A Trail Blazed Too Short
By Ed Crumley
It was 1989 or 90–the year of the White Mountain Wilderness white-out. Actually, there was no snow, but there might as well have been because the trail disappeared right before our eyes. To be truthful, it didn’t lose us—we lost it.
When the illustrious leader of this hodgepodge crew of barely-introduced Christian backpackers decided to blaze his own trail in another direction, we were left to go it alone. In his defense, he did leave us with government topo maps and he did tell us to stay on the Crest trail. But, being leaderless, and everyone going at his or her own pace, somewhere along the way we stumbled our way into being completely lost. The backpacking trail became a cow path, which narrowed to a small animal trail that ended in a thicket.
As the hours lengthened and the light dimmed, undaunted, we forged ahead. The daunting moment soon arrived when we could go no further, stopped in our tracks on the sloping side of a forested mountain. We were a motley crew: singles, families, old and young. Bob and Sue Owen with their son, Stephen, whom I had ridden up with, seemed to be prepared for the event as were Richard and Jane Hardin and their family. So prepared was Richard that he brought hand-held short wave radios.
One of those radios went with his son, Rick, who along with ace backpacker, “Baby” Charles Jennings, blazed another trail straight down the mountainside to find water, help, or both. Richard was concerned about Rick only until he came in loud and clear on the radio. Then another problem loomed beside the dwindling water supply: finding a place flatter than forty degrees to raise our tents. I had enough water but found a new challenge in putting up an unfamiliar new tent in the dark.
The crew prayed for water and God answered with a roaring, crashing thunderstorm which unloaded on ground zero, which was us, soon after midnight. After a while of hunkering in my tent, trying to stay on the upside of forty degrees, and be missed by the lightning strikes, I prayed, “Thanks for the water, Lord, but if these clowns haven’t collected enough water by now they never will, so You might as well turn off the spigot.” God answered almost immediately with what sounded like a gigantic fan blowing down the canyon. The huge wall of air blew the storm away, evaporating wetness in its wake like the drier at a colossal car wash.
To shorten this story, we made it home safely and all was well except for a lingering, nagging desire to return someday to the White Mountain Wilderness and do the Crest Trail like pros. Richard Hardin, Charles Jennings, and I, along with six other men, did just that for a week in 1993. Although we had invited Bob Owen to go, he was unable to at that time. He had become ill and soon passed away at a relatively young age.
Finally, another day will come when we can’t keep our rose-colored glasses off any longer and, like a bunch of foolish old lemmings, head for the mountains again. Several of us will be thinking about Bob and wishing he was with us. His memory will be there cheering us on but telling us to watch the trail so we don’t end up on the side of a mountain in the dark.
