163 mgdL.  Woohoo!  Good stuff.  We went to the edge of the granite cliffs to overlook the back side of Blue Lake.  Breathtaking.  We also ran into snow.  But were too tired to play in it.

See those valleys behind me to the flatish area.  Yeah we hiked that shit.

Tall ass peaks ahead we had to climb.

View from behind Blue Lake looking west.

Then, we made it to Granite Peak.  The fucking tallest and steep and long peak in the range.  But at the end of it was Snowbank Mountain Road and our finish.  We made it!  It only took us till 1200h, so almost exactly 14h to hike ~14.5mi.  To put things in perspective, it took us 10h to reach the exit point from when we decided we needed to get out of there early.  That is how remote we were.  There was no way to get me help or get out of there without calling SAR and that was not an option I considered.  I was still mobile the entire time.  I felt like utter and complete shit for many hours.  But stopping was not an option.  We had to keep going.  So we did.

Blue Lake.

Snow at Granite Peak.

That truck ride to the Early Extraction point was glorious.  We rode in the bed of the truck.  Watched the scenery, which was epic.  Mountain flowers were in full bloom.  The sun was out and the temps in the 70s.  Such a beautiful day.  So glad to be alive and experience something like this.  Do not get me wrong, there were many hours during our trek, especially at night that I questioned why I signed up for the event.  And wished against hope that I was not there.  Not hiking.  Not feeling shitty and that life really super dooper sucked.  A lot.  But thinking it was one thing.  Quitting was another.  And I never once wanted to quit.  I also cursed at the plant life.  A lot.  I used every bad word I could think of when thinking of plants.  It seemed their exist was purely there to make our life more difficult.  I hated flora.  So very much.  Goddamned fucking flora smacking me in the face.  Getting caught on my pants and clothes.  Wrapping itself on my pack trying to push me off balance.  After a while I stopped trying to be dainty with the fuckers and simply crashed through them.  It took so much energy to fight through that brush.  And it was seemingly endless.  Fuck you bear brush and poplars and all you evil shit.

Done!  Truck ride to extraction camp.

At extraction camp we laid on the ground and slept.  I moved around a bit more.  Slept some more.  Moved and slept.  We did that for hours.  We found out when we got out that no teams had yet finished.  And that we were actually ahead of many of the teams.  Even though we traversed the lane from the west side all the way to the east side and up north halfway, we were making great progress.  Wow!  We then realised that it may have been just as easy for us to go all the way to the finish.  It would have taken us more hours to do it, but the route we chose to get out of there was not easy and harder than taking that damn left turn option off the Renwyck Creek Trail.  Ah well.  Foresight.  Sometimes it fails us.

The teams being tracked when they check in.  We were yellow.

In all, 2 teams did early extraction.  Us and Team 4.  Everyone else made it to the finish.  The winning team was a male-female team who made it in 13.5h.  Holy fuck!  They were gone by the time we arrived at base camp.  They had to catch a flight back to CA.  Talk about impressive!  Base camp was set up by a Treasure Valley based veteran SF group.  And what an amazing group of gentlemen they are.  They set up a real camp toilet.  Tents with Army cots inside for all of us.  Had a kitchen and an eating area.  And fed us food and beer.  Perfect.  I was too tired to do much.  We all chatted.  Ate dinner.  Hung out.  Then slept.  I slept like the dead.  Glorious.

Just some of the gear bags of the participants.

In all, I am so happy to have participated in this event.  Even though I hated it to my core while I was out doing it and did not make it to the finish point, I am proud of my accomplishment.  This civilian type 1 diabetic female did something many non-diabetics would not choose to do.  And goddamned if I am not a bit happy for myself for doing it.  I cannot wait till next year!