October 6, 2016 Mile 2508.1-2540.7 32.6 miles White Chuck, Baekus, Chetwot, Sitkum, Kennedy, Glacier, Pumice: the named creeks and rivers stack their wild beauty one against the other until I am at maximum capacity and can hold no more. When I reach Fire Creek, I have to search for a while to find a place where I can cross without getting my feet wet. Wet feet in this freezing cold would be dangerous. I stop for breakfast after a big climb up Fire Creek Pass, at a campsite protected on the downslope side by a thick boscage of conifers. The wind slices through anyway, gently but persistently cutting to the bone. By the time I’ve pulled my breakfast out of my pack I’m already shivering. The sparker on my Jetboil won’t light, and my thumb is too cold to flick the lighter. I do, eventually, and the oatmeal, when it’s ready, is a hot sugary glop that tastes like paste but warms me up a little at first. I drop some Peanut M&Ms in to give it some variety. By the time I’m halfway through, it’s already gone cold from that merciless slow wind. It cuts through my gloves, it cuts through my shoes and socks. It can’t get through my down jacket, but it knows exactly where the baffles end, and it meets me there. My hand clutches the spoon with a dumb fist, unable to clench or unclench. My feet throb with an almost incapacitating pain. Roadside shows up as I’m finishing breakfast. He waits for me to pack up, but doesn’t want to stop for breakfast himself. It’s too damn cold, he says. He’ll just eat some bars. As I start to move, I have a moment of overwhelming pain as blood comes back to my feet—it feels like a stubbed toe, but all over the foot up to the ankle—then relief. My hands stay cold. We descend to Milk Creek. A light drizzle begins. I’m actually in disbelief that it’s still warm enough for rain. The trail, already muddy, becomes slick and difficult to climb. Roadside has disappeared from sight somewhere behind me again, and now I’m scrambling along a slope that seems like it must have been neglected for years, it is in such poor condition. I’ve lost the trail. After climbing over piles of logs, somehow I ended up on a game trail. Other hikers did the same thing—I can see their footprints in the mud, which only makes it more like a human trail—but I’m quite sure now that this isn’t the real trail. It’s flat against the slope and petering out. There’s a copse of trees just ahead where I can stop and check my maps. I scramble over the slope to more level ground. Uh oh. The GPS isn’t working. This happened once before, deep in a canyon in the Sierras where my phone couldn’t find a GPS satellite. It was fine then, because I was still on the trail. Now, I’m lost in the wilderness without a map. My gut tells me the trail is uphill. If it were below me, I would have seen it on the open slope. Above me there were trees for a trail to hide in. I decide to give that a shot before I backtrack. I scramble a little ways uphill, climb over a fallen log, and there it is, my heavily trampled, muddy path. I wonder whether Roadside will have the same trouble. A series of muddy switchbacks begin down a steep canyon slope. At the third switchback, the trail is interrupted by a gap of open space fifteen feet across. It looks like the canyon wall simply collapsed and took the trail with it. A frayed yellow rope hangs down from a tree trunk above the gap. Did someone put that there so we can swing across?! I doubt that it could hold my weight, even if I could reach it. I decide to backtrack. These are switchbacks, so I might be able to find a place to climb down from above the other side of the gap. Sure enough, there’s a section of heavily trafficked muddy ledges leading from the switchback above to the switchback below. They look super slippery, so I cautiously lower myself to the first step, then the second. I find a secure third step, still about 8 feet above the lower switchback, and then my feet start to slide. They move at a snail’s pace, and I hope for a moment that the mud will congeal in the treads of my shoes and stop. They don’t. I stab my poles hard into the ground. My feet keep sliding. There is plenty of time to reach out and grab something, but there is nothing to grab. I look down at the long drop to the trail, then to the canyon slope below it. There is nothing I can do to stop this fall. I sure hope I stop at the trail. I sure hope I don’t break a bone on the way down. “Whelp,” I say out loud, “here we go.” My feet slide off the ledge. My poles twist in the mud and one of them hits me in the face. I land painfully on my tailbone and my right arm twists tightly against the pole, still stuck in the mud behind me. I strike the next ledge with my hip, slide against the abrasive pebbles and roots, and land hard upon the trail, all tangled up with my backpack and poles. My tailbone and hip are bruised, my wrist and shoulder are tweaked, but nothing is broken or dislocated. Miraculously, I am mostly just shaken and muddy. I untangle myself and slowly stand up. I look around to see if anything has fallen out of my pack. Nothing I can see. I get ready to hike and realize that one of my hiking poles is shorter than the other. Dammit, that’s the fifth pair of poles I’ve broken on this trip! I can still see it sticking out where I stabbed it into the mud. These poles telescope, and at full extension the broken pole is just long enough to still be usable. The rain clears. A pair of hikers, male and female, has their gear spread on the ground. “You’ve almost got some sun,” I say. The clouds have thinned enough to brighten the slope a little. “Yeah, this is more than we’ve had in four days,” says the guy. “Gotta try to dry this stuff out.” I’m not sure anything is going to dry, but it reminds me that I should take a break while it’s a little warmer out. I’ve been pushing myself hard all day and it’s been too cold to stop. My goal for today is the Suiattle River, but all the mud and the deeply rutted trail has forced me to slow my steps, but it has been no less difficult for that. I am falling further and further behind. We chat a little more and they tell me they plan to camp near the Suiattle, too, a piece of information I store away in case Roadside doesn’t catch up; I haven’t seen him since breakfast, and I prefer to camp near other humans when I can. Then I move on to a brook just ahead and stop for a snack. I keep it fairly short—the clouds close up again within minutes and the drizzle returns, then the couple passes me with a wave and a smile—and then I continue on, wearily, down to Milk Creek, then back up more switchbacks. Washington has a steep, hard rhythm. Drop 3000, cross a creek, back up 3000. Up and down on a ridge for a while, then back down, back up again. It seems like the last few days have each had over 10,000 ft of ascent, all told. I’m impressed I can keep it up, but it takes its toll. The rain continues late into the day, and I slip and slide down chutes that barely even look like trail anymore. I am a muddy mess from all the slips and falls I’ve taken, but at least it’s just on the outside of my rain gear. The clouds lift a little, and I can see a maze of peaks in every direction, many of them capped and dusted with snow.
I start the last plunge of the evening, down the switchbacks that will take me to the Suiattle River. Good thing, too, because dusk is falling to darkness quickly. I pass the couple, and then they pass me a while later when I have to stop for water again, and then I don’t see them again. These switchbacks are endless. I pull out my headlamp, and by the time I reach the bottom it’s fully dark. The trail opens up to sidewalk width as I walk west, which is a comfort in the total darkness. It makes me feel like I am close to a trailhead and other hikers might be near. I don’t know if that’s true, though. It’s warmer here in the river valley. I check my map and see that I am walking parallel to the river, which I can hear faintly off to the right. The trail swings wide to the west, then back to the east, adding several miles to cross at a bridge. There are comments on the map that say it can be crossed here, but I’m not about to attempt that in the dark. I follow the trail. Soon I’m in an old grove of giant Cedars. They are as thick across as Sequoias, and probably as tall, although my headlamp only pierces a dozen feet or so above my head. It is a great cathedral, dark and majestic, and I walk carefully so as not to disturb the hallowed silence. The trees themselves have personalities, imposing, stern, and compassionate like enormous silent monks. I’m still hoping to see the couple or some other hikers and camp near humans, but I can’t even find a decent campsite. The map tells me I am passing plenty, but I can’t see them in the dark. Finally I come to the bridge. There should be four more campsites here, but I can’t even see a side trail leading out to them. There are four more sites on the other side; maybe someone is camped there. I decide to cross. I start up one side of the bridge in the pitch black. It’s a long ramp made entirely of wood planks, with a railing on both sides. I can hear the water rushing farther below than I would have expected. I try to peer through the railing to see the water below, but the beam from my headlamp disappears into a void. I get a crazy idea in my head: what if I just hiked all night? I could get to Stehekin sometime tomorrow morning and just wait for Roadside there. I doubt he’s still hiking anyway; I’ve been hiking in the dark for a couple hours now. And wouldn’t that be a story, to say that I hiked through the night? The bridge just keeps going. At first I think that it means the river is wide, but then I realize that the bridge is probably made high and wide so it doesn’t get washed out in spring surges. I reach the other side, climb uphill to a junction, and turn right along the PCT. The trail gets rocky. It’s tiring on my ankles. Big, golden leaves fall from the trees and spin down to the ground. In my headlamp, they dance with a fairy-like elegance. I continue like this for a few miles, all the time telling myself that I’m going to hike all night, until finally I decide that I’m just too tired. I check my watch. It’s 10pm. I find a campsite among hardwood trees next to the bluffs, set up camp, and climb into my tent. I wonder where Roadside is. It’s my last thought as my head hits my inflatable pillow.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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