October 8, 2016 Mile 2569.4-2577.2 7.8 Miles I wake to the patter of rain on my tent. While I wait for the others to wake, I read my book. Eventually I hear some stirring, and Roadside and Afro-Man talking to one another. They’re still in their tents. A third voice speaks up, from the unknown tent, but I can’t understand what he says. Then Roadside says “Zigzag? Yeah, he’s here.” I can’t believe it. I look out of my tent and see Brian’s head sticking out of the other tent. “Hey buddy,” he grins. I can’t believe it. In this big campground, we camped in the same site as Brian. I’m curious why he didn’t hear us talking last night and say something. The answer, it turns out, is that he wasn’t here. He met Hat Trick’s dad last night, and stayed up late partying in their room with a group of PCT hikers who I haven’t met yet. The four of us head to breakfast and leave our packs in our tents. The rain has been a steady pour all morning. The restaurant is warm, dry, and nearly full. We pile into a booth at the back and order coffee. Everyone except Brian orders two full breakfasts, but the waitress doesn’t blink an eye. Brian tells us about some of the other hikers. He can’t remember all of their names, but he tells me Superstar reminds me of Lindsey, my wife (when he points her out walking in front of the restaurant later, I don’t see much resemblance, but I guess there are enough similarities there that I can see why he does). Then he says one of the other names was PIF. Roadside and I both perk up. We haven’t seen PIF since Oregon! After breakfast we pack up and find the laundry machines in a small room with concrete walls painted yellow. Afro-Man heads off somewhere else, so it’s just the three of us. We climb into our rain gear and throw our clothes into the wash. It’s freezing outside, so Roadside and I want the door closed. We probably smell terrible, and it’s warm in the room, so Brian wants the door open. Roadside and I have gotten so used to being cold by this point that we relent and let him keep the door open.
Brian seems stir-crazy. He keeps walking outside to look around and coming back in to see if we’ve made any progress. I can see the drive toward action that hasn’t released yet, and it reminds me of how much slower life moves on the trail. Roadside and I aren’t really talking. We’re both in our own thoughts. For a while I stand in the corner and read my book, but mostly I just let my mind wander freely. Eventually the laundry gets done, and then we have a walk to the Post Office to pick up my resupply. The postal clerk is a young lady, and it strikes me that nearly everyone we’ve interacted with in the town so far has been a young lady. A young lady at the visitor’s center gave us directions to the campground last night, a young lady served us breakfast this morning, and now a young lady is working in the post office. They’ve also been unfailingly kind and pleasant. I’ve seen men and older women around, but I think they’ve all been tourists. Roadside didn’t send himself a resupply here, so we head back over to the store, which is close to where the shuttle will pick us up. Unfortunately, there isn’t much food left in the store. The clerk—also a young woman—explains to us that they usually clear out their inventory at the end of September because they don't have many hikers coming through after that. Roadside grabs what little he can and we head off to the shuttle. It turns out this shuttle doesn’t usually stop at the bakery, but the driver (a male!) has no problem stopping for us. The bakery is famous along the PCT. We stop and fill big paper bags with pastries, giant cinnamon rolls, slices of pizza and pie, tarts, bars, and sweet concoctions that don’t seem to fit any category of food. This is part lunch, part resupply. By the time we have everything and exit the bakery, it’s pouring rain. We hurry back on the shuttle bus and gorge ourselves. I am a skeleton. Where Roadside’s large shirt used to cover his belly, it now hangs nearly to his knees. Inside me, the food hits a vacuum and dissipates without an effect. “Fatties,” says Brian. The rain rolls down the windows in thick branches. The drops aren’t large, there just isn’t any space between them. It sounds as if someone is pouring an endless supply of rice onto the roof. The low points on either side of the road have already formed pools and streams. We get out our rain gear and prepare. Brian’s jacket doesn’t look waterproof or even water resistant. It has baffles like a down puffy, though I suspect it’s a synthetic fill. It looks porous, not like the slicks that Roadside and I are wearing. I’m seriously worried that he isn’t prepared for this hike. I think back to a phone conversation we had a few weeks ago. “We’re hiking fast now,” I said, “Make sure you’re in shape for it.” “I’ve been out for a couple hikes. I did fifteen miles last weekend.” “We’re doing 25 to 30 miles a day now. It’s almost winter. We can’t slow down and wait for you.” “Yeah.” “If it’s raining, we’ll have to keep going.” When we hiked the John Muir Trail together eight years ago, Brian wanted to stop every time it rained. “Yeah, I know.” That was a long time ago, I thought. Maybe he’s become more comfortable with rain. Now, though, I’m less worried about his comfort and more worried about his safety. In this cold weather, rain is no joke. I’m worried about his other preparations, too. At breakfast this morning, he told me that he forgot his tent poles, so he had to buy a new tent. They didn’t have one in Stehekin, so they had to order one from a store on the other end of the lake in Chelan and fly it in by seaplane. The plane was already coming out, but still, I don’t want to know how much that cost him. It turned out to be a child-sized tent, too small for him to fully extend his legs. That’s the tent that he has to sleep in for the next few days. There’s something else that worries me, too. If he can’t keep up and I have to leave him behind, will he understand? I wouldn’t leave him in danger, of course, but I might have to tell him to bail at a road crossing, or he might have to turn around and go back on his own. Maybe I’m just worrying too much. Maybe his jacket really is waterproof, maybe he’s ready to do thirty-mile days, maybe the tent poles were just a fluke. The shuttle arrives and we step out into the pouring rain. Another couple steps out with their backpacks and heads up the dirt road. I pull on my hood and lead the way to the trail. We pass by the green ranger house. A short climb brings us to a lake, fuzzy with rain and partially obscured in mists. This view is something I would never have seen if we had waited for the rain to stop. How much do we miss by protecting ourselves from discomfort? As we hike through the forest, I think about other discomforts that I avoid, and what opportunities I might have lost from that habit. Difficult conversations that could lead to greater understanding; emotional risks that could lead to new friendships or roles. If suffering is a universal human condition, willingness to suffer for larger benefits is where our human wisdom lays. Water starts to run down my back. I’m not sure if it’s a leak in my rain jacket or if it’s just so persistent that it’s getting in through the front of the hood. After a minute it becomes clear that it’s a leak; the rain is rolling off the top of my backpack, straight into my jacket somewhere. The trail is just a stream now. In some places water is pouring down hillsides where there is no channel for it. It looks like creeks have spilled their banks and are just flowing willy-nilly down the sides of the mountains. One of these streamless rapids comes crashing through the trees on the right, making a whitewater channel out of the trail. I step up and around it onto a muddy embankment on the left, and my foot goes out from under me. I fall back into the channel, catch my foot on the bottom, crash to my knee and spin sideways into the water. I’m up almost as fast, but it’s too late. The water has rushed in through my rain pants, through the sleeve and waistband of my jacket, and I’m soaked through. Luckily, the water isn’t too cold and it warms up quickly as I hike on. There’s not much I can do about it, so I dwell on it as little as possible. All my clothes are synthetics, so they will continue to insulate. After the initial shock and fear for my safety are over, I actually come to enjoy the adventure of it all. We come to a campground with a lot of tents, but it’s too early to camp. The next site is three miles ahead—the forest here is too thick to camp anywhere besides the established campsites, and there are strict rules about that here. I wait for Roadside and Brian, who aren’t far behind, then we hike together out of the campground and into the woods. The rain doesn’t let up for a second. We stay together for a while, but with my head down and the noise of the rain, I eventually get ahead again. A small bridge lets me know that I’ve reached the turnoff to the second campsite. This is where we had planned to camp, but a paper sign in a plastic protector says that there has been recent bear activity here. When Brian and Roadside show up, I explain our options. We can camp here and hope for the best, or we can hike six more miles in the rain to the next campsite, which would force us to set up after dark. I point out that there’s no guarantee that the next campsite won’t have the same sign posted. They don’t seem happy with either option, but nobody wants to keep hiking in the rain. We’re all soaked, but Brian looks particularly miserable. We climb the small hill to the campsite. Two tiers, each with barely enough room for three tents, are stacked on the hillside next to a swollen creek. Roadside and Brian are both complaining about the quality of the sites—they’re sloped and wet—and it starts to sound like they blame me for choosing a shitty site. “What do you want to do?” I snap. “Do you want to keep going?” I’m not thrilled about the situation either, but I don’t see what else we can do. “No,” Roadside mumbles. We set up close together on the bottom tier: Me, Brian, Roadside. We eat cold dinners (it’s too wet to cook outside, too dangerous to cook inside the tent). I change into my only dry clothes—my thermals and my short-sleeve shirt, and shiver in my sleeping bag. The rain hits so hard that it splashes up under my tent flaps and spritzes me in the face. Every noise sounds like a bear, come for our food. Around 11pm, there’s a break in the rain. I finally drift into sleep. Twenty minutes later, a deluge pounds down and wakes us. It lasts for about twenty minutes, then passes on. I fall back asleep, only to be woken again twenty minutes later by another deluge. The pattern continues for the rest of the night. I cannot get warm.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Author
Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
Categories |