First Time Uploading a Video--with Pics from Australia!

Mama and I were so lucky to have the opportunity to visit Corey in Australia for a week during her semester stay there. We packed as much as we could into the 8 days we were together, including waking up at 4:30am to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was the first time any of us had seen the sun rise out of the ocean. We're used to the sun only setting INTO the ocean! The video below chronicles our adventures on Shelley Beach in the early morning hours. :)

First Post with Photos: Heart Lake Expedition

Heart Lake ~ St. Joe Wilderness

September 2006

This is a story I wrote for an English class a little over a year ago about one of my first backpacking trips. I wrote this three months after we hiked to Heart Lake in the North Idaho St. Joe Wilderness over Labor Day weekend 2006. This hike was the third backpacking trip I ever went on. It was quite the adventure and I'm glad it didn't deter me from going back. At the time I was frustrated--both with my own abilities as an inexperienced hiker and our limited knowledge of the area. Now I see it as a learning experience I would never want to erase from our lives.

**NEW** Scroll to the bottom of this post for more pictures!

The First Heart Lake Expedition

Blue tinted sunlight creeps through the tent on the second day of a three-day backpacking trip. I squint as I fumble around the tent trying to find my glasses; I sit up and look around with them crookedly placed over my eyes. The St. Joe wilderness in northern Idaho is draped in autumn colors. The golden yellow, red, and green hues reflect into Heart Lake, creating a huge watercolor of the ancient crater where it lies.

I accidentally kick my boyfriend, Ryan, as I try to situate myself in our small tent. I mumble “Sorry honey.” He stretches, yawns, and curls back into the cozy sleeping bag when he feels the chilly air surrounding us. His curly dark hair is standing up in the back, just like every morning. He hates it but it is cute. I don’t want to leave the tent and venture into the early morning cold, so I dress and put in my contacts while snuggled in our attached sleeping bags.

I can hear our friends, Rick and Justin, moving around the campsite. They sit near last night’s fire ring, smoking and talking about the animals they heard in the night. “Dude, did you hear all the movement about 10 yards that way last night?” Justin says. I think I hear Rick say he was awake for only five minutes in his tent before he zonked out.

Rick’s raspy voice is muffled, but I can tell he goes on to say something about how cold it is. This is his first year living in Idaho, and as a native of Hawaii, he isn’t acclimated to the fall weather yet. With all of the clothing he has on, you can’t see any of his numerous tattoos. He and Ryan grew up together on the island of Oahu, but Rick was more of an older brother than a friend due to the eight year gap in their ages. Now that they are both adults and live near each other again, they can spend more time together as friends. Showing Rick my home state in all its glory is gratifying.

Justin is in a T-shirt and sweats, not noticing the temperature. He is our resident mountain man; fly fishing pole, Ruger 22 pistol, and gigantic pack included; he likes to go all out. Once Justin discovered that Ryan and I had a passion for the outdoors from a mutual friend, he came with us on several trips. His fishing and shooting abilities proved very useful for catching wild game to cook over campfires.

Once I finally get the courage, I brave the cold. I shiver as my feet touch the icy rubber of my sandals in the abandoned campsite. Even though they are cold, they’re a welcome relief for my feet, which developed a few blisters in my heavy hiking boots during the eight-mile hike to our campsite on the shore of Heart Lake the day before. I maneuver over the small brush and trees on the way to the shore, and notice movement by the water.

A small coil of smoke rises from Rick’s cigarette, floating through the nearby pine needles. He sits on a rock near the water’s edge, pumping lake water through our filter. Filtering water as we go is much easier than hauling it in our packs. Rick is in the best spot to reach the water, so I wait. “So how many miles are we going today?” I say. “Oh, I think Ryan said somewhere around eight. The river where we’re camping tonight is in a valley only a couple of ridges away.” He replies. The collapsible bag Rick is using is almost full, so he shakes the filter dry and makes his way back to the campsite.

I take his spot on the rock and reach into the frigid water of Heart Lake. It feels like ice cubes are sliding over my hands, but it is refreshing this early in the morning and the chilly jolt wakes me up. I splash it onto my face and try to rub my tiredness away. Taking a deep breath, I smile and sigh. The air is clear and the sky is blue; it feels like it’s going to be a good day in the middle of the wilderness. I can hear the songs of the birds flying overhead and small splashes in the lake as a rainbow trout attacks its breakfast of morning bugs. It is refreshing not to hear sirens, cars, and loud neighbors.

When I get back to the camp, everyone is up and packing. I settle on a rock to accomplish my first task; breakfast. The granola and powdered milk we packed tastes foreign but I gobble it down. Powdered milk reminds me of sheetrock dust, but I know it contains nutrients that I will need during the day. Justin rolls up his sleeping bag, Rick takes down his tent, and Ryan lowers our bag of food from a distant tree. Once I finish my granola and powdered milk, I man handle our sleeping bags into their stuff sacks. We want to get a fairly early start on the day so we have plenty of time to relax at our next campsite, eight miles away.

“Everyone ready?” Ryan asks. I heave my bursting backpack onto my shoulders and snap the clasps around my waist and chest. I feel locked in now—ready for blast off. Justin’s pack is the biggest. He has full size everything; tent, pad, sleeping bag, canned food. His fishing pole is attached to one side and his sleeping pad attached to the other. When he walks down the trail, his pack makes him look like an upright-walking turtle. The rest of us have compact backpacks; imitating the guidelines we have read in outdoor magazines and books for the past six months. It is best to go as light as possible to conserve our energy.

The first part of the hike is difficult; we have to hike out of the lake’s crater to get to the river where we are going to camp tonight. There are boulders laying everywhere on the trail, and we have to climb over them and up to scale the crater wall. One side of the crater is a giant rockslide, into which the trail is carved. My legs get tired fast, but I try to keep up with the guys. “You gonna make it?” They ask as I fall behind. “Yes, but my legs don’t go as fast as yours!” I say.

The trail leads up along the steep crater wall. Looking off the side towards the lake makes me nervous; it nearly goes straight down. Even so, I want to take a picture of the lake to show our friends at home. Ryan stops with me, taking in the view. “Man, this is so beautiful.” I whisper, not wanting to ruin the ambience. My fingers turn into thick, immovable logs as I grasp the lens cap and squeeze the release. All at once, the cap flies out of my stubby fingers and careens down the cliff. There is no way either of us are going to climb down to rescue it, so I will have to keep a closer eye on the exposed lens of my camera for the rest of the trip.

Rick snaps a picture of me when I round the last twisting switchback before resting. “Hey, now, that wasn’t too bad, right?” He says. I smile and take a deep breath. The switchbacks climb up the crater wall in a zigzag pattern. Switchbacks are a lot easier to climb than bee lining straight up the steep grade.


We sit under the trees and chew on granola bars to boost our energy; we still have a long way to go before we stop for lunch at Mud Lake. From where we sit, we can see the whole lake hundreds of feet below. The place where we camped the night before looks like a drawing in the distance. The fish jumping in the water look like pinpricks.

An hour down the trail, we all hide under some trees from the sun. The sun stings my eyes; the valley we slept in was in the shadow of the crater, but on the ridge with no tree cover it is hot. I slather some sunscreen on my face and arms. I definitely don’t want the pain of sunburn to put me further behind my hiking partners. “Do you guys want any?” I ask. They all follow suit and cover themselves with the potent smell.

I hike much slower than the guys, but Ryan waits for me; He doesn’t want to leave me alone. “There’s no way I’m leaving you in the middle of nowhere to hike by yourself. I want to make sure you’re safe.” He says several times. Where the trail splits, Rick and Justin wait for us. At the fork, Ryan takes out the GPS and map to figure out which trail we want to take. We decide to explore a little. Down one trail we come over a hill to see another body of water, but we aren’t supposed to find Mud Lake for another two miles, according to the GPS. We turn around and sojourn on the trail to the left of the junction.

Rick and Justin start off again, instantly gaining a lengthy lead on Ryan and I. “Dude, I’m so ready for lunch! Let’s get a move-on!” Justin shouts ahead of us. Now that we are on the correct trail they want to get to Mud Lake as soon as possible. I am tired already, but I want lunch too and try to walk with the same wide stride as the boys.

My body gets heavier and heavier, my stomach growls, and I look at the sun high overhead. It feels like we should be eating lunch soon and I give my body another shove to get moving. The trail seems to stretch on forever. I can faintly hear Ryan grumbling ahead of me with his compass in hand. “We should have made it to Mud Lake by now. Why aren’t we going down into a valley?” He says. We are supposed to turn south and go down in altitude to Mud Lake, but the trail we are following is heading northeast on the top of mountain ridges.

We haven’t seen Justin and Rick in two hours and are getting anxious. Panic sets in as we check the map, compass, and GPS several times in the shade of the sparse pine trees. “If they don’t turn around soon and find us again, who knows where they will end up.” Ryan says. The GPS miscalculated our location at the fork in the trail three miles back, and we are all following the wrong trail as a result.


I keep hoping I’ll hear Rick and Justin’s voices echoing in the valleys on their way back to us, but the only sound is the wind twirling in the trees. Ryan and I sit beside the trail, not knowing what to do. “Should we keep waiting for them?” I ask. “We’ll sit here for another ten minutes, but after that we have to turn back.” Ryan says. Retracing our steps to the fork in the trail where we took the wrong turn is the first step in our plan.

Ryan walks ahead of me, making me want to keep up and go faster. After walking by myself for few minutes, I come over a hill and see him stopped in the trail. He holds his hand out to signal me to stop. “What?!” I say rather loudly and he shushes me. This makes my heart stop in mid-beat. He slowly motions for me to come near. I start to whisper, and he points to the uphill side of the trail. I scan the bushes and small pine trees until I see bright white mountain goats. Two adults and one baby are chewing on the brush only 25 feet off the trail. “Oh my gosh, that is amazing!” I say. “Yea, but we’ve got to be careful around them, especially because there is a baby.” Ryan says. We don’t want to disturb them, so we move slowly and take a few pictures. The largest mountain goat flares his nostrils at us when we try to continue on the trail. “Woah, lets get out of here.” I say. We take a slight detour through the brush on the downhill side of the trail. We keep the mountain goats in sight, but leaving the trail seems to appease their tempers.

As we get closer to where the trail forks, I get more and more anxious about Rick and Justin. “What are they going to do if they don’t turn around?” I say. “I have no idea, they don’t have a water filter, and it is very rare to find sources of water on the top of a ridge.” Ryan says. My two liters of water is already getting low; there is no telling how long it will be until they can drink clean water.

We rest at the split in the trail where we took our first wrong turn, and wait for Rick and Justin; hoping they turned around. Time seems to drip by like molasses, even though we only wait for 15 minutes. The sun moves closer and closer to the horizon. “Well, we have to make a decision or we will be stuck hiking and setting up camp in the dark.” Ryan says. It is still six miles to Mud Lake, but to go back to Heart Lake is only two miles. We have is to go back to Heart Lake tonight if we want to make it out of the forest and back to Ryan’s truck tomorrow. We configure sticks on the trail in the shape of an arrow to signal our direction; hoping Justin and Rick will come back this way.

It takes all of my energy to put one foot in front of the other, but I know if I don’t keep going I won’t have water to drink or to make dinner with. “I hope they catch up with us.” I say. Ryan’s brow is furrowed with worry lines, and he nods his head. It is late afternoon and we never stopped for lunch. The last time I sucked on the tube attached to my water bottle, only air came through. I sigh and look for Ryan ahead of me. He is stopped several hundred yards in the distance, waiting for me once again. My breath is choppy, but I finally catch up. He is resting at the top of Heart Lake’s crater, about to descend to the familiar shoreline. “You ok?” He says. “Yeah, lets just get down to the lake and take these packs off.” I say.

The trail down the crater seems to go by much faster than earlier this morning, and I look forward to taking my boots off. I can feel the open blisters on my feet, hot against my wool socks. It will feel good to soak them in the frigid mountain water that lies far below.

Before I know it, we are in the thick trees along the shore. The night before, there were people camping everywhere, but the shoreline is empty and we pick the best campsite of all.

The water feels like tiny icicles poking the raw parts of my feet, but it relieves the burning sensation of the many miles we hiked today. I slowly pump the handle on the water filter, seeing the clear, cool liquid cascade from Heart Lake into the plastic water bag. It makes my mouth water. Finally sitting down makes me feel even more tired, and I try to pump faster so we can boil water for dinner.

I eat my delicious meal of chicken a la king from its pouch so fast that I burn my tongue. I don’t care; I need nourishment. I feel energized by the warmth sliding down my throat; it is a welcome relief from the hard day. “This tastes so good.” I say. “It would taste better if Rick and Justin were here with us.” Ryan says.

I am glad to lie down on my stomach with my dinner in front of me, even if it is on the hard ground. The bed sheet Ryan brought comes in handy; shielding us from the insects and dirt on the ground. As we fill up on warm food, Ryan and I go over what we will have to do if we don’t see Rick and Justin tonight. Sunset will happen within an hour, and we haven’t seen them in over 5 hours. We decide to hike out as early as possible in the morning, wait at the trailhead with Ryan’s pickup, and hope they hike out as well. If they don’t arrive by nightfall, we will have to initiate emergency services and start a search through the immense wilderness.

Ryan walks to the lake edge to wash off our utensils, but before he is halfway there we hear, “SOOOUUUZZZZZAAAA,” Ryan’s last name, echo in the crater. Our eyes lock together in disbelief. My body freezes in place as every muscle strains to hear another echo. Rick’s voice continues to holler Ryan’s last name, and we run to the edge of the lake to yell to him.

While Ryan runs to meet them halfway up the crater wall with water, I sit at the water’s edge and pump four liters of water for the thirsty hikers. As parched as I was by the time we got here, I know they will be even more so. Just as I finish, and shake the water from my soaking feet and the filter, I hear them traipsing through the brush. Justin holds out his water bottle as he walks into the clearing, not saying a word, and I run to fill it up. Rick leans against a log as he pulls his heavy, dust-covered boots from his feet. I hand him the water bag, and he pours the water down his dry throat.

While the guys eat, the sun seems to teeter on the edge of the crater wall before it starts to dip behind, sending rays of luminescence through the trees around us.

After our tents get set up, we build a fire and stare into the blue and yellow flames like zombies. The GPS Ryan carried all day has an odometer, so we take it out to discover how far we hiked today. Ryan and I ended up trekking ten miles. By looking at the map, we estimate Justin and Rick wandered nearly sixteen miles that day. They tell us how they stopped to wait for us for forty-five minutes. We never caught up, but they kept hiking, thinking I was being slow. Across the smoke and flames, Justin’s unmistakable loud, rambunctious laughter rings as he tells us that they got to the end of the trail. There, they met two hunters on dirt bikes, drinking beer. The laughing hunters told them that Mud Lake was eight miles in the direction they had just come from. On the map, we could see that they walked into another county.

They ran out of water long before they got to the arrow we had fashioned out of sticks. "I just wanted to find you guys, after that, I didn’t care what happened.” Rick says. He tells us he just wanted to keep going until he found us, and our arrow gave him the last dose of adrenaline he needed to keep walking.

Lying down on my air mattress feels like heaven after having over thirty pounds strapped to my back all day. Even though we ended up in the same spot we were at last night, I am thankful to have us all together again. It is relieving to be able to hike back to the pickup in the morning and not have to call search and rescue to find our friends in the middle of the St. Joe forest.

My eyelashes flutter as sleep takes hold of me, and the bright stars glittering above me slowly disappear behind my eyelids. I hear Justin and Rick settling into their tents, grunting and mumbling. I sigh and snuggle into Ryan, sore and tired, but content.

Heart Lake
St. Joe Wilderness
September 2006

Ryan and I at the Crag lake overlook on trail 65.
Two years later Ryan asked me to marry him at this very spot.

The mountain goats we ran into on the trail.
Two adults and one baby!

Justin and Rick looking for grouse on trail 65.

Justin got one!

Rick and Ryan relaxing and filtering
fresh mountain water from Northbound lake.

My horror: immortalized.
This is the first and only time
Ryan ever had to carry my bag.
The switchbacks up to Sawtooth Saddle trailhead
from Sawtooth Creek are grueling.

I was not prepared the first time.

Sitting in my favorite chair rock at Heart lake for the first time.

After the summer of 2006 I fell in love with
hiking in national forests.

It was only the beginning of many
years of hiking adventures to come!!!