Hike with Me: Queens River Loop

By Jeanne Bustamante

Jeanne Bustamante didn't start backpacking until her late twenties, but once she started, she was hooked. On her first overnight solo hike in 2013, she had a lot of time to think about what backpacking means to her, and she wanted to find a way to share her love of backpacking with people who might not be willing or able to go out into the wilderness themselves. Foremost in her thoughts was her mother, who has had Multiple Sclerosis for over thirty years and could not come with her on a backpacking trip or even a short hike.

Hike with Me: Stump Lake was the tale of that trip into the Boise National Forest. And it was the seed of another trip. In 2014, Jeanne went on a four day, three night solo backpacking trip through Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness.

The stakes are higher in a wilderness area, where vehicles are not allowed and permits are required for entry. Multiple nights on over 30 miles of trail provided both challenge and the opportunity for incredible views.

Join Jeanne on this trip through the wilderness which includes over 200 color photos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanne Bustamante
• Release date: Jan 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311751553

Book preview

Hike with Me

The Queens River Loop

by Jeanne Bustamante

Boise, ID

© 2014 by Jeanne Bustamante

All rights reserved.

All photos by author unless otherwise noted.

This book is an account of one hiker’s experience, and does not constitute instruction or guidance.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preparing for the Journey

Day 0: An Unexpected Adventure

Day 1: To Johnson Lake

Day 2: To the Lake at 8696

Day 3: To Nanny Creek

Day 4: Back to the Trailhead

Afterword

About the Author

Foreword

This book is dedicated to my mom. She's never been backpacking, and she will never get the chance to do it now. She has Multiple Sclerosis, and issues of temperature, mobility and care would get in the way. Even if she ever does get to visit me here in Idaho, she’ll never be able to experience it the way I love best: out in the mountains, far from where cars can travel, and far away from where tourists usually congregate.

The idea to write a book about a solo hike for her came to me last summer during my first ever solo hike. That book, Hike with Me: Stump Lake, was a gift for her, but it was also a chance to explore new skills. I knew after that experience that I not only wanted to do another solo hike, but also another book, with full color pictures and in large print so that she could read it. This book exists partly because she loved the first one, and couldn’t stop asking me when she would get the next one.

Once again, thank you, Mom.

Preparing for the Journey

Last year I wanted to spend two nights in the wilderness by myself, but I had to make an itinerary change when fire threatened the area that I had planned on hiking. So I chose instead to do a single night trip in an area that I was familiar with instead of the planned two nighter in relatively new territory.

It served as a good test of my resolve and my desire. Spending a single night alone out there gave me an idea of what I could handle. But I knew that this year’s trip would be different.

For starters, I didn’t know that I would write a book at the beginning of my last trip, while my Mom had been asking me about my next book for months before I even took this trip. Not that I minded - I love that you love it, Mom, and you have helped keep me motivated for this next one.

While knowing that I planned to write about my journey was a difference, time and distance were far bigger differences. This journey would be a long loop, in a genuine wilderness area, over the course of four days and three nights. Specifically, I would be in the Sawtooth Wilderness, making a trip that is known as the Queens River Loop. The trailhead is about 100 miles from where I live in Boise, but the drive takes more than 3 hours because much of the travel is on forest service roads. Those roads are not only unpaved, but narrow and winding to boot.

A wilderness area is protected land. Motors are prohibited within it, even bicycles. Since I use my own two legs to get around, you might think that this doesn’t matter to me, but the impact that it has is if I get in trouble, there will be no mechanized rescue, i.e. no helicopter extraction, no quick drive out on an all terrain vehicle should I find myself injured and stranded.

Planes can fly over the wilderness area, which would at least give me the hope of being able to signal distress, but rescue could take a long time if I got into trouble.

So, of course, the thing to do would be not to get into trouble. Which is part of the reason that I managed to pack up 37 pounds of gear and food into my pack. Maybe more like 35, considering the pack itself weighs close to 2 pounds. And that weight didn’t count the clothes I wore, my boots or the things that I tended to keep stashed in my pockets, like my folding pocket knife

A lot of my gear is the same as I brought on last year’s trip. I have a new pack, but it is designed for two to three day trips at most, and, although I did try, I couldn’t get everything I wanted to fit into it for the solo trip. It is for weekend trips, and well suited for that task. It’s lighter, but has less space than the old green one.

However, there are several other items that I have upgraded since last year. One of the most weight-saving is my new sleeping pad. I wasn’t sure at first that I would do alright with the new sleeping pad. It has a lower warmth rating than my old one, but is also half the weight and is much smaller packed. The very first time I tried it out was a true test that more than proved its worth to me.

The test was a trip that was supposed to be a nice little jaunt to Blackmare Lake, along a marked, but not maintained, trail. This was back in early June, and while Ambrose and I expected to run into a bit of snow, we didn’t expect the blizzard that we found. I was prepared for cold, to a point, but not for getting snowed on. Not for visibility going down to forty feet as ice and snow pelted us. We lost the trail at times. We only found our way because we knew where we were going, and that we had to follow the ridge while the trail beneath our feet was completely obscured by snow.

We made it that night to Stump Lake, with hardly any ground bare of snow. We found a small bare spot to pitch the tent, huddled up against some trees. It was the most miserable night that I’ve spent outdoors. When we arrived, I had trouble getting the tent poles together, and I noticed Ambrose standing there watching me instead of working. I actually snapped at him, telling him to get to cooking dinner. Both of us were dead tired and strained, and even after I got into the tent and put on all my layers, from long underwear to rain gear, I had trouble getting warm.

At first, I cursed having brought the new sleeping pad. I thought that my old one would have kept me warmer. But after a few hours, I warmed up. Of course, by the time I was warm, I had to go outside and pee, which meant going outside, crawling past branches dripping with fresh snow, baring my poor butt to the sub-freezing temperatures and peeing into the snow.

That sleeping pad got me warmed up again, and made a miserable night bearable. It passed the hardest test that I’ve been through so far, and I haven’t used the other pad for backpacking since. I do take the old sleeping pad on most trips for the night at the trailhead. It is wider and warmer, after all, and by using it at the trailhead, I can leave my lightweight sleeping pad in my pack overnight instead of having to repack it in the morning. I take long enough in the morning that I know my husband appreciates any time I can save.

It was also that snow trip that made me realize that I needed new rain pants and gaiters. The rain pants that I’d originally bought didn’t fit right when I needed them most. I’m not sure if it would have helped if I had pants that fit better that night, but it might have. The old pants had their good points - they had side zips which means I wouldn’t have to take off my boots to put them on, but they also had Velcro fasteners at the top, which scratched my skin. In addition, they had patches that I had to apply after tearing them open sliding down an icy slope. The new ones are lighter and a bit bigger, better able to cover me and all my layers. They also came with their own stuff sack, which I really like.

My new raincoat also has its own stuff sack, and is quite light. It doesn’t have a lining at all and is bright green. With a blue zipper. And it also passed the trial by ice, even though at the time I was cursing myself for not bringing the old, heavier rain coat.

The new one is meant for warmer temperatures. I mean, I did wish that I hadn’t brought it on that snowy trip, but I know that it’s good for blocking wind and keeping me mostly dry - it’s just not for wintery weather.

When I first tried gaiters for backpacking, I wore old ones that belonged to Ambrose, but then I started wearing some running gaiters that I bought a few years ago for trail running. The problem with the running gaiters was that they weren’t really meant to go over boots. When I tried to fasten them over my boots on that trip, the snaps were really hard to fasten, and when I did get them on, they were so tight that they hurt my ankles. So I ended up wearing them snugged up to the snaps, but not snapped, because they were better than nothing.

After that trip, gaiters were high on my list - not Ambrose’s old gaiters, but gaiters for me, all new and shiny for me to dirty up. We found a pair faster than I thought we would, and I’ve enjoyed using them so far. They’re women’s and water resistant and have a bright red zipper going up the front. They’re black on the outside, white(ish) on the inside and have a nice plastic, adjustable loop that snugs across the bottom of my boots. There are no snaps on them, which I see as a bonus, but the top does have a Velcro fastening over the top of the zip pull as well as a clasp to snug them on top of my calves.

As a rule, I try not to use new equipment on a trip like this. I want my equipment to be tried and true. But on this trip I made a few exceptions to that rule. One of those exceptions was a sports bra. I had recently gone on a shopping trip for new bras and found an amazing sale. I had a small budget, but I managed to get a good quantity of high quality bras, including three colors of the same sports bra that I thought would be excellent for hiking.

This sports bra is marketed as a triathlon bra, because it is rated for swimming and running. I’m not so sure about the running part, but what caught my interest is the fact that it is meant to get wet and then dry. My biggest complaint about bras when it comes to hiking is that they don’t dry overnight. Waking up in a nice, cozy warm sleeping bag and then putting on a cold damp bra is just no fun.

So even though I had planned all year to wear the green and black bra that I bought after last year’s solo trip, I had a new contender. The final test was which one weighed more. The black and green had more fabric, but the new one did have a zipper, so I wasn’t sure until I put them on the scale. The