This year for my father’s birthday I decided to recount an adventure we shared over a decade ago. As with all family memories, this one has no doubt been coloured since by the passing years and the slight modifications that come with a well-worn tale. Still, as part of the family history, I thought it deserved to be committed to paper. Or bits.

We spent a lot of money on kit. Dad’s canvas external frame pack - a relic from the days when he was a Boy Scout - were deemed inadequate for the week-long trek that we had up our sleeves into the area of the Stanislaus National Forest known as the Emigrant Wilderness. Yes, new packs were a must. And a new stove. There were lots of shiny stoves at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, that mecca of outdoor kit suppliers. I needed a new pair of boots. No sense spending days on my feet in a pair of ill-fitting blister-machines. Oh, those socks look like a must-have too. And then there was the food. Dad and I didn’t worry too much on this point, as one of the reasons for the trip was to try out our fly-fishing skills. So we picked up a few bags of dehydrated lasagna or some such delicacy and Mom got us a big box of powerbars from the wholesale store. More on the powerbars later. We didn’t need to buy fly-fishing gear as we had fixed up that kit a year or two earlier when I spent a summer on a ranch in the mountains of Montana. Oh yes, we were ready to catch some fish.
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