Miscellaneous Essentials

"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light."
Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles, 1920

Three friends – Lisa Cotter, Jenny Ball and Cindy Carey – were planning an expedition to Mt. McKinley, a peak which is infamous for the arctic gales that beset its slopes. Accordingly, they wanted to get some experience camping in high winds. They decided, a bit naively, that the ideal location for a training trip was the Boulderfield on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Boulderfield is a bleak, rocky plain, far above timberline, that is raked by hurricane-force winds in the wintertime. One stormy February weekend a few months before the expedition, they invited me to join them and we headed up. Winter days go fast, and the last pink glow of sunset was abandoning the peaks to the north when we finally got the tents erect in the stiff wind and crawled inside. Jenny and I, together in one tent, cooked dinner by the light of our headlamps. I noticed that the battery powering my headlamp was growing weak. No worries, I thought; we're only here one night, I'll only need my headlamp for another few minutes and besides, I have a spare battery.

Soon after the last sip of hot chocolate, we doused the headlamps and plunged the tent into darkness. The wind began to grow stronger. The tent strained against the gusts as the taut fabric crackled noisily. I had been dozing restlessly for no more than half an hour when a loud snap! like a breaking tree limb jarred me awake. The wind had broken one of the tent poles. An instant later the second one, now unsupported, fractured as well and the tent began flapping and billowing like a giant jellyfish gone mad. I lunged for my headlamp and flicked it on to survey the damage. The beam faintly illuminated a gaping rip in the fabric. Afraid the tent would be destroyed completely and all of our extra gear would blow away, Jenny and I began packing frantically. Suddenly my headlamp winked out, its battery shot. Fumbling in the dark, I plugged in my spare battery, confident that our lack of light was merely a temporary annoyance. Then I discovered that it, too, had somehow become drained. A minute later, Jenny's headlamp failed as well. Fortunately, she also had a spare battery. Unfortunately, it too was dead. Embarrassed now as well as desperate, we borrowed a headlamp from Cindy and Lisa, finished stowing our gear and packed up the tattered remnants of the tent. Cindy and Lisa's tent had also suffered a broken pole; a second pole was badly bent, but the tent, although lopsided, was still standing. The four of us squeezed inside and waited for dawn. When morning finally arrived, we abandoned our plans to climb Longs Peak and scurried for home.

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