Day 6: Camp Horseshit, a New Generation

October 17, 2019

Kilometers: 136.7-154.1

Campsite before Raetea Forest to Campsite at the end of Raetea Forest

You know when things are so ridiculously miserable that it just becomes funny and anger or frustration just turns into uncontrollable laughter? It could be about school or work or anything really. For me I’ve felt that way many times but just about all of them stem from my outdoor experiences.

My family is an avid outdoors group. For decades my parents have been doing crazy wilderness trips. When I said my first word we were camping up in Newfoundland, when I took my first steps my parents weren’t there cause they were canoeing the missinaibi river in Northern Ontario, and so on. When my sister and I were old enough we started going on family summer wilderness canoe trip “vacations”. Old enough being like 7 and 4 years old, by the way. These vacations were 7-10 day trips in the Canadian wilderness, where we typically wouldn’t see any other humans for most of the trip. Yea I know what you’re thinking, not what you would consider a vacation. Me either. Due to a lack of planning or overconfidence in our abilities or something else, coupled with seemingly constant bad weather, these trips always turned miserable pretty quickly. But the yelling and cursing quickly gave way to just peer laughter. My laughter was mostly based around myself asking the question “how did I get tricked into this again this year?”. Yet, every August I would find myself in the same position, whether it was portaging miles at a time on a trail that hadn’t been used by any other humans in years, nonstop paddling in the freezing pouring rain or being wind bound for days at a time while resources ran low, I would always find myself back in that state, where misery turned to laughter. These trips came to be known as Camp Horseshit among our family. The annual trips only ceased because two summers in a row ended in semi-rescue, but those are different stories.

Today Ethan and I experienced that feeling. The Raetea forest is notorious for its difficulty. It is a tough climb combined with mud that goes up to your knees. Although it is only 18.5 km it takes most people over 9 hours to complete, with some having to camp in the middle of it. There are no water sources and the steepness of the climb mixed with the slick mud humbles even the best hikers. In the last few weeks hikers have been filling the TA Facebook group with warnings about just how hard this track was. Being way ahead of the normal TA pace already I wasn’t convinced Ethan and I would struggle with it as much as others had.

We woke up at after 7am, in no rush to leave camp after our huge day yesterday. It had stormed bad throughout the night. Ethan described it as a “goddamn monsoon”. The track was gonna be even muddier, wetter and slicker than anticipated, perfect.

It was raining on and off so we waited for it to stop to get out of our tents and pack up. A slow start after yesterday’s big day saw us leave camp at 9:30am, our latest leaving camp by a lot. The first few hours weren’t that bad, but progress was extremely slow.

In the first six kilometers of the hike you gain about 600 meters (almost 2,000 feet) in elevation. That’s an average of a 10% grade incline. The rain had been steady since we left our campsite and once we got into the thick of it Raetea felt like a rainforest. Working so hard to climb we got drenched from rain on the outside and sweat on the inside of our rain jackets. The conditions pushed us to postpone lunch until we could get to a dryer location.

After about five hours going just over two kms per hour our combination of pain from the first five days, exhaustion, hunger, wetness and muddiness caused me to burst out laughing in the middle of the forest. I only then realized that my parents had successfully passed down the reins to me as the new Director of Camp Horsehsit. This time, completely by my own choice, here I was, putting myself back in the same situation where miserableness turned into comedy. Just like that, a new generation of Camp Horseshit had been born.

The mud was so thick and deep that it came up to our upper calves in places. It tried to suck our shoes off our feet as we attempted to take each next step forward. As we got more and more tired we began to fall more and more, if you couldn’t tell by these pictures.

The sun decided to finally make an appearance just as we exited the forest a little after 5pm. The view was better than amazing, but nowhere near worth the miserable hike.

Battered and beaten we made our way onto the gravel road and soon our campsite. We were moving slow and ready for some rest. Today was the hardest day of hiking I have ever experienced. Each step required perfect foot and pole placement to not fall. The most demoralizing thing was we made so little progress for each step we took. It took us a little over 8 hours to get through the forest including a half hour lunch break. People we passed in the forest rolled into camp very late, some taking as many as 12 hours to complete the forest. Today very well could end up being our hardest day on the Northern Island. Congrats Raetea, you lived up to your hype.

We made couscous and salami in a beef bourguignon sauce with a pita. Either the best dinner we’ve had yet or the hungriest we’ve been, couldn’t tell. We will be sleeping in tomorrow as we have an easy 18km day all on gravel road. There’s also a dairy on the way. Ethan has mentioned he’ll be getting ice cream tomorrow about 100 times tonight.

-Alex