Landers: Tough question leads to navigating trail of robust memories

The question pinned my brain as decisively as a two-ton boulder crashing down on my arm.

“What is your favorite trail moment?” asked Cassandra Overby, who was interviewing me for the Lessons from Legends feature in the current issue of Washington Trails magazine.

I squirmed and stammered as though hacking off my arm at the elbow might be the easiest way out.

“You must realize I live in a fog of 50 years worth of great trail memories,” I told the writer.

Sorting through them was as tedious as choosing which heir to bequeath the customized bicycle I rode across the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail in 1976.

The question was delightfully cruel.

I thought about it all day and into the night, grinning and grimacing as I recalled situations involving friends and family, flora and fauna. Finally I realized I’d never be able to pick a favorite.

But here are some of the candidates for my most memorable trail moment.

Fake and bake: Backpacking in the William O. Douglas Wilderness with another family when our daughters were in grade school, I was field-testing a new product called the BakePacker – a honeycombed aluminum grid that enables breads and other foods to be “baked” in plastic bag in a pot of boiling water.

Much anticipation had built along the trail over the chocolate cake I was going to cook for desert at camp. After we’d consumed the one-pot meal of tuna mac, my daughters and wife were at my side for 20 minutes of BakePacking, spoons in hand and looking like hungry nestlings. Finally I lifted the pot off the stove and pulled out the plastic baking bag.

But instead of a fluffy cake, all four headlamps spotlighted a blob of goo.

The Hindenburg deflated with less drama.

As they moaned I let out a cheer and said, “Look: It came out perfect!” I squeezed chocolate frosting into the bag and spiced it with chocolate bar chunks and a few M&Ms for color. Then I squeezed the warm chocolate stew into their bowls and watched them dig in.

It was as though they were tasting candy for the first time. Not until they’d licked their bowls clean, with chocolate smears and grins from ear to ear, did my youngest, Hillary, pause long enough to say it was the best chocolate cake she’d eaten.

Sky high: The rodeo began near the end of a 25-mile day on a three-person stock trip high into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The packer ahead was just cresting the highest ridge with the North Cascades peaks in the distance when his horses disturbed a wasp nest in the trail.

The 75-year-old packer rode out the storm, but not before leaving me with the indelible image of Mount Rainier framed between the saddle and the seat of his Levis.

Two’s a crowd: While researching routes for the guidebook “100 Hikes in the Inland Northwest,” a stretch of trail in the Colville National Forest was so poorly maintained it forced me and my wife Meredith to extend a three-night trip into a four-nighter.

We were foraging late that last afternoon to supplement our thin remaining rations of food. Meredith, who gets a bit grouchy when her hunger alarm is blinking red, was devouring huckleberries in a nearby patch when I glanced over and saw a black bear above her. They were berry much on a collision course.

“Meredith!” I called pointing at the danger just 50 feet away. But instead of slowly retreating, my wife, who weighed a whopping 115 pounds at the time, raised her arms and her voice and stomped at the bear. “Get out of my huckleberries!” She screamed as the bear peeled out and retreated into the woods as though a pack of hounds had been unleashed.

“I’d rather be mauled than die of hunger,” she said – a mantra that’s shaped our relationship.

Catch of the day: Delayed in another trail quagmire – this time near the end of a 10-day backpacking adventure through the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness – my two buddies and I desperately craved protein to get us through a last unexpected night in drainage named Paradise Creek. We weren’t laughing at the irony. As we dumped the sparse remaining crumbs of ramen, crackers, oatmeal and mashed potatoes into a pot for a thin soup, I noticed a trout rise in the creek, which was small enough to jump across.

I opened my survival kit, pulled out a wad of fishing line, tied on a wet fly, fastened the line to stick and moved into position. Ed and Scott shadowed me as I dropped the hopper into the current and let it drift under a log where the trout had risen.

Wham! A fat 10-inch cutthroat took the bait. I yanked it onto the shore where Ed and Scott dove onto it like Labrador retrievers competing for a crippled duck. We all cheered.

Scaled, gutted and boiled whole in the pot with everything else, the trout boosted our meager rations into a feast.

Light-hearted: The same group got together for a backpack to Stanley Hot Springs, Montana, in a three-man bachelor party for Ed a few days before his wedding. Ed gasped for breath and apologized for being out of shape as he lugged his 35-pound backpack up the 8-mile route in the Bitterroots while Scott and I waltzed ahead of him barely breaking a sweat.

We waited for him to catch up at the hot spring where a horse packer had left camping gear, a barbecue, fresh salmon and a bottle of champagne in a drop camp. Not until I handed Ed my backpack and popped the cork on the bottle did Ed realize that our packs were filled with helium balloons.

Top contenders: Finally, if I ranked my favorite trail moments as categories the choice would come down to a tie:

• Any time I found my way after being lost.

• Every time I met a grizzly at close range and the bear went the other direction.

Contact Rich Landers by phone at (509) 459-5508 or email him at richl@spokesman.com.