Hiking Up Rinose

MOTE, Week 22

This week on More Odds Than Ends, Leigh Kimmel challenged me with: The forecast was for clear weather. Our first warning of the storm was a flash of lightning and thunder so loud it sounded more like canvas ripping.

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Roger, Rhodri, and Richard (aka the three Rs) hiked up the valley. This was, hopefully, the first day of a trek through the Rinose Pass, the highest pass through the Sandees Range.

The three friends had set themselves the challenge of hiking every one of the major passes over the Sandees over the course of this year, and the Rinose was going to be their biggest challenge yet.

The Sandees were well known for heavy, persistent rainfall whenever a cold front came in from the sea, so the three Rs had checked the weather forecast for the week, and confirmed that it looked dry for the entire trip. But this didn't mean that there wouldn't be rain.

The seaward valleys were infamous for sudden, unexpected downpours. If there was too much moisture in the air, wind from the sea would cause clouds to form, and some of those clouds burst. But each valley was different. There could be a downpour in one valley while the valleys either side stayed dry. Or a valley could see the formation of clouds but no rain, while it rained for hours in the valleys on either side. Or worse, clouds could form in one valley, and the resulting rainstorm could be so violent that it passed across the watersheds and dropped floods of water onto the next valley as well.

There were no clouds forming overhead as the three friends hiked up the trail. But that didn't mean that there would be no unpredicted rainfall, for they could not see the skies above the valleys to their immediate north and south.

As the afternoon progressed, it became time to look for a place to camp for the night. The current section of the pass was too narrow – it looked as if the temporary river resulting from each rainstorm filled the entire width.

They reached a corner, and the valley widened. It looked as though the river flowed only around the outside of the bend, leaving a small crescent-shaped plateau on the inside of the bend. Naturally, they put up their tent on the plateau.

After eating their evening meal, the three friends prepared for bed.

Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning to the north, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder so loud that it sounded as if the canvas of the tent was ripping. Almost immediately a film of rain came falling from the sky onto the northern slopes, moving southwards.

In minutes the rain was hammering on the canvas of the tent, with everyone safely inside and the door zipped fully up. Roger was stationed at the door, looking out through the clear plastic window, trying to see through the near-opaque waterfall to check on the height of the water as it started to flow in the channel below them.

During the course of the night, the three took it in turns to watch, just in case the temporary river flowed higher than they expected. But the rain stopped at about midnight, and the river levels peaked at around dawn.

The three Rs emerged into a very wet world. The grass underfoot was sopping wet. But the greatest change was the river, which was flowing in its bed around the corner below their plateau tent site. It was, with hindsight, a very good thing that the friends had camped on the inside of that bend, for the river filled the bottom of the valley from side to side both upstream and downstream of their position. If they had been foolish and camped in the valley overnight, the tent would have been washed away, at the very least.

After breaking their fast, they set about taking down their tent. By the time everything was put away, and their packs were ready to go on their backs, the river's level had dropped by an inch or so, but it was still not safe to proceed further up the pass.

The friends stood about chatting about anything and everything until about an hour before noon. Then, carefully and single-file, they headed up the pass once more, walking alongside the swiftly-diminishing stream.

The delay had put them behind where they would like to be, but they had planned for the possibility, so they were still well within schedule. They were still on track to conquer Rinose on this attempt.

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My submission went to Fiona Grey (https://fionagreywrites.com). I’m looking forwards to seeing what she, and the other participants, come up with.