“…Into Each Life a Little Rain Must Fall…”

“..but someone must have mistaken me for Noah.”   Quote taped to Debra’s refrigerator.

I depart the Summit Inn at Snoqualmie Pass once again, on what will turn out to be my last section for this season.  Everything wrapped in second hand plastic except my spirits, which are soaring to be back on the trail again, rain notwithstanding.  This time I take the traditional route, not the ill fated hot springs alternative.  No phone, no GPS, no camera.  Just one objective:  North, to Canada.

At the last trail head I saw for the first time a warning about Grizzly bears besides the usual description of Black bears. Also a hand written note about a black bear sighting near such and such a campsite.  At this trail head ( only a mile or so East) there is also the first warning I see about Mountain Goats.  And the fact that September- December is a particularly dangerous time to meet a male goat on the trail.  This is truly remote and wild country.  I see neither.  At almost 6′ 3″ and only 154 lbs I would look like a walking stick of pepperoni to a bear.  And thanks to Fritz’s homemade goose pepperoni that I’ve been packing, I probably smell like one as well.  Not sure what a goat would think.  If he could read my mind, he’d probably realize we had more in common than might be first imagined.

This is a popular section for day hikers.  It’s Sunday, and as I am heading uphill and away I meet several small groups returning and one serious long distance runner.  All are cheerful and seem unaffected by the constant rain.  They’re just happy to be out there.  Except one guy, whose only greeting is “How far is it to the parking lot?”  I lie and tell him he’s close.

I get maybe 5 or so miles the first afternoon and find a good camping site under some large trees.  I set up in the last daylight, being as deliberate as I can in keeping everything dry.  The transition between all packed up and being all secure in the tent is a prime time to get things wet.  I’ve learned some things since the last adventure, so I am more deliberate in how I pack and unpack.

Not that it helps much.  First in the generic problem of the tent walls being wet with condensation.  My sleeping bag constantly rubs against the ends where the tent narrows down.  Each night my head and foot ends get wetter and wetter.  Not a good thing for a down bag.  In addition, I experience a new phenomenon.  I have the tent lines taut to protect against the wind.   A gentle rain creates a gentle, comforting background sound, like sleeping next to a river or near the ocean waves.  When the wind changes and I get a direct blast of hard rain, and it’s like living inside a snare drum.  Worst is the big, random drops from the tree branches.  This irregular base beat is both loud and disturbing, especially since my head is near the tent ceiling.  Sounds like I have my head in a bucket and every now and then someone is beating the bucket with a stick.  Even worse is the effect that the big drops have on the condensation.  Each one sends a fine mist of water spraying inside the tent.  90% of it lands on the bag, so it gets wetter by the hour. 1% or so explodes right into my face, and the remainder gets distributed among my already wet processions.
Learning from last time, I leave more outside the tent to reduce condensation, but it does not seem to help much.

Up at dawn, which is getting later and later every day, I put on wet underwear, wet pants, wet shirt, and for the last time dry socks into wet and cold shoes.  Not so bad, I can do this.  And then I just start walking.  Rain off and on all day.  No time to stop and dry stuff out, even if the weather had cooperated.  I have no maps for the first two days.  I discarded them when the plan was to take the hot springs alternative.  As per usual, I hike until dusk and look for a place to camp.  And then I hike well into darkness, still looking for a place to camp.  Then I headlamp up and continue to hike and look for a place to camp.  This goes on for about  2 hours or more after full on dark until I top out on some ridge and find a spot.  Good news / bad news camp.

On the plus side, I estimate I’ve covered 27 – 28 miles, beating my previous one day record of 26.2 miles.  It’s raining hard but the winds are calm when I set up, but that changes during the night.  I set up with the narrow ends of the tent into the prevailing winds and get into my damp but pretty much OK bag and sleeping wools.  It takes the only two pairs of dry socks I have left to keep my feet warm, but I’m still OK.  Inside the bag I am also wearing my down jacket and two hats.  During the night, every now and again the wind shifts and I get a cold blast broadside.  This really rattles my little shelter, but I’m too exhausted to really care.  Until the first tent stake blows out from the cross wind.  I take my socks off to protect them and re-secure it, adding a small log to add weight.

As per usual, I’m up and poke out of the tent several times during the night.  One time I see that the hail has piled up on the cross wind side.  Next time up, the world is white with a frosting of snow.  Next time my universe is blanketed in white.  Snow builds up and causes one end of the tent to start to collapse under the weight.  I kick it off from the inside, causing a shower of condensation inside and blowing out a corner stake in the process.  I’m working on a “..not perfect but I can live with it plan..” when the wind kicks in again and blows out the neighboring tent stake.  No choice but to go out bare foot in the snow and reset them.

As you might imagine, since I don’t employ a ghost writer, I survive the night to go through the putting on the cold wet underwear, etc. ritual again.  This time with wet socks to complete the experience.  Maybe 1 – 3″ of snow, depending on how sheltered any section of trail it, I hike on.  I look across the valleys can see the snow disappears at lower elevations, so I am not too discouraged.  And I have a plan.

At this point I am less than halfway into this section and can still turn around.  Yesterday’s plan was: a) hike all day and camp. b) decide in the morning to go on or turn around.  Thinking was that after a full day plus the first day’s 5 miles I could turn around get out without having to camp again.  But with the yesterday’s long march I could not get out without camping again.  I would have to camp at least once.  If I did the same mileage going North, I would be more than halfway through at day’s end, so the equation is now biased towards continuing on.  It would have to be pretty bad to justify turning around.  I get to the trail conflicted.  After two nights my stuff is already pretty wet and will only get wetter.  Consider the fact that I am a weenie and don’t want to be cold or wet, and more specifically, a great big weenie and don’t want to be cold AND wet.  I take a few tentative steps North trying to decide.  I am walking in ankle deep snow in what are not much more than wet tennis shoes.  It is cold so I start walking faster trying to warm up.  By default, by not deciding I decide.  North it is.

Just a few hundred yards up the trail I come to a junction where the PCT takes off at a right angle to the left.  I surely would have missed this at night, so I take it as a good sign.  I continue on, mostly going downhill.  Snow gets deeper rather than lighter as it has collected on the lee side of this mountain.

By mid day I am back on the map again, which buoys my spirits.  Except the next thing on the map is a river ford.  Nothing to do but cowboy up and plunge in.  The few days of rain has certainly increased the river flow, but I can see by the banks this is nothing compared to the snow melt season.  About knee deep, the river is running fast but surprisingly not as cold as I imagined.  This is the first of several fords in this section, and at all I come away with the same experience.  Does not seem so cold at first, but just a few minutes later I am cold right down to the very core of my being.

I go on for a few more hours, the trail often as much of a small creek as it is a pathway.  When I started in the desert, the advice was to change socks three times per day so your feet will stay dry.  Wet feet are more likely to blister.  My feet look like prunes, and have been that way since Sunday.  They are now more robust than at any time on the trail.  I love my feet and tell them so several times throughout the day.

At some point I realize I must have missed a turn.  I go through the usual “..I go just a little further and then turn around..” ritual several times, until I am discouraged.  Once again I dive off that mental cliff and say  ” …enough is enough, I am just going to follow this trail.  It will come out somewhere and I’ll just bail out..”  I’ve mentally given up once again.  If you’re thinking I’m being a wimp, you would be correct.   I’m heading who knows where along some unknown trail when I see the first person in two days.  A deer hunter with a good map, and he knows how to use it.  Together we work backward to the missed junction.   When we come across it, it’s as big and well marked as a freeway exit.  With my hood pull in tight against the wind blown rain I just never saw it.

My reward for being back on the correct trail is another river ford.  A little deeper than the last, wider, but not as fast.  Just as wet and just as cold.  It’s getting late now, and I’m thinking I’ll camp soon.  I’m working my way uphill when the weather changes again.  It’s been raining, but really not all that cold or windy, until now.  The temperature drops considerably in only a half hour or so and it starts to snow again.  On top of this, I seem unusually tired and I start to stumble more often.  And then I start to sweat.  My inner clothes are soaked in just a few minutes and I realize I am having a full blown hypoglycemia (extreme low blood sugar) episode.

My trusty (not) blood sugar monitor says I’m high at 169, not the less than 55 the symptoms indicate.  I am out of readily available food in my waist belt, and would have to unpack my safe and secure food to get something to eat.  I am hesitant to do this because suddenly I am so cold and now my inner clothes are wet.  I don’t want to stop until I gets some shelter, so I try to march on.  All of you amateur endocrinologists are probably screaming at me for being so stupid, but you had to be there.  Finally I am so tired I just sit down where I am in the wind and snow and dig into my pack.   All I want to do is close my eyes and go to sleep.  I try to rest but can’t.  The food helps, but I have a second, less severe episode just a little while later.  This time the meter says 219, indicating blood sugar way too high.  Had I taken the insulin that number suggested, I would probably have been dead in an hour.  Being a former pilot, I’ve long held on to the philosophy of “when in doubt, trust your instruments”.   Actually, I was never that good of a pilot, and am now happy to have broken that golden rule.

On the strength of pure stubbornness, I am able to continue.  On to a good camp site would be ideal, but there is a sliding scale running from “good”, straight through “good enough” all the way to “I don’t care anymore”.  You can imagine which end of the scale I’m working on when I get to a too narrow, too rocky, slanted in two directions spot on the trail where I just stop.  Not another step today, I’ve had it.

Now had I been paying $400 a night to stay at the Ritz I might have complained about these accommodations, but not tonight.  There isn’t anybody to complain to anyway, neither bear nor goat, just my constant companions, wind and rain.  I do hike back a bit to get water and eat enough to satiate your average high school football team, coaches and cheerleaders included.   I have to put my olive oil into my underwear oven to get it warm enough to pour, but I am dry (well, more like just damp, not wet) and food makes me happy.  Remember, all things are relative.  The only positive thing I accomplish besides getting safe is to go over the next day’s maps and realize I missed another trail junction.  With this final thought of the day, I go to sleep for 12 hours straight.

Just a little more snow by morning, no big deal.  What to do, go back to find the trail junction, or is it just ahead a bit?  I have little faith in my ability to estimate how far I’ve come from the last river ford, and I am deep in the trees along a steep ridge and can’t see anything to get a good fix on my position.  I give myself 15 minutes (1/2 mile) and then I’ll turn around, and then another 15 minutes, and then arrive at the familiar junction of “turn around, stupid” and “this is stupid, I’ll just follow this trail out, it has to come out somewhere..”   Again, I just march on.  Going back, no matter how much it makes sense, just does not seem to be in my nature.  The sign of a great leader, or symptomatic of a person destined to die alone, lost in the forest?

Again, the Trail Gods are with me.  In my semi-delirium yesterday I went much further than I realized.  Also, the last trail junction was only a marker, not a turn.  In less than an hour, I am at the next junction, on track and ahead of schedule.  The sun makes a sudden cameo appearance.  Not a stellar performance, but playing to  an appreciative audience.  The snow is deeper, but the trail immediately starts downhill steeply.  Life is good, until I step on one of those small logs used to divert water off of the trail.  I go down hard, banging my elbow and hip.  I lie there for a moment, thinking for about the hundredth time, “this could be it”.  The last time I smashed my elbow, it was hard enough to draw blood through my shirt.  This time it is my hip that takes the brunt of the force.  E=1/2 M V squared and all that.  I have my insurance card with me, but no one to show it too.  Drive on, Ranger.

I don’t have many recollections of this day’s hiking, besides walking with a limp and almost losing my precious hat.  I had taken it off and tucked it under my waist belt.  I come across yet another river ford, this one necessitated because previous snows tore out the bridge.  This one narrow but fast, I again loosen up my pack and pole straps.  Again, five minutes later the cold hits me and I reach for the hat.  Not there.  It must have dropped when I unbuckled the waist belt.  Nothing else to do but go back and re-cross the river and try and find it.  I go back but it is not on the far bank, so I’m thinking it much have gone down stream.  I’m just about to abandon it (another chink in my thermal armor) when I find it in the mud and water on this side of the river.  Somehow it stayed stuck to me throughout the river crossing, giving up its grip only on the climb up the opposite bank.  I say nice things to it and dry it out the best I can.

At about dusk I get to a valley.  Much lower in elevation but now the snow is deeper.  For the first time I start to lose the trail.  It only takes 6 inches or so of snow and the trail just disappears.  On the ridges and side slopes you can get the sense of the trail by the cuts in rocks and vegetation, but not so on the flats.  It’s getting dark.  I keep backing up a few steps and then restarting.  This works as long as you can look forward to some disturbance in the elevation, but with the fading light it becomes more difficult.  My plan for the day was to get within 20 miles or less of the trail ending so I can get out with only one last camp.  I push on the best I can and get to within 16 miles from the exit.  16 miles of unknown trail, under unknown conditions, but well with range if all goes well. I should be out before dark tomorrow if nothing major goes wrong.

I’m halted by lack of daylight and clear trail definition.  I’d rather camp short than risk going off in the wrong direction.  I find a beautiful camping spot, a tiny spot of a meadow surrounded by but not covered by large trees.  Actually, it is really a terrible place to camp, sloped, rocky and full of brush and branches.  But the deep snow hides all this, and it looks like a picture postcard of the ideal camp spot.  I stamp out a flat spot, filling in and kicking out as required and camping on top of the snow.  This is Last Camp, and I already know it.

In the fading daylight the sky is filled by approaching Alto Cumulus  clouds.  Back to the pilot days, I know what this means.  They are the advance team for an approaching low pressure front.  More rain and snow on the way.  Back in the day, I would have known I could out run them in my trusty rental Cessna 150.  Here, in my trusty size 13 Wide hiking shoes, I’ve got less than 24 hours before the snow hits the fan.  I’m done for.  There may be a small window of “good” weather left, then that is it for days.  Already I’m marginal on being able to navigate.  Two more inches of snow would wipe out most of the trail, and I’m guessing there is 6 – 12″ on the way, more at higher elevations.

So I’ve resigned myself to Last Camp. which includes the Last Dinner (not to be confused with the Last Supper).  I have three dinner meals to chose from, of which I will eat two.  I’ll reserve one just in case.  In most cases I exit with one reserve meal and discard it.  Usually the lowly Macaroni and Cheese.  Tonight I celebrate with it.  Loyal, effective, simple, dependable. Like it’s cousin, the Top Ramen, the humblest are the Kings of the Trail.  Best Calories/$ ratio, able to be mixed with anything. Truly Democratic in the best sense.  (Other Democrats could earn a lot of respect by imitating trail food instead on trying to be a free banquet for All.)  All hail the Mac and Cheese.  I use all my extra’s for it.  The last of the olive oil, protein powder, etc.  I had what I thought was two packets of cheese from some pizza place, and I add those.  Turns out one was a medium size pizza’s worth of red pepper, but I throw it in anyway.  I eat this and more, including another Knorrs pasta and rice / broccoli and cheese meal, plus most of tomorrow’s trail food.  The actual last meal is grits in the morning.  For the first time in 7 months, I don’t wash my pot right after I eat.  Last time I check the maps, last time I do this, last time I do that.  Everything very deliberate.  All very routine, all very ritualistic, all very melancholy.

I’m a failure. I won’t be able to finish the trail this year, I just know it.  I had envisioned finishing the trail in snow shoes if I had to, like some modern day Grizzly Adams.  What does I marathoner get if he only runs 24 out of 26 miles?  Nothing.  No tee shirt, no cheering crowds.  Just sore feet and a long walk home.

I do take one big risk in the morning, and hike out wearing my dry sleeping wools and socks.  If I don’t make it out today, I’m at risk for freezing at night.  But I do, and cover the remaining 16 miles before dark.  No one at the trail head to even take a last picture.  The After picture, to compare with the Before shot taken at the Mexican border.  2,476 miles accomplished, but not the 2660 required.  For what?  It may take awhile to answer that.

 

Some Scenes from the trail:

A small lake tucked into a fold in the side of a mountain.  This is the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.  Characterized by small, high elevation lakes instead of large lakes in the valleys.  Many look so remote they may go years without a human visitor.

Tracks in snow.  Elk and deer for sure.  What I believe to be a mountain lion, complete with the inverted M.   A pair of odd tracks that look bird like in their delicateness but maybe 4″ long, following the trail for about a mile. Kind of like an inverted Peace symbol without the outer circle.  One or the other going of trail now and then to visit something I cannot fathom, but just walking along like an animal, not a bird.

Snow covered tree tops poking up out of the lower elevation clouds, like weird hair follicles on a cotton candy scalp.

Tops of mountain ranges painted in snow, as if God only had a 6″ brush and only gave them one swipe each.

A hillside jumble of rocks, done up in three tone gray scale.  Some facets pure white.  Other dark in the low angle sun, others illuminated.  If it was not for the occasional bit of vegetation to provide scale, it looks just like a scanning electron microscope photo of metal after a fatigue failure. (OK, not everyone would jump to that comparison).

Last camp, as I first approach it. Perfect little fairy home surrounded by sentential  fir trees.  Safe, secure, pure in its uniform whiteness.

Same camp, next morning.  Defiled by only a few hours of human habitation.  Snow stomped down, dirt kicked up, discarded coffee grounds and human waste strewn about.  It is such a terrible sight in comparison.  The only solace is that in a few days of rain or a few hours of snow, nature will heal it.

The first river ford.  Water never ceasing.  Alive and noisy. Powerful. How deep?  How fast?  How cold?  The trail is clearly visible on the other side, so it is possible.  But today?  For me?  Only one way to find out.

The precarious camp site right on the trail.  If you saw the photo of how it looked in the morning light, you would never believe it was the best option at the edge of darkness.

The rain drenched hitch hiker at Steven’s Pass.  Trail trash?  Vagabond?  Criminal looking for his next victim or running from his last?  Better not stop.  Better safe than sorry.  No reason to get involved.

 

Dear Gentle Readers,

Thank you for being my Constant Companions throughout these journeys, the foot paths and mental excursions.  Having you to talk to day by day has been an enormous help, even if you could not always hear my voice.  In the next few days I’ll post one more time to summarize, and to invite you to join me on the next journey, whatever that may be.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Yeti.