It’d been easy to find the lake, which was a gigantic crater fed by a few small glaciers surrounding the area. But every single road leading toward the west side of the lake was impenetrable. We finally zeroed in on the least treacherous, most passable road we could find, the one gaining the most altitude according to our state-of-the-art GPS, and followed it to the end. It was damn lucky there was no snow on the ground. Even in the gargantuan Humvee, chains wouldn’t have been enough. The ruts we had to maneuver around were five feet deep in places, and a few times we had to move trees out of the road to get by. Strength came in handy. The road had stopped abruptly at the end of what appeared to be a solid wall of old growth pine forest. The trees towered above us, swaying and rocking in the high altitude. The sun edged toward the horizon, the sky changing to a pale orange above the treetops as we pulled to a stop. I was absolutely starving. I’d been a long day with little breaks.
