Home is Where The Tarp is

Andrew preparing breakfast at Little Cottonwood Canyon park and ride

I was fully loaded now. I had snatched my pack from the jaws of Greyhound and now all the gear I needed was packed all around my driver’s seat, from warm coats, to snowshoes to a new climbing harness and shoes as I started down the road from Colorado to Salt Lake City where I would catch up with my friend Andrew.

My streak west from Denver took me past Fort Collins, past shrub and red rock, under big sky and on through Laramie, over the plains of Wyoming with the hood of the Mazda pointed at the setting sun.

That morning, I had swept inches of fresh snow off of my windshield. Now, the temperature was warm enough outside that I kept my driver’s-side window open. The remaining snow had melted down to patches in the April sun. To the south, the white-capped peaks of the Medicine Bow Range defied changing seasons.

I stopped to fill my tank in Rawlins, home of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Just outside of town were the leagues of desolate plains and a row of unfriendly looking mountains. Anyone making a jailbreak was going to have a helluva time on the other side of the fence.

There were still plenty of miles for me to travel and it was getting dark. I had my headlights on through Evanston and over the Utah line. Soon I could perceive the bulk of great mountains rising up off either side of the road and then canyon walls that closed in the road as it twisted downward. I kept the car at 70 in the middle lane to pass tanker trucks on the right. Even so, plenty of hotshots passed me on the right, weaving perilously over the road.

Finaly, I turned onto the beltway that wraps around Salt Lake City. I called Andrew to bring me the rest of the way to the park and ride in Little Cottonwood Canyon that had been his home for the past couple weeks. He had just finished a winter as a ski instructor at Snowbird. After a rather toxic roommate situation caused him to leave his apartment, he set up a tarp in the woods behind it where he slept in a sleeping bag. If a tarp and sleeping bag seem like a Spartan living arrangement, keep in mind that this is how Andrew hiked the entire Appalachian Trail.

When I finally arrived at the parking lo, he started his small aluminum can stove and cooked us a meal of macaroni and cheese.

A couple thousand feet below us, the Salt Lake City suburbs shimmered halogen orange like a phantasmal ocean.

There were still plans to be made for hiking, skiing, climbing, getting to California and finding out where we would live and sleep while doing this.

Now it was close to midnight and the obvious place to sleep was Andrew’s tarp.

When we finished eating, I followed him up a trail through the brush nearby to the where he had set up camp. I threw down my sleeping bag and zonked out.

Luxurious accommodations