The Art of Dirtbagging

I spent the last three weeks living out of a 2005 Toyota Highlander with upwards of 200,000 miles on it. During this time, I hiked and climbed down the East Coast, and covered a meandering route from Boston to Clearwater, Florida.


While I won't pretend to be an expert after such a short time, I've learned a few tricks to live well below one's means -“dirtbagging,” as some of us call it with forlorn panache. Just in case you one day decide to flip your desk over, yell “I don't need this shit” in the middle of a work day, and strike out for the Pacific Northwest, here are some easy lessons on how to do it on the cheap.

1) Fast food joints now serve a purpose besides making you unhealthy and fat


It's the 21^st century. Fast food empires have succeeded in placing their boxy, generic locations on just about every street corner in America. I drive past them every day, and I always wage the same internal battle. If I'm on my way to a first date or an important meeting, it's: “how sweaty and winded will I get if I just stop for medium fries?” If I'm on my way home, it's: “do I get the four-piece of the six-piece chicken nugget to go with my large number two?”

But now, it's time for junk food chains to give back to the people they have fattened and diseased for so long (me). As a dirtbag, these “restaurants” present me with opportunities I could never have imagined as a well-adjusted member of society -namely, bottomless napkins and free changing rooms.

Sooner or later, toilet paper and paper towels run out. (Just ask any of my previous roommates who always abandoned little cardboard rolls on the spring-loaded cylinders that face the toilet -the act of popping it out, inserting a fresh roll, and popping it back in seemingly forever beyond them.) What are you gonna do? Buy more? Ludicrous. You're a dirtbag; you don't have that kind of walking-around money. However, what's to stop you from walking into a McDonald's or Wendy's, stuffing your pockets with the contents of an entire napkin dispenser, and walking right the hell back out? Certainly not the abused minimum-wage employees who daydream of pissing on the CEO's Egg McMuffin. Stuff your pockets with precious paper products and turn heels without spending a single red cent.

Just finished a long hike or an exhausting route? Are your clothes muddy and/or soaked in sweat? You don't want to dirty up your sleeping bag by changing in it, never mind the contortions required to get out of your sticky base-layer while lying down in the back of your car. The handicapped stall at your local Dairy Queen rivals the most spacious Macy's changing rooms. Here's a helpful hint for the gentlemen out there: men's rooms in southern states typically have diaper-changing stations as well (the South for gender equality?) in their handicapped stalls. Unfold that bad boy and it becomes a handy little table on which to lay out your clean clothes while you wriggle out of your dirty ones -welcome to the fancy life, you old dirtbag, you!

A final word on this topic: these maneuvers require a high degree of shamelessness when applied in more upscale establishments such as Subway or Chipotle, especially during off-hours when you might be the only “patron” in the restaurant. If you are bold enough for such a technique, you must meet the smiling and eager gaze of the three or four plastic-gloved employees behind the counter head-on. Smile right back at them, let out a sing-songy “hello, how are you today?” before veering right for the bathroom. No one will mind; they'll assume that you're merely washing your hands before purchasing your meal, as any god-fearing American would. When you exit in a different outfit, they'll be temporarily disoriented -you must pounce on this moment. Power-walk the hell right out of there before they can say a word.

And grab a handful of napkins on your way out, why don'tcha?

2) Sleeping in Walmart parking lots is your unalienable right 


Walmarts. The bastion of our shrinking middle class.

According to Business Insider, eight cents of every American dollar is spent at Walmart. The same source credits Walmart as the nation's largest employer, the most frequent destination typed into GPS Telenav, and the defendant in 4,851 lawsuits in the year 2000 alone. Without getting too political, I think it's fair to say that this gigantic corporation is fairly evil. They pay their workers a pittance, bust workers' unions left and right, and palpably worsen the health of surrounding residents. But now they too can give back to the people, or, more specifically, to the consummate dirtbag.

Did you know that 90 percent of Americans live within fifteen minutes of a Walmart? That their parking lots across the country cover a surface the size of Tampa? If you are driving across the country, think of Walmart as a free hotel for your car.

Not only are Walmarts everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, but they also conveniently leave the lights on in their parking lots all night long. While this does make falling asleep difficult, it will provide you with an illusory yet comforting sense of safety as you park alongside a handful of RVs and human beings who have decided to travel, live, and sleep in their cars (what's wrong with them?)

Now remember, while most Walmarts allow overnighters to sleep in their lots, there are exceptions. It's always a good idea to give the location of your choice a courtesy call to verify that they do permit the old park-n'-sleep before you completely disregard their response and do it anyway. They can't tow all of us!

Pro tip: whatever you do, DO NOT Google the words “Walmart,” “parking lot,” and “murder” before utilizing this technique.

3) Believe it or not, libraries still exist


Remember those things before iPhones and tablets? Like a bunch of pieces of paper all stuck together and they tell a story if you read them in order? I can't remember what they're called, but they're like a long Buzzfeed piece with no pictures or clicking. Those mysterious rectangles still have a faint pulse, and these days they reside in squat little buildings called libraries -if you're old enough, you may remember going to one in the early nineties.

Aside from being a museum of the boring, libraries do present the ordinary dirtbag with one modern convenience: free wifi.

You just take your tablet, phone, and other vital electronics inside, and connect. Warning: the librarians will look to you with a dusty, hopeful look -let them down easy. Ask them if there's a password for their wifi, and where you can plug in your computer, then walk head down to the nearest outlet. This will avoid awkward questions later such as “can I help you find anything?” or “need a recommendation for something to read?” -questions you're just not equipped to answer.

Once you're in, really milk this for all it's worth. An average stop at the library should last anywhere between six and eight hours, and your browser should have twelve to fifteen tabs open atany given time. Common sites you may wish to visit include, but are not limited to: Gmail, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Netflix (obviously using somebody else's account) and Pinterest. Make sure to copiously ignore the surrounding shelves. They're only there to provide ambiance and collect dust.

For the advanced dirtbag, this whole operation can be pulled off without ever leaving the comfort of your home/car. Just park close enough to the building, find the library wifi, and connect. Push the seat down, grab a helping of uncooked Ramen, and enjoy the second half of “No Country for Old Men” on your phone.

Any feelings of guilt can be quelled by a thought along the lines of:“my taxes pay for this place anyway.” Never mind the fact that you're unemployed and at the Greene County Library in Georgia.

4) Always pick up hitchhikers; it's good for your self-esteem


If you still have a shred of dignity left at this point (if you don't, I applaud you; you can skip this next section), you may start to notice your self-esteem diminishing as you leech and mooch your way across the country. Don't worry, there's a solution, and as always, it's free: picking up hitchhikers!

These “leather-tramps” or “road kids” (people willingly hitching across the country) are typically as destitute as they come, and you can enjoy a superior smirk as you clear some room for their guitar or skateboard in the trunk while they offer their humble gratitude. Bask in their pestilential odor as you settle in for a drive, and feel your ego soaring to unimagined heights: “wow, their last shower must have been months ago...I'm squeaky clean compared to them.”

Say something princely like “well, I can take you as far as Tallahassee” or “we'll have to squeeze in, but there's enough room for all this stuff” to fully restore your wounded pride. Ask them if they have enough room, if the temperature is adequate, or if the choice of music suits them. Essentially, do everything in your power to lord the one difference between you and them: your wheels.

If that still doesn't do it, ask them about their travels, and rejoice as they regale you with tales of camping behind a Cracker Barrel, waiting six hours for a ride across town, and a really cool commune somewhere in Maine where they might stop for a couple weeks. If that still doesn't get you where you want to be, ask them something more profound, like why they decided to set off à la Jack Kerouac. 

Make sure you suppress your haughty giggling as they mumble something about their “restless spirit” through their muddy beard.
If these people don't savagely murder and eat you, you will drop them off with a revitalized sense of well-being and self-worth. But of course, this technique only works if you can fully repress the memory of washing your feet in a Wendy's bathroom sink that very morning.


That's it for now! I'm sure I'll learn plenty more along the way on the art of being a good dirtbag, and I'll be sure to report just as soon as I do. Until then, a huge shoutout to my friends Tony and Shannon (and their adorable baby Liam), who are allowing me to stay in their guest room for a week while I recover from my travels and plan the rest of my itinerary.

I'm not sure what they were going on about the other night, but they couldn't stop grinning when they asked me to tell them again about my camping stove catching fire...

The Fear of Falling

One morning during a climbing trip, my friend Travis and I woke up to a snowstorm.

I left my tent late, and we shivered in our puffy jackets while Travis made breakfast –the temperature at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia was in the low thirties. Snowflakes shaped like wood shavings wheeled all around us. In spite of the cold, the snow was not sticking to the ground, and we thought that we could still climb if a break in the snowfall presented itself, which it did around noon. Eager to take advantage of it, we drove to the trailhead and geared up. Travis carried our backpack and rope, while I had all our climbing gear hooked to the loops on my harness: an assortment of carabiners and protection (or “pro” for short), nuts (small, curved pieces of metal that can be jammed inside a crack of a constriction in the rock) and spring-loaded cams (a syringe-like device with four lobes that contract when one pulls the trigger, and then expand upon release, exerting pressure and, again, jamming inside nooks and cracks in the rock.)

Our plan was to attempt a route called “Thais Corner,” a difficult, steep route that ascended a lengthy corner in the middle of the South Peak’s West face. The route has a bit of a reputation as a classic test-piece for Seneca Climbers, and we knew we were in for a challenge, but we believed we would either pull it off or retreat early and safely if the climbing became too hard for us.

We hiked in to the lower part of the cliff, and, after a short scramble, reached the bottom of the climb. The corner was unforgivably steep and long, arching all the way to the South summit. Craning my neck, I could see a white bulge of Tuscarora Quartzite about halfway up, barring the way to the upper stages of the climb. Travis and I had agreed that I'd lead the first pitch, so I tied into the rope and double-checked my gear.

About this method: the leader climbs first with a rope attached to their harness and places pro along the way, clipping their rope to it to protect from a fall, while the follower belays from the ground. The leader then builds an anchor at the top and belays the follower, who in turn removes the pro as they climb, or “cleans” the pitch. Because there is no rope hanging from the top, this method requires the leader to climb past each piece of pro, hence exposing themselves to a potential “lead fall,” in which they would fall the length of the amount of slack that has been fed past the last piece of pro, and then that length again, before the rope catches them. Leader falls are often lengthy, hazardous, and, obviously, highly undesirable in traditional climbing.

I started up the cliff, pinching small holds and placing the edges of my rubber climbing shoes on tiny grooves in the rock. I climbed about five feet before placing my first piece of gear, a large #3 cam, into a crack running along the middle of the corner. I let out a long breath, pushed my left leg along the other side of the corner, (a technique called “stemming”) and rested in this position. I was surprised at how hard the route really was –finicky, crimpy face-climbing at its best. While the corner protected us from the wind, it also cast shade over us. The rock was frigid, and my hands were already growing numb.

Best not to linger; I pushed on past the next few moves, using the corner to make the moves more restful. The footholds were small, and I could feel my toes growing numb too through my thin climbing shoes. I climbed another twenty feet, placing two more cams along the way, and then threaded a sling through a carabiner and around a small tree that had chosen this odd place to grow, and clipped my rope to it. Again, I let out a long breath and pushed on, finally topping out on a small, rocky platform, on which another large tree grew. A caretaker of the cliff had left three large permanent slings around the base of the trunk with two metal rings (known as “rappel rings” or “rap rings”) fixed to it. I secured my rope to them and called for Travis to take me off belay. I belayed him from the rap rings, and soon he was standing beside me on the small platform, breathing heavily.

The snow had started again and we were both feeling the cold. I put on my gloves and beat my hands against my thighs to help get the blood flowing. We briefly discussed bailing on the route. We had two beautiful, solid rap rings, and we could go down now without leaving any gear. The weather was getting worse, our feet were turning into chunks of ice, and we had both left our sneakers at the bottom of the climb. We had acquitted ourselves pretty well on the first pitch of a hard route –there would have been no shame in heading back down.

But I knew that we could always bail later in the climb if the weather really took a turn for the worse. It would mean leaving some gear behind if we had to build an anchor from which to rappel, but that would be a small cost compared to fleeing for our lives in really dangerous weather. My hands and feet were cold, but we were not nearing frostbite, and the climb protected well and offered numerous cracks and features in which to place .gear We decided to push on for at least one more pitch.

Travis didn't feel like leading in these conditions, but I felt decently confident, so I put on my face mask and clipped the gear back to my harness. The next pitch featured a large “chimney” (a constriction between two opposing corners in the rock, which can be ascended by jamming one’s body between opposite walls) that exited back onto the face on an overhanging section. I made my way up carefully, stemming between the right-sided corner and the middle wall. I placed plenty of pro, aware that a long fall into the walls of the chimney would leave me banged up, if not seriously injured.

The crack system I had been using to place nuts and cams ended abruptly near the top of the chimney. I paused there and looked up. Above me, that nasty white bulge protruded into the snowy sky, obscuring the entire climb. I placed a small, #7 nut into the very top of the crack, and extended my placement by clipping it to a single-length sling. I knew the bulge above would cause my rope to curve over the rock. Nuts are designed to jam down, not up, and by extending the placement, I was reducing the risk of the rope’s movement pulling the nut out, or causing it to “walk.” I clipped my rope to the sling, confident in my decision, and climbed on.

With a twisting move, I heaved myself out of the chimney and found myself back on the face. The biting wind hit me immediately, and my fingers and toes grew even number. Above me, the incline steepened, and the handholds were gone altogether. Looking across to the left wall of the corner, I saw a tiny, roofed platform carved into the rock, no bigger than a large cubby, with permanent slings affixed to it –the next belay station. I had to traverse about ten feet across the bulge to reach it. I wrapped my right hand around a small horn in the rock and scrambled my feet to the left across some small, sloping ledges, and scanned the rock for a left handhold. I found only one: a small crack two feet to my left. Very slowly, I leaned my entire body off of the horn and slipped my left hand into the crack, using its left side to push back and maintain myself in this precarious balance. Breathing deeply, I decided that it was time to place a piece of pro. And there was the problem: my left hand was in the one small ripple in which I could possibly have squeezed a piece of pro.

Something was hammering inside my chest, like a distant drumbeat. For the first time on the climb, I realized I was afraid. Splayed out across the white bulge, I didn’t move. Hidden from sight by the towering chimney, Travis was silent. About ten feet below me, I could see the green rope snaking back over the bulge and into the chimney to where I had placed the #7 nut, which I could no longer see. Would it still be in its place? I had lengthened the placement with a sling, but would that be enough to prevent it from walking?

I wanted to move, but I couldn't will myself to do it. I could no longer feel my right fingers at all, but I could see that they were still wrapped around the small horn. Across the way, my right hand was similarly freezing inside the crack. My feet teetered on the tiny ledges –they both felt as if they could go at any time. Horrified, I contemplated the fall that awaited me. It would be at least twenty feet, perhaps up to thirty with rope stretch and slack. I would fall right into the chimney, bouncing off all three walls, and then hang there limply, level with Travis on the belay ledge, perhaps unconscious or with broken limbs. There was no cell phone service here; he would have to get me off the cliff somehow, and then drag or carry me down to the parking lot. Would he be able to do it? What kind of pain would I be in? Would he have to leave me and run down for help? These images surged one after the other like a fast-paced commercial, and I dimly recognized that I was very close to something like panic.

It's hard to describe what one goes through in the moments before a big fall. The mind, a few moments ago so engrossed in the grace of the climb or the mechanics of the gear, is suddenly jittery and unfocused, unable to zero in on anything. Limbs start to shake violently –climbers call it “Elvis-ing” or compare it to a sewing machine. You want to call “time-out” or say “wait, hang on, let’s take a break,” or call for your belayer to “take tight,” as if you were hanging from a top-rope. Often, the strongest instinct is to try to somehow look away, to evade the immediacy of the predicament, and it feels oddly like pulling the covers over your head on a Monday morning and thinking: “I don’t wanna go to school!” Only there are no covers, no top-ropes, no breaks, and no possible escape. Only the fall. Or sometimes, the unhoped-for solution.

Gathering a modicum of focus, I willed my mind to cooperate. NO, I thought in a burst of self-control, you’re not gonna fall. You’re gonna figure this out. Right now. There was no feeling left in my right hand. I squeezed its muscles and saw it tighten around the horn. That hand had to stay there. It was too cold to unclench and grab anything else. My left leg started to shake. I made a minuscule shift of my weight onto my right leg, and the shaking stopped. I scanned the face again –only one crack in which to place gear. The one my left hand was in.

My left hand, which was keeping me in my shaky position on the face, was precisely in the one possible spot where I could have placed a piece of pro.

That’s it. That’s it. You’ve gotta move that hand. You’ve got to do it now. I gripped the horn even tighter with my right hand and slowly pulled my left hand out of the crack. For a second, I teetered slowly like an unhinged door, but I didn’t fall. Okay, quick, get something in. My left hand had just enough feeling to grab a large #3 cam from my gear loop. I tried to stuff it into the crack. Too big. Way too big. Come on, man, get it together. Too weak to clip it back to my gear loop, I placed it on a sling I carried around my shoulder. It made a clinking noise as it settled against the carabiner I had clipped to the sling. I tried a #0.4 cam, and it sank into the crack without touching anything. Too small, way too small! What are you thinking? Come on man, come on. I dropped it onto the sling, and it clinked against the #3. My right leg started shaking. Slowly, I inverted the shift back onto my left leg, and the shaking stopped again. Above me, I didn't even dare look at my right hand, now a locked vise around the small horn. I fumbled for a #1 cam, and, shaking, compressed the lobes and dipped it into the crack. It barely went in, and when I released the lever, the lobes barely expanded, gripping into the rock. A perfect placement. This is the one. This is the one! Clip to it! Clip to it now! Both legs now shaking uncontrollably, I reached down to my waist and felt the knots around my climbing loops. I slid my hand down the rope, grabbing an armful of slack, and finally heard the divine sound of the carabiner’s wire-gate click shut around the rope.

“TAKE TIGHT!” I yelled down into the wind.

I didn't hear a response, but I felt the rope tighten and pull me into the inviting embrace of the rock. At last, I sat back in my harness and let go of the rock horn, dangling off my blessed #1 cam. My right hand was a frozen claw, the fingers barely able to move. Even in the cold, I was drenched in sweat. I am not sure if I hung there for two or ten minutes, but it felt like ages. I put my gloves back on for a while and felt the painful sting of my fingers regaining sensation. Above me, the rest of the climbing looked fairly straightforward –hard, but nothing like the run-out bulge I had just gotten past.

Regaining my strength, I called for slack and pulled the last five feet to the rock cubby, wondering what types of contortions might be required for Travis and I to both fit inside. I clipped the fixed anchor, rigged a belay, and called for Travis to climb. A few minutes later, he was level with me, struggling to climb past the white bulge that had so nearly spat me out. Attempting the traverse, he tried out several ledges and holds with his left hand, unable to gain any purchase on the rock. Finally, he leaned back on his right hand and called out to me:

“Dude, that cam is in the one place where I could possibly put my hand!”


Comfortable in my little rock cell, it was all I could do not to laugh.  

Mistakes on Mount Marcy

It is often said that good judgment comes from experience, and that experience can only come from bad judgment. In other words, screwing up is the only path to not screwing up –something I discovered firsthand earlier this week.

As the first part of my journey, my friend Pierre and I decided to attempt a winter hike up Mount Marcy (5,343 feet), the high point of New York State and of the Adirondack Mountains. While Mount Marcy may not be a big mountain, it does present certain difficulties, which are magnified in winter. In addition to being prone to poor weather, the mountain is remote, precluding any cell phone service, and presents a winding approach over ice and snow –a round trip to the summit means upwards of a fifteen-mile hike. To shorten the distance, we started up with the goal of setting up a base camp at Marcy Dam, a primitive camping site 2.3 miles into the hike. We would then only face ten miles to the summit the following day, with light packs and the prospect of returning to an already established campsite.


Having often slept in the White Mountains and twice on the upper slopes of Mount Rainier, I know that winter-camping presents unique challenges, most of which can be solved by bringing the right gear. We packed a two-person winter tent, a stove with plenty of fuel, enough food for four days, zero degree-rated sleeping bags, insulating camping pads, an ice-axe, snowshoes, micro-spikes, winter-rated boots, GORE-TEX hard-shells, heavy down jackets, a bivy sack, and a myriad other essential items.


I felt confident as our snowshoes crunched into the ice. The forecast was clear, only indicating a chance of rain showers between two and three o’clock, and we were carrying eighty pounds of gear between the two of us. Lastly, I had just had a conversation with the State Park employee at the lodge about not underestimating even the smallest of mountains. Surely, such a potent combination of clement weather, equipment, and humility could not be run aground.

We made short work of the approach to Marcy Dam. As expected, we encountered light rain at around 2:45 P.M. –no big deal; we donned our hard-shells and hiked on. Soon, the rain passed and we reached the campsite in good weather. Near the trail, the dam encroached onto the river. Further behind the trees, we found several lean-tos and a few campsites. For a few seconds, I toyed with the idea of foregoing the tent and simply setting up our sleeping bags in the first lean-to, or even pitching the tent inside one. I dismissed both options quickly.


Too cold to sleep in our bags in one of those, I thought, and they act like a big windsock. We can’t even set up the guy lines properly in there; it’s better to just pitch our tent on the ground.

We moved past the lean-to and found a nice spot in a small clearing. The snow was mushy, but we managed to find a compact platform on which we could sleep comfortably. We took off our packs, put on our puffy jackets, and I unfurled the tent into the ground. As I dashed inside it to set up the first of three support poles, I heard Pierre’s voice.

“Hurry up man, it’s starting to rain again.”

I managed to click the first pole into place and clambered back out of the tent. It was four o’clock, an hour past the end of the forecasted period of “rain showers,” and yet a thin but intense, freezing winter rain was peppering the landscape.


That's when I made my first big mistake of the day.

Should we stop? Take all our stuff into a lean-to and wait for the rain to pass? It could get worse. It could also stop in a few minutes –the forecast does call for good weather. I can get this tent up quickly. I’m going to keep going.

I jumped back into the tent and struggled with the second pole for a while, then went about the business of fastening about a dozen straps to the poles. Finally, I climbed back out of the tent to put up the vestibule. A good ten minutes had passed, and the rain had only gotten worse. Our two packs, which had been lying in the snow, were thoroughly soaked. Dejectedly, I threw my drenched hard-shell over my pack and fussed with the vestibule pole for a few minutes. This time, I had no half-set up tent to protect me from the elements, and the rain soon inundated my puffy jacket, my fleece, and even reached my base-layer. By the time Pierre and I rushed into the finally erect tent, we were wet to the bone.

Still, our spirits were not as damp as our gear. Our sleeping bags, stuffed into waterproof compression sacks, had remained dry. We hung up our clothes to dry on the tent’s support poles and crawled into our bags, where we quickly regained some warmth. We spent the next two hours or so recovering from hauling our heavy loads up to camp, laughing, joking, and chitchatting as two old friends are wont to do. By dinnertime, our clothes were still fairly damp, and I was only wearing my now (mostly) dry base-layer in my sleeping bag.

We were starting to grow cold, but I was confident that as soon as I fired up the stove, we would not only get some warm food and drinks in our bellies, but also be able to dry our clothes. I carefully assembled my brand new stove, and hung it from the middle of the tent roof. We opened the back flap and the seal to the vestibule to create some ventilation. I poured water into the pot, and clicked the igniter, expecting to see a bright spark turn into three small flames. Nothing happened. I clicked it several more times. Nothing. I exchanged a crestfallen look with Pierre. My brand new stove, which had cost me a fortune, and had functioned perfectly when I had tested it out a few days prior, was broken. I took a closer look. The igniter was no longer working, and even though the gas was flowing, the actual stove was failing to ignite without the crucial spark.

That's when I made my second big mistake of the day.

Okay, so the igniter is broken, but the stove seems okay. I just need some other way to light it. I don’t have a lighter, but I have waterproof matches in my emergency kit. I’ll just turn on the gas and use that to ignite the stove. It might get a little smelly with the gas and the match, but we have some good ventilation. Besides, we really need the stove to dry our clothes and eat some hot food. We just won’t be able to warm up without it. I’m going to do it.

I turned on the gas, cracked a waterproof match, and shoved it under the stove. The gas lit and a tongue of fire licked the thick air of the tent, but, again, the stove failed to ignite. Resigned, I switched off the gas and blew out the match. At that point, I understood how toxic the air inside our tent had just become –a vicious smell of sulfur and gas permeated everything around us, and the beam of my headlamp revealed thick ribbons of smoke waving around the enclosure. We wafted the air inside the tent as best we could, but still, I knew we had just inhaled some fairly noxious stuff. To make matters worse, we had lost all the body heat we had created and trapped inside the tent while venting it, so we were now cold again with no stove to warm us.


We went to sleep with the prospect of a cold night, two days of eating cold food, and some seriously wet, cold clothing to put on in the morning. However, our troubles did not wait until the morning before ending the short reprieve of sleep.

I woke up at a quarter past midnight, after a fitful hour and a half of sleep, extremely cold, and with a grinding headache. Pierre was already awake from the cold and breathing heavily. I started doing sit-ups in my sleeping bag to generate heat, but I could not get warm no matter what I did. Rain still pitter-pattered against the waterlogged tent fabric, and I realized that thick drops were running along the tent poles and onto the clothes we had hung –it had been raining for more than six hours, seriously compromising the waterproof nature of our shelter. I touched my clothing. Every article was still drenched. Pierre and I talked about our situation, and decided we just needed to get warm and weather the night.

However, no matter what I did, I could not get warm, as I was only down to my base-layer in a large zero-degree rated sleeping bag designed to accommodate down clothing. There was simply too much air for my body to warm, and with wet clothes strewn around the tent, my body heat was escaping into the vacant air within the bag. I grew colder and colder as my headache evolved into a full-blown migraine, doubtlessly from the toxic gases I had inhaled while battling the stove.

As I started nearing hypothermia, we realized that our summit bid was off the table. We had to take down camp and head down to safety as soon as dawn broke. We gave that idea up at around 3 A.M. We were simply too cold (and growing colder) to wait until the morning to flee back down to the trailhead. Our breathing had also grown heavier from the compromised atmosphere of the tent, and we direly need to get the hell out of dodge.

I quickly weighed the risk of hiking out in the dark versus the risk of waiting until morning, and, finally, made a sound decision.

We’re only going to get colder, and my headache is only going to get worse. The trail is very well marked and we can navigate it safely. We have headlamps and we can definitely find our way back down.

I had no sooner thought that than Pierre told me his headlamp was no longer functioning. The rain had stopped, so we broke down camp as best we could. We were both shaking from the cold, and touching wet fabric with my bare hands was painful. With everything out of the tent, I put my damp clothes back on, figuring it would be better than hiking out in my base-layer. My socks were still too drenched, and I had to pack them in my bag. I put on my frigid boots with only my thin sock-liners on, and my toes instantly went numb from the cold.

“We have to move,” I told Pierre. “I can’t feel my toes.”

We clicked into our snowshoes, rolled up the tent, and strapped it to my pack. My waterlogged gear was much heavier than it had been on the hike in, adding a good five pounds to my pack weight.
Since I had the only headlamp, I took the lead and guided Pierre who could barely see, calling out the type of terrain we were going over as I encountered it. On difficult ground, I would sometimes negotiate obstacles as he waited, then shine my headlamp back to them so Pierre could get down safely. We repeated this process several times, slowly warming as we trudged down the mountain. The wind picked up, and soon it was snowing heavily. We had to walk right into the wind, and thick flakes whipped right into my face. With a shiver, I remembered all the stories I had read of hikers getting lost in the dark and disappearing, eventually dying from exposure.


We reached the car after an hour, tossed our wet gear in the back, and cranked up the heat. We slept a couple of hours right in the car seats, grateful to be warm and dry. Later on that morning, we drove back down to Massachusetts for the next part of our trip.

That night, we slept at a motel so we could dry all of our gear, especially the tent, which required a large surface on which to spread out. Before we went to sleep, we decided to grab dinner at a small Greek restaurant near the motel. I walked down first from our second floor room and waited for Pierre in the parking lot, fiddling with my stove to see if I could fix it. No matter how many times I tried, the clicker refused to produce a spark. As Pierre joined me, I gave it one last click, barely looking at the stove, expecting, once again, for nothing to happen.

A large wreath of flames roared out of the igniter and engulfed the entire stove, gas canister and all. I dropped it before it could burn me, and kicked it away from us. The stove, the pot, and the canister were all burning furiously, Pierre ran upstairs and dropped me a full Nalgene, which I emptied out onto the stove. We repeated the operation, eventually putting it out, and I reached into the smoking wreck and shut the gas off. The malfunction had been fatal –the stove’s axis had melted and crumbled, and the foam casing around the pot had sheared right off, revealing ugly burns all along the metal. It was a charcoal briquette. 

Pierre and I exchanged scandalized looks, and erupted into a noisy exchange about what could have happened if the stove had caught fire while inside the tent on Mount Marcy. We imagined ourselves with third-degree burns, disfigured, or shaking in our base-layers in the snowstorm, watching a fireball engulfing our tent, clothing, and gear. But as we spoke, another thought crept into my mind.

Hey, as bad as our time on Mount Marcy was, I guess it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

It made me feel better. Not much better, but better. After all, a stove had just caught fire in my hand.

In the end, we shook it off and went to feast on delicious Greek food.