Mile 2,489.4 to Mile 2,508.10

Mile 2,489.4 to Mile 2,508.10

by | Aug 8, 2015 | Hikertrash Cont...Part 2, Pacific Crest Trail

Saturday, August 8, 2015
Day 8: Mile 2,489.4 to Mile 2,508.10
Miles: 18.7
Total Miles: 2,508.10
Miles to Go: 150.81

We may have had a crappy night’s sleep in our cramped, uneven tree hole, but we awoke in an exceedingly good mood considering. With only one tent to pack up and a chill in the air, it did not take us long to get back on the trail.

We arrived at Lake Sally Anne around breakfast time, to discover it was packed! With tents crammed into every available space, we all agreed that trying to find a campsite after dark would have been a nightmare. As we followed the PCT around the east side of the lake, we watched in disbelieve as dozens and dozens of campers emerged from seemingly nowhere to make breakfast, drink coffee, and get ready for another day in the backcountry. Suddenly, we were that much more gratefully for our solitary little hole in the gnarled trees.

Side trails crisscrossed and joined the PCT at random as we passed Ward’s Pass and Dishpan Gap. There were no roads marked on our maps, but from the number of hikers and trails, we assumed there must be some nearby.

It wasn’t hard to see why the area was so popular; everywhere we looked was postcard perfect and just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, it did.

Coming over a gentle rise, we found ourselves entering the Glacier Peak Wilderness. In front of us, the trail sloped down through a giant meadow and disappeared into the thick pine forests at the base of Indian Head Peak. Beyond the grassy peak (which was sadly devoid of the glaciers marked on my map) a snowcapped Mount Baker teased us in the distance. Luckily, we would get to hike around Mount Baker, before we had to veer off of the trail for the fire closure.

We stopped at Indian Head Creek for a snack, and again a few miles up the trail to simply drink in the beauty that surrounded us.

My brother-in-law constantly hounded Bearclaw and me, “I don’t know why you guys always have to have a destination when you’re out in nature. Why not just sit on a rock for two or three hours and enjoy what’s in front of you, now.”

Though the determined and goal driven side of me balked at this (gotta’ make those miles yo), the rest of me had to agree; life was too short to pass all this beauty by.

As hard as I try, I have always found it difficult to be present, truly present. My mind is always thinking about the “what if’s” and the “should do’s” and the “wouldn’t it be cool if’s.” I have an excellent imagination, and I hate to say it but most of my time is spent a million miles from reality. Maybe, that’s why I liked hiking. It connected me to the present, even when my mind was far, far away.

We ate lunch near White Pass, lingering in the August sun.

From White Pass to Red Pass was hell for me, and for nearly two miles, I wished I truly was a million miles away, and not just in my head.

The trail gently climbed up the side of a mountain, through meadow and grass. There was nothing wrong with the trail itself, or with the views. The problem was me. There is an angle at which my vertigo goes into overdrive, and the mountainside we were walking on was at that angle.

The downhill side of the trail began to swim in my vision. The path was suddenly far too narrow. I felt nauseous. In my head, I was almost certainly going to fall off the mountain at any moment. My legs felt like Jell-O.

Hiking ahead, Krav was oblivious to my distress. Bearclaw however, was acutely aware of my “height” issues.

“Even if you did fall,” he assured me, “you would stop in like five feet. It’s not that steep here.”

Logically I knew this, but when I start feeling like this, my brain tells me I will spontaneously and without reason, fall, and I will not stop. I will just keep on falling and falling forever, into nothing.

“Oh no, really, I’m a badass hiker,” she said unconvincingly as she clutched her husband’s backpack and whimpered in fear of the big bad mountains. I mean seriously…

I’ve been slowly trying to come to terms with this fear/issue because it’s ridiculous (even to me.) I’m a grown ass woman.

“Want to hold onto my pack?” Bearclaw asked knowingly.

“No, I’m okay,” I mumbled, on the verge of tears. Every step was a fight with myself.

I am happy to report that I made it to the top of Red Pass on my own, with no help. I was fighting back tears and shaking like a leaf, but I made it and, unsurprisingly, I did not fall off the side of the trail and tumble all the way down to the bottom of the mountain on the way.

The view on the other side of Red Pass was worth every single scary step. Mouth open, I completely forgot how terrified I had been moments earlier. A broad, scree-strewn basin lazily curved around White Chuck Cinder Cone to our left and disappeared into the valley beyond. In front of us, stark, barren peaks rose in every direction. Off in the distance, the White Chuck Glacier sparkled in the mid-day sun.

This was worth a sit, and an attempt at being in the moment. We did not, however, sit for two or three hours, because, you know, miles.

Dropping into the basin, we were all in awe. Can you believe this place? Could this get any better?

Turning into the Chuck River Valley, the trail was all downhill as we entered back into the forest. Our goal had been to make it up and over the first of many big climbs by nightfall, but alas, we had stopped one too many times to take in the scenery.

We made camp next to the milky Baekos Creek. As we ate dinner, a couple through hiking the trail decided to join us in camp. She was Purple, on account of her purple hiking skirt. For the life of me, I cannot remember his name. Exhausted, we climbed into bed, where, instead of being present, I worried about how scary the next few passes would be, and whether or not I was up to the task.

Entrance to Glacier Peak Wilderness

Entrance to Glacier Peak Wilderness

Meadow Flowers

Meadow Flowers

I'm Scared of These Angles

I’m Scared of These Angles

View from Red Pass

View from Red Pass

Ridge Lake to Small Tarn Mile 2,417.56

Ridge Lake to Small Tarn Mile 2,417.56

by | Aug 2, 2015 | Hikertrash Cont...Part 2, Pacific Crest Trail

Sunday, August 2, 2015
Day 2: Ridge Lake to Small Tarn Mile 2,417.56
Miles: 19.58
Total Mile: 2417.56
Miles to Go: 248.67

“TIME TO GET UP!” Krav yelled from his tent. It was 6:00 a.m.

I’d totally forgotten about the Krav alarm! I rolled over and popped out of the tent, pleasantly surprised my feet, calves, and hips had made a more-or-less full recovery.

I sat down cross-legged on a bare piece of ground and started to make breakfast. To my right, the mountains the trail would be contouring around were awash in the soft peach glow of the early morning sun. To my left, in typical hikertrash style, Krav was making himself breakfast from bed. Behind him, a pika scampered up a large half-moon shaped boulder in the talus field and greeted the new day with a piercing “PEEP!”

Oh, my God, a pika! I’m of the opinion there is no cuter animal in the forests of the Northwest. Hell, even marmots are homely in comparison! (Sorry, marmots, I still love you, but we both know it’s true.)

Although the American Pika was denied federal endangered species status in 2010, their populations are dwindling. Because pikas’ habitat is limited exclusively to rocky talus fields in high mountain ecosystems, they’ve adapted to a very specific set of living conditions. The excessive heat and mild winters brought on by global warming have been lethal to pika populations across the Northwest. I felt lucky just to be seeing this little guy.

“There’s a pika!” I whispered to Bearclaw and Krav.

“Ha! It looks like a furry burrito with legs.” Krav laughed when he finally spotted it.

Abandoning breakfast, I grabbed my camera and every so slowly tiptoed towards the rock pile. I made it three steps before the pika let out one loud warning “peep” to all his little pika friends and disappeared beneath a rock. Even though I’ve gone from trying to pet every animal I see, to simply trying to sneak up and photograph them, my ongoing attempt to integrate myself into the wildlife population has thus far been a monumental failure. Wildlife: 10,482 Hummingbird: 0.

Passed Ridge Lake, the trail clung precariously to the steep wildflower filled mountainsides of the Chikamin Range. With every turn, new views of pristine alpine lakes nestled in dark green forests, and valleys that seemed to go on forever, spread out before us. Joe Lake especially caught my eye. If I’d have known yesterday how spectacular it was, I would’ve hiked the extra two miles past Ridge Lake and camped there instead! Within the first three miles of trail, Bearclaw and I had stopped to take so many pictures that Krav was nowhere in sight.

I’ve always found it interesting how all-encompassing the phrase, “Hike Your Own Hike” really is— from gear and clothing preferences, to how you interpret and choose to apply LNT principles, to the simple act of how you walk a trail. Hiking is one of those things that there is no “one way” to do. You can ask a thousand people how they hike, and you will get a thousand answers. Take for instant Krav, Krav knows he is at his best when it’s cool. In the morning, he gets on the trail, and he is gone within minutes. You can’t catch him, very few people could. The hotter it gets, the slower he becomes. His solution is to “kill” as many miles as he can, as quickly as he can. On the other hand, Bearclaw and I are slow and steady all day long. At some point around noon, we catch up to Krav for lunch, and for hours after that, we will be ahead of him. As soon as it cools off in the evening, he’ll blow by us again, and we won’t see him until camp. Besides the fact that we beat him to camp, today was no different.

When Bearclaw and I stopped for a morning break on a low saddle above the Park Lakes, we asked a German hiker heading in the opposite direction if he’d seen Krav.

“Yes, I saw a man that fits that description about twenty minutes ago. He was going quite fast.” Yup that would be Krav!

Even though Bearclaw and I picked up speed as we headed down the tight switchbacks leading around the edge of the stunning Spectacle Lake, it was nearly one o’clock when we finally caught up to Krav, cooling off in a pool halfway up Delate Creek Falls.

“It’s warm!” He assured us, as we crossed the footbridge below the falls.

I had my doubts, but it was hot enough that dropping my pack and splashing around in the shallow pools of a picture perfect waterfall sounded incredibly inviting. Hours passed before we reluctantly pulled ourselves away from the creek and continued up the trail. No one was looking forward to the 2,200-foot climb that would end our day. The trouble was this: we either had a fourteen-mile day with no climb at the end, or we hiked a twenty-mile day to the next available campsite at the top of the climb. There was nothing in between. At breakfast, we’d decided to go big.

At mile 13.9, the campsite at mile fourteen was starting to sound mighty tempting. However, when we arrived, the decision was made for us— a father/ son section hiker duo, Tin Man and Crawfish, had already set up camp there. Twenty miles it was.

Knowing we’d be so exhausted by the time we made camp that the simple task of setting up the tent would feel as complicated as disarming a ticking time bomb, we stopped at the last water source near the base of the climb for dinner.

“Are you ready for this?” Bearclaw asked as we packed up to leave.

I did a quick inventory. My ankles, feet, and hips were killing me, but that meant they still had feeling, which meant I was still alive, so that was a good start. I was exhausted. How we consistently did twenty-five mile days on the trail was a mystery.

“Nope, but let’s do this,” I replied.

“All you have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other,” I told myself as we headed up the trail. I used the waterfall thundering off the glaciers of Lemah Peak on the far side of the valley as a measuring stick.

Every few switchbacks, I would come to grinding halt to see how much progress we’d made. Ever so slowly, “We’re almost halfway up the falls,” turned into, “We’re at the top of the falls,” turned into, “Yay, now we’re in line with the lower glacier.” Things were going fine until, half a mile from camp, I was reunited with my nemesis the fallen log. This particular log was one of those logs that was impossible to go around, impossible to climb under, and just the wrong height for easily going over.

“Oh hello, exhausted little Hummingbird….Did you miss me? Muhahahaha!”

Stupid, log.

Painstakingly lifting one leg over, I lay there like a cheetah hanging out on a tree limb, both legs and arms dangling over the sides, a good six inches off the ground.

“I’m stuck,” I mumbled to Bearclaw, my face smashed up against the bark, “Can you push me?”

He reached out and gingerly gave me nudge until I slid like Jell-O off the far side.

“Great, now how am I going to get over?” He looked as exhausted as I felt.

“Just swing your leg over, and I’ll pull you.” I offered pathetically.

Accepting this as a viable solution, he swung his leg over the log. I tugged on his backpack until he too slid over, and we both found ourselves on the winning side.

The log defeated; we stumbled into a sandy campsite tucked alongside a shallow tarn just in time to watch the sun set behind Lemah Peak. The last of the light hadn’t even faded from the horizon before we were fast asleep.

Morning Wildflowers
Morning Wildflowers
View of Spectacle Lake
View of Spectacle Lake
Krav Taking a Dip in the Falls
Krav Taking a Dip in the Falls
Waterfalls & Glaciers!
Waterfalls & Glaciers!
Snoqualmie Pass to Ridge Lake

Snoqualmie Pass to Ridge Lake

by | Aug 1, 2015 | Hikertrash Cont...Part 2, Pacific Crest Trail

Saturday, August 1, 2015
Day 1: Snoqualmie Pass to Ridge Lake
Miles: 7.48
Total Miles: 2,397.98
Miles to Go: 268.25

“Are you guys excited?” My friend Tree asked as she drove us up to Snoqualmie Pass from her parent’s house in Ellensburg.

Truthfully, I was exhausted and stressed. Two nights of little-to-no sleep and I was a barely functioning human being. Mentally, I was still at work. Did I remember to send out that last email to let everyone know I had no intentions of working for the next three weeks? What if there was a catastrophic failure in a client’s auto-campaign while I was gone that brought down Facebook and society as we knew it? Ha! Who was I kidding, I didn’t even remotely have that kind of power! Most days I congratulated myself just for being at my desk by eight with my underwear on the inside of my pants. Still, I didn’t even have my laptop with me. I felt naked and vulnerable.

I was also nervous. Could we hike eighteen miles a day? Our “training” had involved two weekend backpack trips and three whole visits to the gym, where I’d spent thirty minutes pretending I remembered how to swim laps. Next to the lane of Master’s Swim Club members torpedoing across the length of the pool, I’d had all the grace and stamina of a giraffe caught up in a flash flood. Oh well, as Bearclaw liked to say, “Nothing gets you in shape for backing, except backpacking.”

Speaking of backpacking, I’d packed our backpacks in less than an hour because there just hadn’t been enough time. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten something important. During the entire drive to Ellensburg, I’d been going over it in my mind. Tent? Check. Sleeping bags? Check. Sleeping pads? Check. When I got to the end of the list, I would start all over again. I was driving myself insane. What I needed was to disconnect, to decompress.

And then, it dawned on me; we were headed back to the trail! In less than an hour, we would be at home in nature, and virtually nothing I was currently stressed about would matter. My entire life was about to be pared back to the essentials – food, water, shelter. The trail was about to kick my ass in the best possible way and remind me what was really important.

“Where are you supposed to be meeting your friend Krav?” Tree asked as she pulled into the parking lot of the only gas station in town.

“Just look for a tall skinny guy with dark hair and no beard,” I responded. Krav had started a week before us, picking up at the Snowgrass trailhead where snow had forced us to get off the trail in 2013. As Bearclaw and I had already hiked that section last summer, we’d told him we would meet him in Snoqualmie.

Snoqualmie Pass was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village; there were only a few places he could be. My bet was he was at one of the only three eateries in town. What would it be like hiking with Krav after so much time had passed? Was he the same guy? How much had he changed? How long would it take him to be like, “Oh my God, I hiked with these people for how many months?”

We found him sitting at the thru-hiker table at the Aardvark. He walked over and gave us a huge hug. His once jet-black hair was now a deep shade of chestnut brown, but other than that, he appeared to be the same old Krav.

As Krav unpackaged his Snoqualmie resupply box, he filled Bearclaw and me in on the last hundred and twenty miles he’d hiked.

“Two nights ago, I was listening to some music while setting up my tent in the dark when I started to feel like I wasn’t alone. I looked left, nothing. Looked right, nothing. Looked back to the left and all I could see in the light of my headlamp were a cougar’s head and eyes. He was just staring at me.”

“Really? Crazy… What did you do?”

“Dove into my tent and started yelling until it went away.” Krav smiled. God, how I’d missed this guy!

“It’s too bad Bearcat couldn’t be here.” He sighed. We all agreed.

By the time Krav had eaten brunch and was packed up and ready to go, it was early afternoon. We pulled out the maps, decided that if we could make it eight miles to the top of the climb out of Snoqualmie, we would be doing good, and hit the trail.

“Where is the trail from here anyway?” Bearclaw asked as we headed down the side of the highway.

I pulled out my Halfmile App.

“We are at PCT mile 2,390.64,” I responded giddily.

“You’ve missed that, haven’t you?” Bearclaw smiled, shaking his head in amusement at the obvious joy I was getting from consulting my GPS.

Had I ever! But not for reasons you, or he, might think. My love of maps and miles had nothing to do with my anal retentive need to keep us on schedule, or even a desire to know where I was. It was deeper than that. In front of me, two hundred and seventy miles of trail lay at my feet. Behind me, the trail stretched out over horizon-after-distant-horizon, all the way to Mexico. With that knowledge, came a great sense of freedom.

On weekends, when we hiked out-and-backs and loops, there were always a finite number of miles, a foreseeable end. This loop was sixteen miles; that loop was twenty. We always ended up precisely where we started, right back at the car. Not on a long trail, not on the PCT. On the PCT, we could hike for months and never reach our destination, and even if we did, we could always just turn around and hike back. There was absolutely nothing stopping me but my own fear and insecurities. Oh, and inevitably running out of money. For some reason, this thought put me in a complete state of Zen.

At the trailhead sign where the PCT diverged from the highway, we stopped for a few quick, “We’re back!” photos before excitedly ducking into the forest. We were back on the PCT!

The excitement wore off approximately three switchbacks in when my calves and thighs began to burn. We needed to gain 2,40O feet of elevation over the next seven miles? Ughhh… I probably should have made time for a fourth trip to the gym.

“We must have gone at least a mile and gained five hundred feet.” I thought, stopping to catch my breath and consult Halfmile. Or, you know, just a third of a mile and two hundred feet. This was going to be a long, slow, painful, ass-kicking.

A few miles in, the trail entered a talus-filled clearing, where I happily stopped to snap photos of a snowcapped Mount Saint Helen’s trying hard to still be visible through the smoky haze.

“You guys picked the hottest time of the day to climb this mountain, didn’t you?” A girl with long dreadlocks smiled happily as she and a friend breezed by us on their way back to town.

Fond memories of hellishly hot climbs out of Wrightwood, Cajon Pass, Castle Crag, Belden, Sierra City, Saied Valley, and Crater Lake, came flooding back to me. We did seem to have an uncanny knack for waiting until the hottest part of the day to climb. Were we sadists or did we just like getting sweaty and stinky? I’d already caught a whiff of my armpits, and I was well on my way to sporting a scent I like to refer to as “Eau du Hikertrash.” I am such a classy lady.

“Yeah, we have a tendency to do this kind of thing a lot.” I sighed.

As they passed by, I tried to spare their nostrils by keeping my elbows glued to my sides. I looked like a T-Rex, holding trekking poles.

Nearly to the top of the climb, I sadly realized that even though we’d been hiking for hours, I’d barely paid any attention to the trail. Instead, I’d been making a list of things I needed to do when I got back to work and prioritizing it for efficiency. No matter how hard I tried to turn it off, I couldn’t. It was as if the constant buzz of the I-90, echoing off the steep mountains around us, was tethering me to reality.

Eventually, the trail leveled out as it wrapped around a smooth rock ledge, passed over a short ridge, and promptly ducked behind a thick rock shelf. Just like that, the persistent din of traffic speeding towards Seattle, and all my anxiety was gone. I was officially on the trail.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Bearclaw.

“Hear what?” He asked, pausing a moment to listen.

“Silence,” I responded, closing my eyes and reveling in it.

We finally arrived at Ridge Lake around six, shocked to discover there were already fifty or so tents crammed into every campsite available. Every side trail we went up led to another tent. It took a lot of searching, but we finally found the last spot: a meadowy patch of grass, just big enough for two tents, hanging high above the serene lake.

Using the last bit of energy we had, we made our way down to the lakeshore for water. The lake was easily two feet lower than normal. Working our way through a muddy flat, we made our way to the rocks that lined the far side of the lake.

“Be careful when you waddle over here that you don’t fall in the lake Hummingbird,” Krav advised as he watched me work my way towards the spot he and Bearclaw had found to sit and filter water.

“Waddle? Did you just say waddle?” I asked indignantly. “That doesn’t have very nice connotations you know…”

“Well, you do kind of waddle.” He replied with a cocky grin.

Aww, I preferred to think of it as more of an ‘out-of-shape hiker shuffle.’

“Hey man, I am a Hummingbird, not a Penguin.” If I hadn’t used what little energy I’d had to waddle down to the lake to get water, I would have gone the extra four feet and pushed him in. But as it was, my hips and my feet were too sore. So instead, I filled up my Camelback and waddled back up the hill to bed.

Reunited!
Reunited!
Over the Talus and into the Woods...
Over the Talus and into the Woods…
The Wall that Blocked out the World
The Wall that Blocked out the World
Ridge Lake
Ridge Lake
Mirror Lake to Snoqualmie Pass

Mirror Lake to Snoqualmie Pass

by | Aug 23, 2014 | Hikertrash Cont... Part 1, Pacific Crest Trail

Saturday, August 23, 2014
Day 9: Mirror Lake to Snoqualmie Pass
Miles: 9.1
Miles to Go: 0

It was hard to be motivated to get out of bed knowing we were only nine miles from the end of the trail. I wanted to return to reality now, about as little as I had when we’d left Packwood after the storm. I had no desire to return to real life because somehow, it never seemed real. It always felt like something was missing. Hiking felt real, traveling felt real, adventuring felt real, living life to its absolute fullest felt real.

Work was really just something I did so I could afford the real moments. It seemed wrong to me that we had to buy our own free time.

At least since we’d gotten off the trail, I’d found a job I enjoyed doing and was working on a side project I absolutely loved. For that I was grateful. Most people I knew would say they tolerated what they did for work at best. I found that sad. If we’re lucky, we get ninety years on this marvelous planet and a third of that time is spent sleeping. It seemed like such a waste to spend two-thirds of the time one was awake miserable. Society felt like giant mouse-trap: you need a car to get to work so you can make money to pay for the car that got you there and the house you never spend time in because you’re too busy making money to pay for it. Sometimes I wonder if we just do things because that’s the way things have always been done and the system wouldn’t work if we collectively believed they could be done any differently.

What would happen if everyone suddenly realized they could be happy with just what was in the backpacks on their back? Maybe I needed to start a hikertrash revolution.

Meh. That was enough of that. I was giving myself a headache. I shook my head. I couldn’t dwell on these things. They made me crazy, and quite frankly, crazier was the last thing I needed to be. Sighing, I crawled out of my sleeping bag and prepared for the inevitable.

Besides, we needed to be off the mountain before the ultra-runners came through. The runner we’d met on break yesterday had said Mirror Lake was a popular destination for well-wishers to come watch the runners go by and by midafternoon it would likely be packed.

The trail was still damp from last night’s rain as we made our way over the small hill behind the lake. From that point on, we knew it would be downhill all the way into town. With gravity pushing us along, we hiked fast. There was really no reason to prolong the inevitable; it’s always less painful to rip a Band-Aid off quickly, right?

The trail hugged the side of a steep forested hill for a good many miles as it worked its way down into Olallie Meadow. Passed Olallie Meadow, we crossed one forest service road and then another, before dipping under a power line. Ugh, power lines, gross. I was fully aware that I was a hypocrite for that because, the first chance I got, I had every intention of showering with water heated by the very power surging through those lines.

“Do you hear that?” Bearclaw asked, “It sounds like cars on a highway.”

“That’s because the I-90 is less than a quarter mile east.” I sighed.

Civilization was nigh. I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around the base of a tree and scream, “No! No! You can’t make me! Save me tree!!” And yet, my feet kept moving me ever forward.

By the time we reached Lodge Lake, the trail was a highway in its own right, as weekend warriors and day hikers made their own escape into the wilderness. It wasn’t long before we popped over a rise and ended up on a ski run.

We were halfway down the ski hill on our way into Snoqualmie when we met a couple headed up the road toward us.

“Are you thru hikers?” They asked. I smiled. Every single conversation we’d had over the last nine days had started with those same four magical words.

We gave them the low down, letting them know that unfortunately, we were hiking our last few hundred yards of trail. They had a cabin a million miles from civilization and had spent years guiding pack expeditions in the backcountry, they felt our pain at the impending return to civilization.

The man looked at us thoughtfully. “I have a poem I think you might enjoy. It’s called Lost. It was written by a man named David Wagoner and was based on an ancient Native American teaching.”

His gaze flew over Snoqualmie and deep into the steep mountains beyond as he recited this poem from memory,

“Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”

I’ve said it a hundred times before, and I will say it a hundred times again: The trail has a funny way of being able to read you and knowing exactly what to do, or who to put in your path, to make everything all right.

It didn’t matter if I was standing in the middle of a towering forest of pines, at the top of a mountain pass, had my toes submerged in the sand and surf of a deserted beach, or was lying on the sun-baked earth of the desert staring at the sparkling night sky, I never felt lost in nature. In nature everything had its place, everything had its purpose, and if I let it, it simply invited me into its rhythm. I became a small part of the big picture. Civilization was out of sync with the rhythm of nature, I wasn’t part of something bigger, and I didn’t have my place. I was lost. Out here though, I always knew where I was. I was “here” and “here” was home. It didn’t matter how long I had to be away, it would always welcome me back.

We ordered lunch at the stand in front of the gas station and plopped down at a picnic table to wait for Trenchstar to arrive with our car. When our order was ready, the girl behind the counter looked at us and asked the age-old question, “Are you guys thru-hikers? If you are there’s a free can of beer with your name on it.”

“Yes, we are,” I responded without hesitation.

Not because I really wanted a frosty beer but because I’d had a trail epiphany. You don’t need to be thru-hiking to be a thru-hiker, just like you don’t need to be a hiker to be hikertrash. These things, and where you call home, are more a state of mind than anything.

Miles Left to Canada: 258 — Stay tuned for the end of the story Summer 2015!

An Old PCT Assurance
An Old PCT Assurance
The forest breathes.
The forest breathes.
The Forest Knows Where You Are.
The Forest Knows Where You Are.
Another Old PCT Assurance
Another Old PCT Assurance
Buesch Lake to Two Lakes

Buesch Lake to Two Lakes

by | Aug 17, 2014 | Hikertrash Cont... Part 1, Pacific Crest Trail

Sunday, August 17, 2014
Day 3: Buesch Lake to Two Lakes (2322.8)
Miles: 13.8
Miles to Go: 79.2

Oh, trail sleep! How I had missed trail sleep: no trains, no sirens, no cars, no heater kicking on, no cat purring, no streetlight shining in my window, no stresses keeping me up. Just complete exhaustion and pure, unadulterated silence. Nearly every night on the trail was the best sleep of my life. No wonder I always woke up with so much energy.

I may have had a ton of energy from the waist up but my sissy little weekend warrior legs had no intention of cooperating with the upper half of me. They were unaccustomed to twenty-five mile days now. Popping a handful of Vitamin I (Ibuprofen) with a cup of Choffee, I was secretly thankful we only had fourteen miles to go to get to Twin Lakes.

Our morning was mellow, as we passed by lake after lake, and trail junction after trail junction. The backpacking possibilities seemed endless, yet we didn’t see a single person for over five miles. At the Twin Sisters Lake trail junction, we finally stumbled across a group of three boys out for the weekend. They’d spent the night at one of the Twin Sisters in the Gifford Pinchot Nation Forest and were headed to Fryingpan Lake.

“Are you thru-hiking?” They asked.

As Bearclaw answered, I thought about Gifford Pinchot and his other namesake, Pinchot Pass in the Sierras. Dear God how’d I’d hated that pass and the never-ending climb to get over it. In fact, I do believe I’d hated it so much I’d wanted to build a time machine to go back and kick Gifford Pinchot in the crotch. At the time, I’d had no idea who Gifford Pinchot was. A Canadian born, Mexican raised, U.S. alien, my American history was admittedly sub-par.

As it turned out, we probably wouldn’t have nearly as much forest left if it weren’t for Mr. Pinchot. First Chief and Founder of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford believed in the conservation of the nation’s forest resources through proper scientific management, planned use, and renewal. A good man, he was vehemently against clear-cutting and large-scale logging operations. Although he was a conservationist, his conservation efforts were utilitarian as he focused on the responsible harvest of the forest to ensure the future of the industry. My hero John Muir, on the other hand, believed in preservation for the sake of wilderness and scenery. I’d read that Muir and Pinchot didn’t much like each other.

It was thanks to the tireless efforts of great men like Muir, with their idealistic views of a land untouched by the hand of greed, that we had National Parks and wilderness areas today— places as untouched and pristine as they had been centuries earlier. We needed wild lands to remind us of our place on this planet, to keep us connected with it. On the other hand, we still needed to build shelters and make paper, and it was men like Gifford Pinchot that realized that these needs would likely always exists and that there would always be greedy hands eager to raze down every tree and every forest in their insatiable lust for more. It was his place to make sure that the forests would still be there for future generations to harvest. I pictured the two as an idealist and a realist, and the world needed both. Suddenly, I felt a little guilty for wanting to kick Pinchot in the crotch; not guilty enough to take back what I said, but guilty nonetheless.

A mile up the trail we crossed into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, making our way through thick green meadows towards the Bumping River. The ford was less than knee deep, the water refreshingly cool as surged around my still sore calves.

On the far side of the river, a European thru-hiker sat in the sun, boiling water in a miniature teapot. She was friendly enough but seemed happy to sit alone in solitude, so we left her and hiked halfway up the next set of switchbacks before sitting down to our own quite lunch of Curried Couscous.

Thankfully the trail leveled out for a mile or so, giving us time to catch our breath before it began to climb again as it rounded Crag Lake high up the hillside. It took us over an hour to get to the top of the mile and a half long climb because two of my favorite things just happened to found along the trail— huckleberries and oxygen. Why is it so hard to get in shape and so easy to get out of it?

The Pacific Crest Trail flirted relentlessly with the western boundary of Mount Rainier National Park. From just past the Laughingwater trail junction to highway 410, it meandered in and out of the park like it owned the place. When we finally made it to the top of the climb, we found ourselves momentarily within the park boundaries, drinking in a spectacular view of a snowcapped Mount Rainier.

Two long miles later, we stumbled down the steep path to Two Lakes. Quickly setting up the tent, we climbed inside. It was only two o’clock.

“I wish I’d brought cards.” I lamented, watching the mosquitos stick their proboscises through the mesh of the tent in their ongoing attempt to suck me dry. Poor Bearclaw just wanted a nap. I’d been idle for ten whole minutes, and it was driving me mad. He handed me the pocket-sized version of Henry David Thoreau’s, “Walden: Or Life in the Woods,” and suggested I read it out loud.

“When I wrote the following pages,” I began, “or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shores of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.” Now here was a man I could relate to. Not only did he love nature and being alone in the woods, but he obviously loved commas as much as, or more, than I did. I sprinkled them liberally, like confetti, and then watched in dismay as editors removed them one by one. To me, it was like watching a baker pick sprinkles off my cupcake. I bet no one ever tried to remove Thoreau’s commas. I read on in awe, not only at the man’s accomplishments and wisdom but at the majestic length of his comma filled sentences. It was the equivalent of thru-hiking with words. And thus began my love affair with Thoreau, nearly alone, in the woods, miles from any people, in a tent we had set up ourselves, on the shores of Two Lakes, in the middle of nowhere, Washington.

Carl Looking for...Berries?
Carl Looking for…Berries?
Mount Rainier, Washington
Mount Rainier, Washington
Trail Selfie!
Trail Selfie!
Mount Rainier Up Close
Mount Rainier Up Close