2 Day Reset

Remember the post about Mt. Laguna and almost being a frozen human Popsicle?  Well, I have to admit I may have over dramatized a bit.  I don’t think I have the words or phraseology to fully convey what I went through yesterday.

Started out easy enough.  I spent much of Friday doing the last journal update, so I did not head out until late afternoon.  The trail splits here, with one route going through Goldmyer Hot Springs.  That’s the route I took, having it recommended by the SOBO hiker I met at the cabin.  First 5 miles to Snow Lake were easy, a nice path and several day hikers.  Snow Lake actually had a snow field right up to the water’s edge.  Just at dusk I took the next trail junction as planned.  Immediately the trail turned to crap.  Very narrow, slippery rocks, over grown in many places and lots of blow downs.  Cut the pace to about half and had to use the headlamp.  This is obviously a lesser used path, and not maintained.   It was so bad I was sure I was on the wrong trail, but the GPS confirmed it.  Right trail or wrong, there is no place to turn back to,  and surely there will be a campsite eventually.   I can hear a river below me, and usually there is a campsite where the trail meets a river.  I just keep keeping on.

This is my first day on the trail in serious rain, and I learn I’m not as prepared as a I think.  The map is the first thing to get compromised by the rain.  My phone / GPS starts to get flaky.  Everything is touch screen driven, which does not work when either the screen or fingers are wet.  (It works by sensing a change in capacitance, if you must know.)  I’m in the Commonwealth Basin, where no camping is allowed.   It’s still light out when I enter, so I figure that I’ll just hike on through and find a site on the other side.  I hike what seems like forever trying to find a site.  Give up on that and just look for a flat wide spot on the trail to camp.  Well, there is nothing flat about this basin, and the trail is about half the width of the PCT, not being graded for horses.  I go on for two hours.  It is so slick I fall at least six times, and my poles save me at least a hundred.  Each time its all slow motion and mostly no injuries.  When I finally get back to civilization I find scrapes and bruises all over my fore arms.  I tweak my knee once, thinking “this could be it”, but escape largely unharmed and not overly traumatized.

Finally I find a semi wide, semi flat spot by the base of an old growth fir and set up my first rain camp.  I have a rain cover over my pack (first time I’ve used it) but the pack is completely wet, and the very bottom just soaked.  My waterproof gloves were on the very bottom, and I wring water out of them like they were sponges.  Most of the stuff is well packed so I’m still OK.  The tree provides a rain shadow so I can keep things reasonably dry while I set. First to fail is my meter for checking blood sugar.  Not the continuous monitor, but the more import finger stick meter.  Luckily I have a spare. So far, so good.

I haven’t eaten much because I’ve been fighting the trail, and it’s been cold.  The trail is too narrow to set up my stove outside under the awning, so I try to cook inside the tent.  Don’t try this at home, I’m a professional.  Actually not a real professional, as my lighter is wet and will not light.  I have a bag of backup safety stuff, including matches. Since I don’t use it every day it drifts to the bottom of the pack, where it has been wet all day.  The matches are damp so they won’t light either.  I go to sleep exhausted and without dinner.

Another rain related adjustment.  Normally when I have to pee  at night I just open the flap, kneel outside on my sit pad and go.  Now that does not work, as getting through the flap sends a mini shower onto my wool sleeping clothes, and where I kneel is already soaked.  The adaptation is to pee into my water bottle while kneeling inside my sleeping bag.  Worked well so far, but one of these nights it’s going to cause a mess.

Next morning I have to do one of the things I have been dreading, getting dressed into wet clothes.  Nothing drys, it is 100% humidity outside, same inside plus condensation.  I sleep with both my hats on, and put the lighter in between the two.  It dries and lights in the morning.  I eat yesterday’s dinner and today’s breakfast, so I am fortified and actually feeling upbeat about getting through the first night.  I figure I’ll be at the hot springs by noon and can dry my stuff there.  The foot of the down bag is wet from hitting the condensation soaked tent walls, and the down jack from being near the flap.  Not good, but so far not so bad.  I’ll have to do better, because each night it will only get worse.

I thrash on down the trail for several hours until I hit the next junction, Babcock Creek.  The trail is all washed out.  I find what I believe is the  side trail I am supposed to take.  It starts at the right spot and goes off in the right direction.  There are no signs, except for one that says “Trail not maintained beyond this point”.  I think that is some kind of sick joke, as certainly the trail has not been maintained up until that point.  But it is definitely a trail and I’m thinking I’m about 20 minutes away from the hot springs.  That’s when things slowly turn worse.

No hot springs, no nothing.  I can’t see very far ahead because everything is all fogged in.  Very eerie, very surreal.   I keep thinking “It has to be just ahead”, but nothing.  Finally I admit I am either on the wrong trail (unlikely as there is nothing else on the map and the compass confirms the overall direction) or I just plain missed some turn off.  Phone gives up completely, now permanently stuck on the start up screen.  No way I’m going back the way I came.  Just too ugly.

In general, my number one rule when getting lost (I’ve had lots of practice) is to backtrack to a known point.  Not today.  New strategy is to just keep following this trail.  It will eventually come out somewhere.  The further I go on, the dumber this seems, but the less attractive turning around sounds.  For all I know this is a 50 mile trail to nowhere.  I’ve got shelter, food and fuel, so being lost is no worse than being on the PCT, so I just push on.  Turns out this is a very impressive trail.  It goes up and down the ridges surrounding the basin, catching several peaks along the way.  But it just keeps getting steeper and more exposed.  Overgrown wherever sun and water permit, and blow downs every so often.  It seems I’m a million miles off trail.  I can see this trail has not been used in awhile, and it is very likely my footprints are the last they will see until Spring (which could be August).  I keep going up to each mountain top, hoping to find a Holiday Inn or Denny’s, only to find the trail takes a dip and then climbs something higher.  And it is just amazing.  So desolate and forbidden.  Looking down all I can see is a few tree tops and some of the surrounding peaks, everything else drown in an ocean of clouds.  I could be in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, anywhere.  I’m above the timberline and soon I start seeing snow patches.  This makes me colder just looking at them.  If I get hurt out here (something seeming more and more likely) it’s going to get bad fast. The next time I take a tumble, which I do from time to time, all I have to do is tweak something and I’m 30 minutes away from hypothermia.  I’m soaked to the bone, in spite of just purchasing the best, most breathable rain gear I could find.  Any serious slip would knock me a few feet off the trail, where I would be swallowed up by the vegetation.  They may never find my body.

I think back to the guy who got his arm trapped by a falling rock.  When he eventually had the idea that he could just cut it off, he felt immediately relived.  He had a plan, he had some hope.  I develop my own plan.  If I go down, and can’t get a shelter up, I’m finished.  For sure.  And I’m only one slippery rock away at any point.  My savior will be insulin.  I’ll take a massive dose and pass out.  End of story.  I keep thinking about what message I could type out on my phone.  Surely someone would check the final text messages.  But my phone doesn’t work anyway.

This seems as other worldly as I have ever been.  No pictures however, dead phone = dead camera.  It would have been such an overwhelming positive experience if I had not developed this continuing sense of dread.

I’m wet, cold and tired.  My arms and hands hurt from climbing.  I eventually reach what seems like the seminal pass.  Only it is super steep and all washed out.  The trail just ends by pointing up to a ridge, through a gully of washed out rocks.  If you are like 1% of my friends, you would be familiar with The Chute on Mt Hood, it is as steep as that but with no snow.  It’s either go up or go back, so I’m in “I’d rather die trying” mode.  Several times this day I think, “just keep going forward.  If you die today, people will think you died doing what you love to do”.   I start going up using my poles in the scree.  As it gets steeper, I move to the  wall and used one hand to grip the wall, one hand to push off with the pole.  Then it takes two hands on the rock wall.  I’m at the edge of my endurance, and this is about as exposed as I have ever been in my life.  I’m reaching my finger tips into cracks like I was a real rock climber.  And then progress just stops.  It seems like there is no way up, and I am about to (begin to?) despair.  If you knew me, you would know that despair is not a word I would use casually.  Then off to my left I see a few feet of trail that has not been ravished by the rock slides, and up above  that another few feet.  This gives me a sense of where the trail at least once was, and confirms up is the way to go.  I try to traverse, grabbing the biggest rocks I can find for support.  Rick:  Remember that big rock you rolled onto yourself on our last big hike?  It’s like that all over again.  The bigger the rock, the slower it rolls.  By what miracle they don’t take them with me I can’t say, but apparently I have more than 9 lives.

I finally make it to the top, feeling like I conquered the world.  In reality, a thousand day hikers will do this in the summer, some wearing flip flops.  No Holiday Inn, just the trail going off in four directions.  One I discount as being just a short sprint to a peak to my left, one only slightly used straight ahead, and the main path to the right, going of course uphill.  Still thinking this has to end somewhere, I go that way for quite a while until I find it ends at a spectacular but unproductive peak.  I’m on the top of the world, with only a sheer drop on three sides and a few peaks poking through the clouds.  It’s really starting to blow now, and seems like the rain is only a degree or so away from hail or snow.  Up until now it has been mostly a slow but constant light rain.  I go back down to the four way stop.  The lightly used path leads nowhere, but I can hear the highway now.  I contemplate just heading straight toward it cross country, but I am not (yet) so desperate to lose all common sense.  Stay on the trail, even if it the wrong one.  (Works for most political leaders, should work for me).  I really really do not want to turn back, so I take what I think is just the short hop up the nearest peak just to eliminate it.  It does lead to a view point, but another trail goes on beyond that, in the direction of the highway noise.  I carry on, hitting a few more peaks as we go.

It’s starting to feel like Mt. Marcy all over again (a family story from years ago).  Little by little I feel my competence and confidence slipping.  I take off my pack to eat, I’ve hardly stopped 10 minutes since morning.  My hands are so cold, my thumbs do not work.  This goes back to Mt. Marcy and the first time I got frostbite.  When they get cold, my thumbs are useless.  I can imagine getting into an emergency situation and something as simple as that makes things go from bad to worse.  As it is, try as I might I just can’t snap my sternum strap together.  Frustrating, and possibly the first in the chain of events that leads to disaster.  For want of  a nail, the shoe was lost.  For want of the shoe, the horse was lost, etc.  Finally I loosen it up as far as I could, grip the left side in my teeth and and accomplish the snap with my right.  But now I can’t cinch it up.  Opposable thumbs are pretty useless when they to not have any strength to oppose anything.  So I carry on with my pack on but no longer secure, constantly shifting left and right and always hanging back.  I have to use my back muscles to compensate, which eventually takes a toll.  Also now, with every misstep I have this 32 pounds (plus rain water!)  shifting mass changing my center of gravity.  I have a greater chance of tumbling.  I take a few minor falls, and tweak my right knee a little, but overall I’m lucky.  I love my poles.

Now it’s starting to get dark and cold for real.  Under my high tech rain gear I’m wearing the same desert clothes, only now soaked.  As soon as I stop I begin to freeze.  So I don’t stop.  I can hear highway noises in the distance,  but it is a constant hum.  This means it’s likely I-90, a major freeway and far away.  But this trail is heading straight for it so it my new favorite.  The death defying ridges and traverses are behind me, I’m on a more civilized trail.  Still wet and slippery, but heading in the direction I want to go – toward safety.

Eventually I reconnect with the real PCT, and face my next big decision.  Continue on North, or go South back to road and eventually a motel?  That took about a micro second to process.  I’m hurt and exhausted, down two days worth of food and fuel, and all I want to do is get dry.  I’m so cold my hands don’t work properly, but all I think about it getting dry.  Me and my stuff.  South it is, and in about 4 more miles I’m back where I started.  After a day and a half of hiking, I’ve had one of the simultaneously best and worst adventures of my life, and took the crash course in rain hiking.

So now I’m back at The Summit Inn, net progress after two days is moving 3 doors down the hall.  I’ll start out again as soon as I get this posted.  Much better prepared and with a whole new resolve.  Biggest change is to wrap everything in plastic bags.  Another hiker gives me a pack sized garbage bag.  I steal some smaller garbage bags from the cleaning lady’s cart, as well as some even smaller ones from the ice bucket.  I buy Zip Lock sandwich bags from the convenience store.  I’ll get soaked for sure, but my stuff will be OK.

My new plan: just figure out where I would be after 1.5 days (about 30 miles) and jump back on the trail there.  Except for one thing. I learn that I am about to embark on the longest, most isolated stretch in Washington.  76 miles with no road crossings.  It’s either start all over again or skip the whole section.  Personally I’d be cool with trading lost  miles for trail miles, but I haven’t got it in me to skip a complete section.  It’s once again all or nothing.

By the time you read this I’ll be stepping out again.  It’s been clear all morning but now dumping rain.  Makes no difference, it’s going to rain for the next 5 days it will take me anyway. 2 days behind schedule,  no phone, no GPS, no camera, no back up maps, but lots of plastic bags.  I’m good to go.

Yeti