I'm back, with my next post about my last month on the PCT, only a few days away from the one-year anniversary of finishing my hike!
It was an absolutely beautiful day. As I mentioned before, I so enjoyed having my dad on trail. I love adventuring with him, and having good talks with him, and even sharing silence as we walked together. Still, this hike had always been about me taking initiative to do something just for myself, and after discovering how much I enjoyed my few solo miles here and there while my dad was hiking with me, I felt surprisingly thrilled to be heading out on my own. With the silence of the trail, only the sounds of nature and my own footfalls on the ground, the rhythm of my movement, the long path ahead and behind, and the realization that I felt safe, confident, and capable in my own presence... well it felt like coming home. The trail had been my home for 5 months at this point, but now, with the way it felt to step back on it alone, I finally realized how much of a home it had become. It was similar to the way it feels to to have someone you love as a house guest at your place. It's so nice and fun to have their company and to share your home with them, but once they leave you can take a moment to sit on the couch in silence and take a deep breath in and a relaxed sigh out and feel yourself go back to being just a little bit more yourself than you had been moments before. I spent a lot of time in the next few days reflecting on how much I'd learned in my hike about the value of my own company.
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| A turquoise blue lake just north of White Pass |
As I hiked away from White Pass, I reveled in everything as I took it in, even with the back and foot pain due to a heavy pack filled with 5 days of food. I stopped every now and then to take in the small beauties of the trail and to soak up the sun of a beautiful blue bird day. I walked by several gigantic canvas tents, evidence that hunting season had officially begun. I later learned that most hunters have their shelters and gear toted into the woods by chartered pack animals, in order to set up fully functioning homes in the woods for the 2-week Elk bow-hunting season. The elk certainly were present in the area, it was common over the next few days to hear the strange sound of the bulls bugling in hopes of finding a mate. I had never heard the high-pitched bugling before, and stopped multiple times that day to listen and wonder what the hell that weird sound was.
I took frequent breaks to consume more fresh blueberries than I could count, and then turned a corner and accidentally interrupted a bear on the trail, doing the same. He stopped and looked at me and I stopped and looked at him, at once thrilled and terrified. He ran off to hide behind a tree just off trail, which was much smaller than him and not remotely successful in hiding anything. "HEY BEAR!!!" I said loudly, "SORRY TO INTERRUPT YOUR SNACK TIME!!! I'M JUST GONNA WALK ON BY FOR A SEC AND I'LL BE OUT OF YOUR WAY, THAT COOL?!" I waved my poles in the air while chatting in a loud, casual voice to the bear, letting him know I didn't want to bother him and was just passing by, while I slowly crept down the trail to the other side of his tree, and then quickly bounded along the trail to safety. I immediately began crying and laughing at the same time, filled with adrenaline and excitement at my close encounter. I was absolutely tickled pink by the whole experience. I silently wished the bear well and continued my way towards Mount Rainier National Park, enjoying occasional views of the peak.
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| Starting the climb towards the park - Can you spot the remnants of a rainbow? |
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| Entering Mt. Rainier National Park |
Mount Rainier National Park contains one of the rare inland temperate rainforests of the United States, and almost as if it wanted to live up to this reputation, clouds began to gather throughout the afternoon, and by the time I arrived at an empty campsite the evening had become cold, damp, and dark. I set up my tent, cooked my dinner, and was contentedly leaned up against a tree eating my pasta, when I was joined by some familiar hiking friends - Jam, Squeeze, and Milkshake. (A super fun trio comprised of a married couple from the states and a solo hiker from Germany, who had been hiking together for months). I was totally prepared to peacefully spend my night alone, but that didn't stop me from being super excited to see my friends. I was even
more excited when I saw my kilt-clad hiking buddy come around the corner. MACRO!!! Hugs, laughter, and snacks commenced, and then we all escaped into our tents after it was already dark (so far on trail we usually were heading to bed while it was still light out, but now that the days were getting shorter, dark goodnights were happening far more frequently).
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| One of the few close-ups of Rainier where the clouds weren't obscuring the view |
I had learned from Squeeze that the forecast predicted three days of rain following the beautiful blue day we'd just had, so I wasn't surprised to wake up to misty, wet conditions, although definitely a bit disappointed. I had been dreading this part of Washington... the threat of multiple days of rain in a row, without opportunity to dry a wet tent, damp sleeping bag, or sopping socks and shoes.
There is a common saying among hikers, "The trail provides." It's a common enough occurrence for things to somehow work out on trail that this phrase has become such a staple of hiker culture. This might be because hikers tend to try to focus on the positive, are willing to be flexible, and having been living with such deficit, any measure of good luck, comfort, or relief is interpreted as divine intervention. On the other hand, maybe it's possible that the trail really does offer some kind of caretaking of those who traverse it. All I can say is that I swear there is a reason they call it Trail Magic. The magic of the kindness and ingenuity of strangers, and the magic of good timing and good luck, come into play frequently during a thru-hike, bringing the things you need just when you need them. I experienced that magic so fully over the next three days of bone-chilling, wet weather. Sometimes it happened in the form of the clouds clearing just long enough for the sun to beat down warmly during my lunch break, once it happened in the form of a cabin in the woods with a crackling fire already burning upon our arrival, and once it was an incredible trail angel who set up a giant tent in the woods, complete with a wood-burning stove, hot coffee, and snacks galore. Somehow I managed to find time every day to dry my things and warm my body, allowing myself to avoid one of my biggest hiking fears: getting into a sleeping bag at the end of the day, already chilled and miserable, and finding it wet and unable to warm me adequately into relaxation (or, you know, contributing to hypothermia and actually threatening my safety).
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| The welcome site of a dry, warm cabin after a wet night and morning |
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| Hiker trash enjoying a coffee and snack break while drying our bags and gear by the stove |
The hiking in Mount Ranier National Park was fairly easy, and although the wetness was uncomfortable, there were beautiful scenes created by the mist and clouds, which were either blown about rapidly by high winds, or forming literally before my eyes, rising into the air from the valleys below. The way the clouds moved out of the valleys reminded me of the smoke billowing off the wildfires I had seen, but with a cool and mysterious, almost fantasy-like atmosphere. (Plus the happy knowledge that the clouds weren't a symptom of the forest burning, which is always a bonus).
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| The wind blew the clouds so quickly, the weather went from blue skies to clouds and rain in moments |
The colours of the trees, mosses, and bushes were luscious and bright. Fall was beginning in the Pacific Northwest, and though the trees were mostly coniferous and therefore remained green, the blueberry and huckleberry bushes carpeting the ground were beginning to shift into brilliant, autumn reds. The colours were so vibrant, and brought with them the definite sense of fall in the air, and with it a keen awareness that fall can be pretty short in the mountains, and snow was likely not too far behind it.
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| There were a lot of lakes in this section, but the weather was way too miserable for me to want to swim |
Macro and I continued to hike around various hiker friends around this time, including Jam, Squeeze, and Milkshake, and Nap and Bubbles, (a couple from Switzerland). I was happy to have these friends around as we trekked together through these wet days. It helped to have people around on occasion to commiserate about the rain, or to share in a moment of sunshine, or to bask together in the utter bliss of a warm fire courtesy of a trail angel. I also enjoyed having some great chats here and there while hiking, to help the time go by, and to get to know interesting people I would never have met if not for our shared desire to hike the PCT.
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| Macro by Mirror Lake, happily enjoying some trail magic |
The rain cleared up for a last few miles, and my dad popped up on trail again to join us for the descent down to Snoqualmie Pass, a mountain pass featuring an interstate, another ski area, a couple restaurants, and a couple hotels. Snoqualmie is so named because the area is the traditional lands of various nations who are part of the Snoqualmie and Tulalip Tribes. We had dinner and drinks with my dad, who then said goodbye and headed toward the airport to catch a late flight home, and Macro and I headed to the hotel.
I'd had some concerns about my tent at this point (a Z-Packs Duplex for those hikers who are interested). It had served me so excellently throughout the hike so far, in the Desert and Sierras, and Nor Cal too, but as the weather became colder and wetter, it was starting to become less adequate in keeping me dry. There were tiny holes forming here and there throughout the tent, many of which I patched up with Tenacious Tape, but many that were too small to identify, and I also had a few mornings where I woke up with the inside floor of the tent quite wet. I couldn't tell if it was holes in the tent floor or from the condensation inside the tent, which also was becoming a big problem. Being a single-wall tent, the cool weather caused a lot of contrast with my hot breath and the tent walls and ceiling were usually wet every morning. The tent design helps with the water not dripping, but it didn't make it any easier to move around the tent without getting myself and my belongings pretty damp. Then, to make everything better, one of my zippers broke entirely. I had to safety pin the door closed and thank myself for having chosen a tent with double-doors! Anyway, this is all to say that when I shared these concerns with my dad he was happy to take my tent home and lend me his almost brand-new Big Agnes Copper Spur Platinum for the remainder of the hike, and I was pretty thrilled about that!
We got a late start the next day. Macro wanted some time to edit his photos, and I was super down with that, so I spent the morning chilling in bed and watching movie on my phone. We finally headed back out to the trail in the early afternoon, which started with another descent up into the rocky peaks of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. It was stunning. There were plentiful clouds around us, which created incredible shapes around the peaks surrounding us, but the ridgeline we walked on kept the clouds from descending on us, meaning I stayed dry, the rain only finally deciding to fall once I was in my tent, drifting towards sleep.
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| Clouds on one side, sun on the other |
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| Alpine Lakes Wilderness |
The rocks also housed some pretty fun wildlife, namely a wackload of whistling marmots and chirping pikas. The marmots were loud and sounded so much like a lifeguard whistle, I initially was sure it was someone in trouble, blowing their emergency whistle trying to notify someone to help them. The marmots would whistle from a distance, but the pikas were more prone to chirping right as you walked by. Each time I entered a new corridor of rocks, I would hear several "MEEP" sounds jumping out from the rocks above or below me, which I assume was the pikas warning each other of my presence. The only dampener to that afternoon was an hour or so in which I had severe cramping in my stomach (likely just gas, but damnnnn did it hurt). I couldn't afford to stop walking, so I hunched over and breathed deeply and pushed through until we ran into Snake Charmer, another hiker we had just met on our way out of town, who gave me some Gas-X (
bless her heart) and it slowly started to improve. Gas is NO JOKE, people!!
The following day again was on and off cloudy, but didn't rain until camp was already set up. I was so grateful for that because the day was bonkers beautiful. The craggy peaks, the dramatic clouds, the reflective lakes, the bright colours - there honestly aren't words, and although there are excellent picture (some of my favourites from the hike), they still don't do it justice.
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| Bright red berry bushes, sun bleached tree trunks, craggy peaks, and stormy skies... perfection. |
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| Fireweed carpeting an old burn area |
The best part for me was the deep sense of joy, wonder, and contentment I felt while taking in these views. I was in total awe of my surroundings, and so grateful to be able to experience them in this way - not just driving through so quickly that you can only stop for a moment to take it in before continuing on your way, not through a window or from a stationary vantage point, but as
part of it. Experiencing the land personally, intimately, both feeling that it was mine, but even moreso that
I belonged to
it, and I had been gifted this opportunity to be welcomed so close.
Even the animals seem to accept that I was part of the wilderness on that day. I turned a corner and suddenly came upon two bucks fighting directly beside the trail. They stopped for a moment to notice me, and then decided that I was not a threat, so they continued. I'd never seen such a thing in person before. I was utterly mesmerized. I stood there watching them for so long, and then figured I should probably get back to hiking. I took a couple steps but then thought to myself, people pay money to watch this stuff on tv and it's happening here, right now, right in front of me! I shouldn't pass this up! So I stopped and I took it all in until they decided to move into the woods and out of sight.
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| Mating season for these young bucks... The strongest buck gets the girl. |
The next day, as if nature wanted to remind me who was in charge here, was hands-down my
worst day on trail. The beautiful weather that had been so kind the days before suddenly turned. The rain started just as I began to pack up my tent, becoming harder and stronger by the minute. By the time I stopped for a mid-morning snack, I was already soaking wet and freezing cold. The thing about rain is that not only does it come from above, but it also saturates all the leaves along the side of the trail with gigantic droplets of water which pour onto your shoes and pants unavoidably as you walk. The first thing that gets soaked is your shoes, all the way through to your feet (socks are futile); then the wetness spreads higher up your legs. Even with rainpants, the water seems to reach up from the ground, and your legs are soon soaking wet. Then of course, the rain falling from the sky and dripping from the trees is also soaking the upper half, eventually saturating your rain jacket until at the very least your chest and arms are soaked through. Add onto this the fact that the temperature hovered somewhere not too far from freezing, and the rain intermittently changed to sleet, (which was almost a blessing as the tiny ice pellets bounced off of me instead of soaking further in).
I was utterly miserable. The cold was sinking into my bones, and I felt unable to relax my body, spending the whole day tensed and shivering even as I hiked. For my lunch break it was raining too hard to stop and cook some warm ramen noodles as I usually did, so I just crouched by a tree trunk on the side of the trail and shoved a couple granola bars into my mouth, before getting up and continuing on my way. For a little bit in the afternoon the sun seemed like it might be coming out, as I headed up a long uphill stretch. I was so hopeful. I opened my rain jacket zipper and tried to dry the shirt I was wearing beneath it in the sun, but by the time I reached the top of the climb, the clouds had rolled in again and the sun was nowhere to be found. I eventually caught up to Macro and a couple other hikers and hiked near them for an hour or so towards the evening. As we descended, the rain turned to snow... huge fluffy, Christmas-style flakes filling the air. It was beautiful, it was cold, and frankly it was ridiculous. Snow is one thing, but snow on top of being soaking wet and freezing all day, that's just another thing entirely. We immediately started singing Christmas carols, and laughing almost hysterically at the misery of the entire day. Perfect proof that camaraderie and commiserating can go a long way in making a shitty situation more bearable.
Alas, they eventually sped ahead of me and I spent the remainder of the afternoon pushing on alone. By this time I was definitely in some beginning stages of mild hypothermia; my hands had been so cold for so long, they no longer were able to function properly. They were stuck in a sort of claw-like position with no ability to grip anything, making it difficult to hold my poles properly, and even more difficult to take my phone out of the ziplock bag it was in, to take the one picture I took that day. I almost dropped my phone down the side of the mountain as it slipped right through my weak grip, but thank goodness it was saved by a bush.
I finally arrived at the spot Macro and I said we would stop, 23.2 miles later, but he was nowhere to be found. What. The. Fuck. I could not and would not walk any further, but also, where was Macro? What if he expected me to walk till I found him and then worried I wasn't okay if I didn't show up? I took several steps further on trail, and then hesitantly said aloud, to no one in particular, "Macro?". To my immense relief, a disembodied voice answered my from the trees to my right, "Yep?". Thank God. He was off in a copse of trees scoping out some spots by the trees (since he needed trees for his hammock). The only flat spot was right beside the trail, which meant that Macro was way off in the trees that night and I was alone at my site. Normally that wouldn't bother me at all, but at this moment I really wanted to have the company of someone else to distract me from how deeply cold I was and to reflect with on how ridiculous this day had been.
The camp set up was the worst. Throughout the day, though cold, stiff, and miserable, it was fairly simple and repetitive to keep moving. My body may have felt like an ice cube, but it wasn't too challenging to keep my legs moving back and forth, back and forth, propelling me forward. Trying to do any other sort of activity though, even something as simple as unbuckling my pack, became difficult with my entire body so stiff, and my hands still stuck in their claws, with limited ability to grip or squeeze anything. It took me full minutes to get my pack open, and then even longer to set up the poles and fly of the tent, and then longer still to crawl under the fly and attach the inner net. It's a sweet feature of the BA Copper Spur that you can set up the fly separately from the inner net, which means if it rains you can set up the inner part of the tent while protecting yourself and the tent from getting wet. It does involve a bit of finagling with various buckles while hunching over under the rain fly, and at this particular moment, finagling buckles was not something I had much ability to do. I pretty much lost it. I was deeply cold to the point of pain, utterly exhausted, and desperately wanting to feel any form of comfort for the first time in around 12 hours, so I sobbed as I continued the effort of setting up the tent.
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| The only picture I took on this shitty day - This picture almost cost me my phone! |
Once I finally set up, and completed the odious task of collecting water from the icy stream next to the site, I shoved my soaked pack into the vestibule of the tent and got ready to enter my blessed shelter. I didn't want to get the floor of the tent wet, and my own clothes were soaked, so I pulled down my pants to my ankles and sat down in the tent with my wet, muddy, frozen legs and feet outside the door on the ground.
I thought to myself of all the things I needed to do before I would even begin to warm up my body... pull all the stuff out of my pack, blow up my sleep pad (the worst), unpack my sleeping bag, peel off my clammy clothes (and therefore be
naked in the freezing cold), put on my dry clothes, and then pray that somehow I had enough body heat left to warm me up if I crawled into the sleeping bag. Listing it out really does
not sound that difficult, but in that moment each action felt insurmountable, and I had nothing left in me but to start sobbing again.
To this day, I think this moment is probably the
most hilarious part of my whole hike. There I was, alone on the side of the trail, crying my eyes out, with my pants around my ankles. I can only imagine how pathetic I looked, and if anyone had walked by and witnessed it, I feel sure they would have had to laugh. In the moment though, it felt like the hardest thing I had ever been through. I remember as I was walking towards the site and setting up, trying to figure out some way to relay to another person how wretched I felt in the moment, and the one thing that popped into my head is,
This is worse than heartbreak. I amended a second later realizing that was ridiculous, but to explain how truly horrible I felt, I did still rate it only a few points lower than heartbreak on the misery scale. (For the record, my partner and I broke up several months after my return, and I was
wildly mistaken. I would take that rainy day a hundred times in a row over heartbreak, but that just goes to remind me how pain rarely feels temporary in the moment, even though it always is).
Anyway, at some point it occurred to me that no one else would be coming to help me take off my wet clothes and get into some dry ones, and that I would definitely not feel any better unless that happened. (Not to mention that I would most certainly get hypothermia if I continued to sit there like that all night). So I pulled myself together and finished those tasks and crawled into my bag. I boiled some water in my vestibule and prepared a freeze-dried camp meal, which functioned wonderfully as a hot water bottle for my hands and toes while it was rehydrating. I wrapped my feet, hands, and whole body around it inside my sleeping bag, and by the time I started to eat it 10 minutes later, I had started to enter that sleepy, blissful state that happens when you've been cold and stiff for a long time and your body finally starts to warm and relax. Feeling the pain and tension leave my body left me in a state of some of the most intense comfort I had felt in the entire hike, and that Chili Mac was the best meal I'd had in my life.
The next day dawned clear and blue for the first time in days. My tent and all the leaves were covered in a layer of transparent ice and the air had a cold bite to it, but the sun was bright and it was evident it would warm up in no time. In the sunshine, my misery the night before was already comical to me, and I was in a great mood packing up my wet, icy gear, especially since we would be arriving at our next resupply today, and after the wet days we'd just had, I expected to spend tonight indoors.
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| The view on trail that morning, after the most miserable day of hiking |
We had a beautiful, sunny day hiking the easy 11 miles to town - the sun was warm and the rain that had fallen yesterday had been snow on the mountaintops, providing a pretty view of snowy peaks in the distance. It didn't take too long to arrive at Steven's Pass, which is another ski resort at a major highway.
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| A misty pond close to Steven's Pass |
From Steven's Pass we hitched into the tiny "town" of Skykomish, where I picked up our resupply boxes from the post office, had a late lunch at the local pub, laid out my wet gear in a sun patch on the lawn, and settled into a tiny motel room to enjoy some stillness before we headed back out for the next leg of the adventure.
That's it for Part Two of my final month on the PCT! Part Three will be out soon and then I'll finally get to the end of this crazy journey! Thanks for following along.
PS:
As a reminder, all the areas I've described have been sacred land to this continent's First Peoples since long before Europeans settled here. The names they are known as now are new names depicting explorers and settlers who "found" them, but all these places had names and meanings already.
Mount Ranier's original name is Tacoma or Tahoma, and the land known as Mt. Rainier National Park is the ancestral lands of several tribes including the Nisqually, Cowlitz, Yakama, Puyallup, and Muckleshoot nations. The area around Steven's Pass is the ancestral lands of the Tulalip Tribes, which incorporates Snohomish, Snoqualmie, and Skykomish Tribes, among others. That area is known to the Tulalip tribes as
the Guardian Spirit of Snow, in their traditional languages.
Bye for now!!
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