THE DEVILS CANYON WILDERNESS
JAMES O’DONNELL
Well he was one of the most engaging individuals any of us had met for a long time. Why Louis could out talk us, which is pretty darn good, considering we had plenty of backpacking stories to tell him. But that would mean we had to interrupt him. Of course this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the next most engaging person in our group is Tim, who should have been a politician, who knew him from work. He invited him to spend the weekend with us on this backpack trip. Also along with us, came Jim Spencer and Mario Bonura among others. Well Louis had a mission to accomplish on this trip. He had gone out and spent a lot of money on camping ...view middle of the document...
All this trail information, distances, advice and photographs are provided by our leader Mario Bonura. One of the points, Mario makes mention in his trail information, is important to the novice hiker. This is an upside down weekend hike. In this particular situation it is crucial to Louis, who either didn’t read it or ignored it? Whereas the trail down the canyon is just a little over two and a half miles, it only takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to accomplish it. But this is a fifteen hundred foot drop to the stream bed floor and to the campsite. However the following day you pay the piper, with a fifteen hundred foot hike up the canyon to the trailhead.. What was an easy hike yesterday becomes a two hour painful and excruciating experience.
Well when Louis finished the hike on Saturday he announced to us “that was easy.” We all smiled, he didn’t get it. But, oh well, he would tomorrow. Meanwhile Louis spent the entire afternoon and evening advising us not to help out Darla, for he wanted her to, you know to experience the wilderness all by herself. As I mentioned before, we kind of attempted to point out to him this really wasn’t a good idea. Meanwhile Darla took frequent naps in their new tent. We invited her into our conversation, most of the time she just flashed her beautiful smile at us as Louis talked on and on. One other subject Louis liked to talk about was his teenage daughter. There was a lot of pride in his eyes as he told us about her. Most of us have daughters and we knew whereof he spoke. We...