High Sierra Topix

Ever had odd dreams about backpacking? I used to have this re-occurring dream. More like nightmare. I’m heading up into the Sierra, but the area I’m hiking consists of grassy knolls. I’m on my way to the lowest lake in Goddard Canyon. A beautifully remote lake that I know several of us have seen. It’s an arduous climb and I’m passing several upper lakes, which makes no sense to reality, but it is the lake I’m going to, just not the terrain, except in my dream. I reach the pass and feel the cool breeze of life passing over and make my way up. As I reach the top and look down, I see the lake, my favorite lake (well, one of them anyway), but it is vastly different. There is a parking lot full of cars and a giant building overlooking the lake. Some fool built a road up the other side and built a resort. My heart sinks. Partly because my beautiful, secluded lake is ruined, but also because I took the hard way up when I could have driven.

:-). Hmmmmmm (stroking chin hairs) how did you feel about your father?

He's a bit too fearful about rocking the boat for my taste, but otherwise fine. Unless he was the one who built the road, then, hope somebody taught him to duck.

My backpacking dreams are stress-related (much like the dream where one has a test at school and forgot to study).

The dream starts with me waiting for my partners to show up so we can drive to the TH. While we arranged an early (5-6am) meeting, someone doesn't show until 10am and then takes an hour to get their gear packed. We end up not getting to the TH until 2-3pm and then I figure out I left the food behind. I don't even dream about the backpacking—I dream about trying to get to backpacking. Oh, it just riles me up thinking about it.

For the record, I am a meticulous planner and organizer and I really dislike when things don't go according to plan. Yes, I'm frustrated a lot.

Jimr

My dream is similar to yours. I return to Roaring River Ranger Station and find there is now a road to it. To make matters worse the Ranger has allowed stock parties to over graze the area and the meadows are virtual dust bowls. (I know if cars can drive in why would there be stock grazing? It was a nightmare!)

Mike

Never had weird dreams about backpacking, but I have had some mighty strange dreams while backpacking. I attribute it to taking sleeping aides like Tylenol PM or Benadryl. Sierra nights are long for me, lots of time for dreaming.

When I'm on backpacks where I do a peak or go over a dicey pass (and sometimes for days after), I often have anxiety dreams about climbing up absurdly impossible walls or stairs. The feeling in the dream is "wait a second, wtf do I have to do this??" I guess my unconscious is trying to tell me something.

I don't sleep well backpacking, so i don't have weird dreams there. Since my mid 40's, most of my bad dreams have been falling dreams.. One scared me so bad at 2am, i couldn't get back to sleep. Took days to shake it. I think they keep me safer when i'm evaluating passes and chutes.

My personal internal motto is "don't die stupid"

I used to boat the Thousand Islands (No, not that one, Upstate NY) and I always spent nights on anchor in various coves. Quite often, After I got home, I would dream I wad adrift in the St Lawrence shipping channel. I would leap out of bed, looking for the helm. I swear that the tiny light on the message machine looked like a channel marker.

I used to have another recurring dream about hiking in from Yucca Point to Tehipite Valley. For 25 years, I’ve wanted to visit TV. In 1989, my buddy and I were going down Goddard Creek and ran across three guys who were camped at the same lake we were at. We were heading down with packs and they were heading up from an exploratory hike to prepare their descent the next day. I had TV as a possible long day hike from Simpson Meadow, but wasn’t sure I wanted to do the mileage after GC. I asked one of the guys about a possible route up the MFK and he said that at the top, there was a very narrow area that locals called “the Keyhole” that was impassible in higher water, but negotiable in low water.

From then on, I’ve had dreams of bushwhacking up the river and slipping through a Keyhole (I know, a little through the looking glass-ish) to be immediately rewarded with a wonderful high walled valley stretched out before me. A few years back, I found a TH report from somebody who did this route. The first description I’d ever found. Other than the Alice in Wonderland portion of the program, it seems my dream was a fair assessment. I’m finally going to TV this July, WHOOHOO!!

rlown:
I’ve been plagued with falling dreams up until about 40. For me, it is driving up a mountain road, sort of like the Angeles Crest Hwy. Each curve brings my vehicle closer and closer to the edge, like banking a curve too fast and drifting out ever farther. I guess there’s a little flying in it as well because my vehicle drifts well past the shoulder over the edge until finally, the turn hits that I can’t recover and I start to fall. Then, I wake up in a cold sweat. Several years ago, I got my kids a Nintendo 64 game console and used to play one of the games with them. It was a racing game going up ramps and onto the top of walls surrounding a fortress. Every time I fell in the game, I got the same unnerving feeling as in my dreams. My kids, to this day remind me of this.

Freestone:
Sierra nights used to be very long for me as well. Last year, I purchased a new, thicker Therm-a-Rest and the nights seem quite a bit shorter now.

My worst night in the Sierra was in 1985. We were doing a trans-sierra from Courtwright Res. to South Lake. The first day was supposed to be to, I want to say, Big Maxon Meadow. It's the area just at the junction heading up to Hell-For-Sure pass. The flies on the first day were so bad, we couldn't stop for more than a few seconds without being driven out of our minds. Deet was of no use and the flies did not light or bite, but they swarmed our heads constantly. Once at BMM, we decided to add day two to day one and stay at Rae Lk. to hopefully lose the flies. It was a tough day adding a 3k climb to the second half of the day. When we hit Rae Lk. the flies were gone, but the skeeters were abundant. They were not much of a problem for those of us who didn't mind being bathed in Deet. One person decided to wear his thermal underwear under shorts and tee shirt to keep them away. Needless to say, he suffered from hundreds of bites.

That night in my sleeping bag, every time I started to drift off, I'd suddenly find myself waking with my arms flailing trying to get the flies (of which there were none) away from my face. A bit of post traumatic stress, I guess. Sort of like being on a boat all day, then at home, in bed, you can't shake the motion of the ocean. That was probably the longest non-drug induced night I've ever spent.