Start: 85.7
Stop: 99.9
Today’s miles: 14.2
Total PCT miles: 287.7
Man, I’m still a grump when I wake up. I heard Silky saying, “good morning” over and over to let us know she was leaving, and all I said back was a loud, “NOOO.” Haha it was 5:55 and there just was zero motivation to get up that early! I did, finally, at 6:20.. those 25 minutes made all the difference in my sanity.
Margo, Pebbles and I packed and headed out just after 7am. The trail was gorgeous, winding through deep woods with a raging river next to it.. it was steadily going up elevation wise but the way the trail wound through the trees it didn’t feel like it. All day long, we’d leap frog each other, take breaks together (with Silky, too, we caught up to her taking a break pretty early on), eat lunch on a log together.
As pretty as it started, the afternoon got hot. I was moving so slow, it felt like all of my energy had been zapped-so zapped that I kept wondering if it was my thyroid, because I’ve been tired on trail, but I was barely moving. It was frustrating, for sure.
Margot and I crossed a fast moving river on a wide but broken log.. well I did, Margot crossed on a smaller but solid log that had me nervous as hell watching her. FakeSnake, the Australian meteorologist we met in Stehekin, helped guide us over. I was grateful he was there and watching, one wrong step and it wouldnt have been pretty-either tangled under the crazy limbs broken in the water or sailing all the way down until you hit new limbs in the water. Margot and I waited on the other side to make sure Pebbles and Silky went over the correct/safest way.
From there we started climbing in elevation. The trail would weave in and out of tree line, and when it was out-it was overgrown valley with bushes that cut and stung-and reopened the scab on my shin. Dammit that hurts. When that finally chilled out, because we got high enough elevation wise to not have anymore of those gangles of bushes, it turned into water crossings, rocks, and snow patches.
Margo and I decided to just walk through some fast moving water, instead of trying to rock hop to keep our feet dry. Silky and Pebbles took their shoes off to keep them dry and so we got ahead of them. As we went, the water crossings got more frequent, sometimes the current coming right through trail, from all the snowmelt. I immediately thought of how happy I was I didn’t take the time to take off my shoes, since it wouldn’t have mattered for me now anyway.
As we crossed a snow field that wasn’t steep in anyway, Margot and I noticed the storm clouds rolling in. We picked up our pace a bit-the rest of our day was uphill, and right now we were very exposed. Before long, we heard thunder-felt it really, and then the lightening started to crack across the sky. But, so far, no rain. Not yet. We stayed together, both jumping when the thunder would rumble through our souls, and eventually we came across a decently wide area of tree cover. It looked safe from falling debris, it would hopefully keep us dry when the rain we could see in the distance finally made its way to us.. we decided to stay right there until the storm passed. I did not want to keep climbing in elevation and risk being exposed with the rain came-and because that lightening was terrifyingly close.
Pebbles got to us, happy we had said we weren’t going to hike out until it passed over, and minutes later Silky got to us too. Minutes after that-the rain came. Silky got out her Tyvek and we all four huddled under it, until the rain water came tunneling through the middle of the trail, and the middle of the four of us! Thankfully, the trees were sheltering us from the majority of the rain and hail.
Peter and Pickup showed up during our pause from hiking. They were absolutely soaked through. We talked a bit and once the rain let up, we all hiked out together. I wasn’t quite ready, but I wasn’t going to stand there alone in the storm. Immediately, we were all soaked through, too. Oh, hell. Nothing to do now but walk, but I was honestly still struggling pretty bad.. slow moving, especially uphill.
The higher we went, the more the trail turned into a sea of hail.. like the trail was covered with hundreds of thousands of white and clear dippin dots-seriously.. marble sized hail accumulated so much that it was several inches deep in some places. It wasn’t snow, and it was slippery-like lots of ice cube balls to slosh through. Watching every step carefully and trying to move quick enough to warm up some, because no matter how hot I had been only an hour ago, I was now shivering in my rain jacket.
Margot and I were the last to make it to the planned campsite. She seemed spent-cold and out of it. The icing on the cake-Pebbles let us know as we got there that there were no more campsites that weren’t currently under water. The majority of the area flooded out, and Silky, Pickup, and Peter had their tents in the only non flooded spots left. There’s a specific four letter “f” word that came out of my mouth in that moment. Betcha can’t guess which one?
Margot looked utterly defeated. She was shivering and her eyes were blankly staring. I knew she was hungry and needed some hot food to eat, but the rain picked up again and I thought sitting there to eat wouldn’t help the situation any. I remembered seeing some flat looking areas off a trail junction back a quarter mile and talked them both into hiking back to there, to scope out tentsites and eat. They agreed.
When we got close to the junction, I got Margot’s water bag from her and sent her to find a spot (basically to make her keep moving in this random freezing weather), and Pebbles and I filled up all three of our water bags at a fast moving creek. We went to find Margot, only to realize what looked flat from the trail was actually not flat at all. We probably spent a good 15-25 minutes trying to find something decent, then settled on the original very lumpy and sloped spot we saw from above.
We got all 3 tents up, albeit it uneven, but it would work for tonight. We fixed Margot’s tent-it randomly had a hole in the roof and that’s a recipe for disaster in the rain. Then we got as warm as we could and ate dinner. As drastic of a change as this afternoon was from this morning, and as upset as I personally felt that we made it to the campsite and didn’t feel like anyone was willing to make room for us in a storm, I really had a great evening with these two. We laughed and joked and laughed some more until close to 9pm, when we all huddled in our tents to try to get warm for the night.
Im currently so cold and can’t tell if my stuff is cold, wet, or just damp.. like even my sleeping pad feels wet but I know the inside of my tent is technically dry.. it has to be the moisture in the air, the humidity, the condensation brewing from my hot breath meeting this frigid air.. yeah, it’s time to tuck these arms in and get warm-or try anyway. Sweet dreams.