September 17, 2016 Mile 2062.1-2094.4 32.3 Miles I’m hot and sweaty when I reach the first ridge of the day. It’s a low ridge, but it was a steep, fast climb away from the creek, and now I’m hot and sweaty despite the cold. It was so cold when I woke that I left my thermals on, but now they are damp and clinging to my skin, so I stop to peel them off. Roadside catches up. He is remarkably consistent with his clothing no matter the weather. I never see him wear a jacket or need to change out of longjohns. I wonder whether he even has them. We start the downhill, and my skin temperature plummets. So does the outside air. It’s bitingly cold now. I know the thermals will be wet and will probably make me too warm again, so I stay cold and hike faster to try to warm up. As light begins to filter through the trees, I see colors. Reds and oranges and yellows that have become more intense overnight. Or perhaps it has more to do with geography than time, I have no way to parse the two anymore. There is no question now that we have intersected autumn, and winter will be close on its heels. No more dicking around, it’s time to make miles. The trail passes along the shore of Timothy lake, an endless shoreline. A light breeze comes across from the west, stirring up waves that lap the shore in polyrhythmic counterpoint with my insistent footsteps. It is an overcast morning, dotted with light drizzle. It is a good morning for solitude. I’m glad to be among the trees, sheltered from some of the wet and the wind, listening to the lapping of the lake and the limpid grey patter of the damp forest. Sometimes I try to stomp feeling into my numbing toes, or shake warmth into my aching hands. I am uncomfortable, but I am content in my discomfort. I don’t expect or need to change it. This is real life, and I can bear a little discomfort without gritting my teeth. I stop for water at a brook where it enters the lake and Roadside catches up again. He has been hiking to outpace the cold, too. We talk about hunger, we talk about cold. We talk about the buffet at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, only twenty more miles away. Past hikers call it the best breakfast buffet on the trail with nearly one voice. Can we make it tonight? Their dinner is probably good, too. That would be a 32-mile day. With a steep climb at the end. Not undoable, especially when there’s food involved. “I’d like to sleep in a hotel room tonight,” Roadside says. That settles it. I would too. We continue with renewed vigor. I imagine the food ahead and the gnawing in my gut is more insistent. I imagine the warmth and the stinging in my hands feels louder. I start a podcast to distract myself. My wet fingerprint can’t unlock the phone at first. I worry a little about electrocution from the earbuds, but not enough to stop. Miles fly by in a passive mindless haze. We stop for lunch at a trailhead parking lot. There are a couple of cars parked here, but nobody around. The drizzle is more insistent, but there is a dry patch of ground underneath some thick fir trees, close to the ground. We sit and make hot meals in the rain. The cold and wet makes us want to hurry things along, but if I’ve learned anything these past few months, it’s that hurrying only tends to slow me down. There is a ritual that I must follow. One thing at a time, step by meticulous step, with focused attention. There’s something new, too: when the rain drips into my face, I don’t try to avoid it. The bend in my neck from trying to keep my face dry quickly becomes more uncomfortable than the momentary shock of cold water. It’s better to let it strike. I eat my Knorr’s Spanish Rice while it’s still too hot. It burns my mouth, but it feels so good inside me. I can almost feel the warmth and nutrients spreading down to my sore leg muscles. We scrape our pots clean, though it’s tempting to just pack up and go. Then we start the uphill climb, up the base of Mount Hood. It is steep almost immediately, and the rain increases with the rise in elevation. It begins to come in sideways, as much water blowing down from the trees now as is falling from the sky. I fight against my aching legs—they want me to slow, they want me to rest, but the more they ache, the warmer I am, and the closer to food. I promise them a good rest tonight after they carry me to the Timberline Lodge. Roadside disappears behind as I steam engine my way up the hill. I pause to cross a busy road and Roadside catches up quickly, though I haven’t seen him in over an hour. Across the road, the trail steepens further. Another hour in cold, miserable rain, and then I come up out of the trees. The rain is whipping now. There are a few shrubs here and there, but nothing to block the long whips of wind and water. Each footstep sinks into the glacial sand as the trail turns directly up the slope. It seems that switchbacks would simply erode here. The trail itself is not well defined—the trail’s three-cornered insignias are posted in regular intervals to guide us up the wide sandy slope that shows several sets of footprints, some of which appear recent. My legs are screaming. My face is stinging. My back is furious. My lungs are burning. My hands grip the handles on my hiking poles as if they could squeeze the cold out and stab! stab! stab!them into the sandy ground.
The trail makes a turn to a more moderate slope, directly into the rain. Muscles are clenching where I didn’t know there were muscles—ribs, hips, scalp—in a fruitless attempt to warm me up. I know the Timberline Lodge has to be close. It has to be. The trail is cutting directly across the mountain now, barely sloped upwards at all. That means I have to be close, right? I turn around a gravelly shoulder and there it is, windows lit up in the dark storm, barely visible through the sheets of rain. A safe haven. It looks so warm, so incredibly warm inside. It is a huge building, and yet it seems so tiny compared to the distance I have to cross. A chasm lies between us, a chasm so deep that I cannot see the bottom, or perhaps not deep at all, but simply obscured by the darkness and the rain. I try to hike faster, but I have nothing more to give. I have been maxed out for hours now. The trail turns in and intersects the chasm on its uphill end. I fear a rushing torrent, but I only find a small creek. I’m able to pick my way across on a few boulders that have fallen in, and then I’m headed back up the other side, straining against everything to get out of this horrible rain and into the warm ski lodge. I look back across the chasm as I climb. Where is Roadside? Over the lip and back onto open slope, the wind reminds me of its full force. When I look up to the lodge, it is almost as far away as it was before. But what can I do but keep going? There are a few tufts of trees, and I can make out the distinctive shape of campsites, but each one flooded with water. What if there isn’t room in the hotel? Will we camp in this? Can we? The distance to the hotel begins to close. It is even larger than I first thought. Finally I find myself staggering alongside it and then climbing the stone stairs to the entrance. I push open the doors and enter the 1930s. My first thought is of relief. I stomp and shake in the entryway to get some of the water and mud off. I stand and look around while a little more drips off. It looks much like any old-time ski cabin—stone fireplace, banisters and columns made from sanded and lacquered logs—except it’s huge. The fireplace is an enormous three-sided stone column in the center of the room, and big fires are blazing in both of the sides that I can see. All the signs are brass panels, and there are stylish designs that remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Timberline Lodge was a construction of the Works Progress Administration, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that was intended to create jobs during the Great Depression. This building has an architect, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, in common with some of the most iconic buildings in the National Park System—the Ahwanee hotel in Yosemite National Park, lodges in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. The Timberline is most famous for its exterior, which was used in Stanley Kubrick’s horror movie The Shining. The inside is elegant, but there’s something I care about even more right now: it is warm and dry. My second thought is that I should get a room. I dread the answer, but I approach the desk anyway. The “Hi, I’d like two rooms, please.” The three people at the desk are wearing matching 1930’s-era bellhop uniforms. On the desk are push-button phones, triplicate tickets, and modern computers. The lady to whom I’m speaking looks at my dripping rain gear and gives me a kind grimace. “I don’t think we have any rooms left, but let me check,” she says. “Sometimes we get cancellations.” She checks her computer, and then turns to the man at the next desk. She points at the screen and quietly asks “can we give him that room?” He comes over to her computer and clicks a few times, then looks up at me. “This is our last room,” he says. “It’s a single queen bed. It’s $274 a night. Do you want it?” “Yes,” I say. They run my credit card, tell me where to find the pool, hot tub, sauna, and laundry, and hand me two metal keys that are each attached to a brass diamond with the room number. Roadside comes through the doors a moment later. We go find our room, lay out our wet stuff, and make our way down to dinner. The food is expensive but worth it, and we stuff ourselves. We finish the evening with a couple of drinks at the hotel bar. Roadside is chattier than usual, and he starts to talk about what he might do after the trail is over. Maybe it’s just because it was a rough day, but he seems like he’s ready to be done with the trail. He wants to go to Vegas for a week and just sit by a pool. I have to admit that sounds pretty good, but I’m eager to get home to my wife and my dog. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do after this. I don’t want to go back to teaching. Roadside doesn’t seem to worry about what he’ll do next, even though he’s out here in part because he got laid off and the economy in Canada isn’t doing too well. We finish our drinks—beer for Roadside, scotch for me—and walk back up to the room, where I offer him the bed. Hotel beds have been too soft and stifling for me the past few times, and this one looks particularly soft. I’ll sleep on the floor. As I wrap myself in my sleeping bag and listen to Roadside begin snoring almost immediately, I find myself thinking about breakfast. I am hungry again.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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