Chapter 4: Planning for the Wrangler

After the successful overnight hike in August, Stacy posted to her forum their goal of taking on The Wrangler in October. Most of the replies were positive even though the author’s that responded stressed caution. Along with what were now weekly hikes or other exercises to prepare, Stacy also suggested they start having dinner together once a week to talk about what she was learning on the forum, and to begin planning their trip. She wanted everyone to understand what would be entailed in a two-night trek of the most advanced trail in their immediate area.

Wednesday at 6:30 the doorbell rang. Eric called out, “I’ll get it.”

He opened the front door to see Nikki and Dalton standing on the porch holding a pizza, wings, and a twelve-pack of beer.

“Dinner is served,” said Dalton as Eric opened the door and let them into the house.

Stacy met them in the kitchen. Plates and cups were already placed. It did not take long for the pizza and wings to disappear.

“You guys want coffee before we start on the planning?” asked Eric.

Nikki agreed that sounded good while Dalton deferred saying he would prefer to have an additional beer. As the coffee brewed Stacy opened her laptop and placed a folder on the table.

“Uh, oh, this looks serious,” joked Dalton.

Stacy was not amused. “It is. While most of the responses I have received on the hiking forum have been positive, everyone has stressed that The Wrangler is a very hard hike. There is no such thing as too much planning as the unexpected is the norm.”

Eric served the coffee and then sat at the table.

“Tonight, I want to go over every step of what we did on our overnight hike. Overall, it was a success, yes, but even a football team that wins a game 52-3 will be able to identify many errors in their play if they are honest with themselves.”

There were nervous glances as no one wanted to say anything.

“OK, I’ll start,” continued Stacy. “On Sunday morning we needed to climb to the summit. I knew where and how this was to be done so I took off and let you guys follow me. I should have first made sure you were stowed and ready, and then let you know the outline of what was to come. If something had happened to me, you would have figured something out, but there is no reason we’re all not on the same page at all times.”

Once the ice had been broken, the others offered their thoughts and suggestions freely. They talked for over two hours with Stacy taking copious notes.

“Guys, this is really, really good,” she said as she closed her laptop. “Next week I’ll give you an overview of what I know about The Wrangler. Eric and I can come to your house. Chinese?”

“How does Thai sound?” asked Nikki. “A new place just opened that we’ve been wanting to try. I can send you their website link.”

“Works for us,” said Eric.

As Nikki and Dalton headed to the door Stacy said, “This Saturday I think we should go back to the Signet Loop.”

Dalton cocked his head. “Didn’t we do that one? A long-ish, but pretty flat and easy hike, if I remember correctly.”

“You do. It is just under eight miles around the loop,” replied Stacy. “But this time we will take our packs and load them with weight to mimic what we’ll need in October.”

Stacy waited for a groan or other form of protest before adding the real kicker.

“And I think we need to do the loop twice.”

“Twice!” exclaimed Dalton.

“Yep. We need to increase our stamina. I envision doing longer trips every other weekend. In between we’ll do something that is much shorter but has some other type of challenge.”

There was reluctant agreement.

“You’ve got us this far,” said Nikki. “We’ll do whatever we need to in order to make it through October.”

Eric shut the door and said, “That went better than expected.”

Stacy laughed. “Sure, that was only agreement. Let’s see what happens on Saturday when we finish the first loop and the car is in sight, but we have to make a second loop.”

“I can’t promise I won’t be thinking about calling it a day at that point,” Eric said with a smile.

“Me, too, but we won’t. We can’t.”

The hike on Saturday went well. Even with the added weight and extended distance, they were home by dinnertime. The next week Stacy and Eric stopped at the new Thai restaurant before going to Nikki and Dalton’s house.

“Hey Dalton,” Stacy sang as he opened the door. When he stepped back, she noticed that he was wearing new clothes. “You look great, are those new pants and a new a shirt?”

Dalton beamed. “It is. First time since we’ve been married that I’ve been able to fit into anything less than a 42.”

Eric agreed, “Yeah, you’re looking great. Feeling better, too?”

“Oh, man, you wouldn’t believe it. I’m even taking the stairs to my third-floor office at work.”

Dalton escorted them to the kitchen. They ate everything even though Eric ordered one of the dishes extra spicy and it was probably much hotter than anyone would have normally ordered. After dinner, the laptop came out and Stacy took over.

“OK, The Wrangler. The more I read the more I realize this one’s going to be a beast. But last night I IM’d with Storm and Thor – remember them? They were the couple we met on one of our early hikes. After hearing what we’ve done so far, they were very encouraging that we can pull this off. They did it a few weeks ago and had great recent first-hand tips to pass along.”

“Wow, that’s great,” said Nikki.

“Yeah, I’m very happy to have them as a resource as this gets planned.”

Stacy turned her laptop so the others could see the screen.