The sun was peaking through the white blinds, casting white light on the white sheets I found myself wrapped in when the subtle plucking twangs of Harry Nilsson telling me Everybody’s Talkin’ faded into consciousness as I drew myself up from the bed. 730am. “I should get started then”, I blurt out, half in my mind and half aloud like a lich casting it’s first spell after resurrection. Despite the “early” rise this Saturday morning, it’d be another hour before I left the house bound up in socks I wasn’t happy to wear in boots that I’ve worn too much. The Salomons are peeling at the seam, exposing the gortex and cotton interior, clearly no longer waterproof but they’ve got at least 20 more miles in them I think.
Hunger pangs hit on the way out Antelope Drive, a long road carved through suburban Syracuse, and I stop in the closest ‘erto’s restaurant for a compulsory breakfast burrito. It’s one of the good ones that hits just right—mixed, no potatoes per usual order—with cheese melted to the bottom and that overwhelmingly decadent sauce ladle that forms on the tail end of a well folded tortilla. It’s just after finishing the eight pound behemoth whose volume alone is testament to the human ability to adapt, in this case through stomach expansion, has me realizing I probably aught to take a break at the local gas station before I start hiking a peak with no bathrooms, likely high traffic, on an island covered in bugs. “To hell with it” I think, “I’ll hold it. This really won’t take too long lad. Just get up and come down, easy peasy”, and I roll on out to the toll station before I start the ride down the causeway I haven’t been on since I was 7 years old.
This is my first time out on Antelope Island since I was just a young boy, and the only thing I remember from that is learning about Brine Shrimp and their winged evolution. It seems justified that the first wildlife to greet me along the stark road are flies in greater numbers than I could have imagined. The Brine flies are so thick I had at first thought a diesel engine had blown past the road, and left a cloud of smoke. After travelling some while after I realized that the plumes of somewhat ethereal black was in fact columns of brine flies starting from the shoreside bushes and spiraling up some twenty feet in cyclones of buzzing insects hungry for reproduction in the spring spawning frenzy. At last I hit the island proper, and am greeted with several tourist buildings, lines of cars not quite sure where they’re headed, and of course, the innumerable lines of Bison drifting along the prairie-like hillsides and salty shorelines.
I start the hike around 11, and the first thing I notice is the winding trail of friendly hikers working their way along the well travelled dirt, rising right from the parking lot some hundred or more feet before disappearing over the first of many hilltops. It’s a surprisingly tough start to my first real hike of the season, and even though I’m able to pass a few on the trail I find myself dissapointed in what feels like should be an easier ascension given my abilities in the past. I catch my breath a moment and remind myself I’ve been eating like shit and ignoring cardio workouts (and still recovering from a 2 week battle with my first covid infection ever) for the past 3 months, and this is just the way it’ll be for a while. After the reality check, I’m able to get a solid pace and continue along the trail, running in some sections of flat ground to cover distance and stopping to snag a few shots here and there.
Just as I crest what seemed to be one of the larger hills on the trail, the cool afternoon breeze is swallowed up whole by the cover of the mountain as the trail moves onto the Western side of the island, and within seconds I am a walking swarm of mosquitos, with so many bugs landing on me you’d not be wrong to mistake me for the Antelope Island Sasquatch. There was a time that I felt I’d be able to force through the onslaught and get up to another cool breeze to which I’d lose the bugs, but after about 15 minutes at 15 bites per minute or so it seemed, I opted to throw on the light jacket I had brought with, both as protection from the bugs and the sun. I didn’t anticipate the toll the jacket would take on me though and by the time I’d made it up to a beautiful overlook of the Eastern shore and the Wasatch Range, my progress in passing people and leaving them fairly far behind would be entirely undone; Everyone I had ran past on my way up were now passing by me as I gasped for air and water, drenched in sweat from the windless, cloudless ascension. I was close now, really close, and there were only about 45 minutes left of the climb until I’d reach the peak.
The last segment of the trail dips down into a seemingly precarious dip along the steep face of the peak on the westernmost side, with a nice little dip of elevation to leave you assured of the journey being uphill both ways. It was sketchy at first but with a little guile and care, you can pass over lost of it relatively easily, then it’s a quick jaunt up to the peak to join all the other people taking in the views. It was, frankly, far too crowded for me at the top and I opted to head out after finishing what was left in my first water bottle, then plugging in the headphones and rampaging down the hills running all the segments I could muster. It only took me about 20 minutes before I realized how poorly my choice of sock was for the day, couple with the old wornout boots that I was breaking down as impromptu trail runners. I was able to get back to the first hill and walked the rest of the way, the total journey down taking only 45 minutes, in bold contrast to the 2 hours and 15 it took me to get all the way up!
Panorama from the top of Frary Peak
For me, Frary was a nice little way to kick off some peak bagging again and get out in the woods and back in time for games. I wish I could have done it with somebody, and in fact all my climbs seem to be lonely grueling jaunts to the top of mountains that I do for some vague notion of self gratification. It feels good to do it all, but I often end up thinking I might have cheated myself and in fact the whole experience by running to fast or not stopping enough to take everything in. But the ride back I had a view of a cool buggy stocked with eyepro wearing dogbros, so that’s a plus in my book.
Cheers.
PA
