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Written By: Allison Dappen

The idea of strapping a heavy pack to one’s back, hauling that pack uphill for several miles, sweating, fighting mosquitoes, bathing in dust, and then camping in an area without toilets or showers does not appeal to the majority of teenage girls. Many might equate this to a vision of hell.

However, a group of my friends and I have discovered that backpacking, far from being a tortuous experience, has offered us a chance to accomplish something on our own. While the two overnight trips we have taken together may not have been long or extremely difficult (though the uphill sure felt like it), they were trips that we survived together and were incredible bonding experiences.

We started backpacking last summer when one friend said she wanted to try it and I realized that a trip with friends sounded more appealing than the occasional family trips forced upon me in the past. We found a weekend matching everyone’s schedule and four of us hiked up to Lake Caroline. The hike passed quickly as we caught up on each others’ summers and played rounds of twenty questions. Rather than counting down the miles until we reached the destination, I found that the company of my friends made the journey fun. We took a slow pace and arrived at the lake too late to swim--part of our master plan--but nobody minded.

After sleeping curled at the bottom of our sleeping bags through a night that numbed our toes and frosted the grass, we woke up to the sun breaking over the ridge and illuminating the lake. We warmed ourselves with cups of hot chocolate and a bowls of oatmeal prepared on a granite slab beside the lake, fondly nicknamed “Pride Rock.” Upon returning to our tents, we found a deer observing us through the brush. We stalked the deer with our cameras, snapped a few pictures, then packed up our gear and prepared for the downhill trek back to the car. Our bruised shoulders and hips from yesterday’s efforts were sources of laughter. There was no complaining.

Curiously, backpacking with a group of friends had an entirely different atmosphere than hiking with family. Rather than feeling like we were hiking because we had no choice, hiking became a statement of independence. The fact that we organized the trip, drove to the trailhead, hiked the route, and made it back home in one piece was empowering. There was no complaining because we all realized these aching muscles and bruised shoulders were of our own making.

This summer, we tackled Earl Peak. The trail was shorter and, when I chose the trip, I thought that there was less elevation gain than the previous year—something that appealed to the returning members of the group. Before we left, I rechecked my information and discovered that I was mistaken—there was about 1000 additional feet of elevation gain over last year’s trip. I did what any good trip leader would do—I said nothing.

Not only had I miscalculated the elevation gain, but we all quickly discovered I was clueless about the exact location of the trailhead. From where we parked, a faint trail followed the correct creek but, a short distance from the car, the trail vanished. Standing on the bank of Beverly Creek, we consulted our map and the trip instructions and realized we were on the wrong side of the creek—a problem easily fixed. With some boulder hopping and log walking we crossed the creek and, standing on the other side, looked expectantly for the clearly-designated trail that we were sure to find. Nothing. We bushwhacked along the creek briefly before scrambling up a bank to a gravel road paralleling the creek. Confused, we continued along this road for a mile, occasionally diving back into the woods and pushing our way through the brush in search of our trail. Finally we rounded a bend in the road and were met with a large parking area, a bridge across the creek, and a large sign for our clearly-designated trail. We had walked part of the access road. All agreed it made a funnier story than simply driving to the correct parking area.

So the trailhead proved to be farther than we thought and the route was a fair bit steeper than I had promised, but no-one could deny its worth when, later, we stood on the top of Earl Peak, reveling in our accomplishment and absorbing a perfect panorama that took my camera a half hour to properly document. Back at our campsite, tired enough that a pile of rocks made comfortable seats, we prepared our dinner and commented on how everything—even our partially uncooked rice—tasted better when backpacking. Full, exhausted, and proud of what we had achieved during the day, we lay back on the rocks and watched the stars come out, our conversations a mixture of gossip and philosophizing. Even without toilets and showers, we said, life surely didn’t get much better than this.

Away from both adults and civilization, there was a total lack of reserve and a sense of freedom that enhanced the entire experience. If we felt like screaming a Tarzan call from the top of the mountain or whistling like the seven dwarves as we walked, there was no embarrassment. We could talk and tease openly, or we could walk in comfortable silence.

Backpacking, we discovered, also provided a refreshing escape from expectations of appearance. When we got back to the car the next day, we four girls had tanned our skin with layers of dust, our hair was a knotted disaster, we had grime under our fingernails, our shirts were stiff from sweat, and before we started the drive home we sealed our socks in Ziploc bags so that we wouldn’t have to figure out what they smelled like. But along the hike, whenever someone commented on how dirty she was, the rest of us would chorus, “Who cares?”

For each of us these hikes have become highlights of the summer. Persevering through the effort and the dust, we friends reached a shared goal. Maybe we haven’t done things in the best or easiest way, but we have done them our way.