PCT Day 107 September 18, 2016 Mile 2094.4-2111.7 (+.8) 18.2 Miles Between the snoring and the hot, stuffy room, I didn’t get much sleep last night. But that’s okay because this morning we get to enjoy the famous Timberline Lodge brunch. It’s a fancy affair with plenty of fresh fruit and veggies, two things we have been lacking on trail, as well as an omelet station. I go back for seconds, then thirds, then fourths, downing little cups of coffee the whole time. My final trip is to the Belgian waffle station, where I cover a carb bomb with a heaping pile of whipped cream, strawberry compote, blueberries, and chocolate chips. After breakfast we go down to the WY’East building to get our resupply packages. It’s like a small shopping mall with a food court. The place is empty and most of the stores are closed, except for one employee in one gift shop who leaves us alone in the store so she can track them down for us. We take them back to the hotel room and repack them into our pack, then decide to get the most out of our $274, one-night rental. We go down and spend some time soaking in the hot tub in our hiking shorts, then wrap ourselves in towels and throw our shorts in the dryer. Across the hall is a sauna, where we sit and stew. My calves and hamstrings are tight, hard as rocks, but they’ve been that way for so long that I hadn’t noticed until now, when I feel them start to soften, just a little. “This is what I want to do after the trail,” Roadside says. “Sit in one place for a week, maybe by a pool in Vegas. Pay someone to bring me food so I don’t have to move.” “Hell yeah,” I say. I know that’s not what my post-trail will look like, but I enjoy the fantasy. To everyone I know back home, this trip is already a vacation, and I’ll be expected to get back to work finding a job. And maybe they’re right. Maybe all the hard work and loneliness and self-reflection and overcoming of fears, maybe all of it was just a different way to escape. But I don’t think so. I think the work I’m doing out here might be some of the most important work I’ve ever done. For the first time in my life, I’m starting to see that the mismatch between society and me is not entirely my fault. The horrible feeling of inadequacy that has made up most of my life is actually the result of playing by the wrong scorecard. And I’m starting to get an inkling of what a better scorecard might be. We check out at 11am on the dot. Before we leave, we each take a picture with an axe that has “Here’s Johnny” written down the side of the handle. We have to go back to the WY’East building to see if we can get some canister fuel. I’m running low. They don’t have it, but there is a small restaurant open in the food court, so we get lunch before we leave. Another hiker stops by and starts up a conversation. He’s an older guy, maybe in his sixties, with the trail name Space Cowboy. After some conversation, we tell him our fuel problem, and he says he has plenty if we want to hike together and borrow his canister for a meal or two before we get to Cascade Locks. It’s a generous offer. We pull our stuff together and head out together, all three of us, then we’re back out onto the trail, back in the rain and the wind on the side of the mountain. The rain is a light drizzle, not like the whipping sheets from yesterday. I don’t find it all that unpleasant, despite the cold air. We hike fast under ski lifts and past a number of junctions. We find ourselves on a sandy cliff above a glacial creek. There is a small trail along the edge, but it is crumbling, and we have to hold on to bushes to get across certain parts. This doesn’t seem right—there’s no way hundreds of backpackers have come through here. The trail works its way down along the cliff, then cuts down steeply through thick vegetation and lets out onto a wide, well-groomed trail. We must have taken a wrong turn, because this seems much more like the trail I’ve gotten to know. I check my gps, and sure enough, we’re back on the PCT. We cross the glacial runoff by following a number of misleading cairns and find the trail on the other side. Then we take a side trail to Ramona Falls. It’s a towering two-story waterfall that fans out over mossy rocks. A few people are sitting nearby. I clamber onto the wooden bridge that straddles the runoff from the falls, pull out my camera, and snap a photo. I stand there and gaze at the falls at what seems like an appropriate amount of time, then start hiking again. I’m sure it seems to the day hikers that I’m not appreciating it adequately, and perhaps they’re right. But I gave it my full presence while I was there, and now I have miles to make. I have pulled away from Roadside and Space Cowboy, so I plug into a podcast about Myths and Legends. It ends with a section about a folk monster with long, oily black hair that comes and takes away children in the night. I look around the dark forest and peer between the trees. This seems like the sort of forest that would hide a folk monster. I chuckle to myself.
Back on the main PCT, I come to a river crossing that I’m not willing to do by myself, so I wait for Roadside to catch up. The river itself is down in a gully about fifteen feet. The crossing requires balancing my way across on a fallen tree. Normally no big deal, but this tree has two trunks, and the top one blocks passage for the last part of the bottom one. And they’re both wet from the rain. Roadside arrives, and Space Cowboy just after him, and I start across. I try not to look down at the rushing river below, or the rocks. At the halfway point, I grab onto the upper trunk and press myself to it while my backpack tries to pull me away into empty space. A sideways shuffle gets me to a point where I have no choice left but to climb up to the upper trunk. Someone has fastened a yellow rope here to help with the climb, but I don’t trust it. I pull myself up the wet wood, heart thumping, and work my way across the last section with special sensitivity to the grip on my shoes. They hold. I make it across. Roadside and Space Cowboy follow, slowly and carefully, and I am at least as scared for them. Once everyone is across, we start an evening climb up lots of switchbacks. At the top, we meet another hiker, “Man”, in his twenties or early thirties. The four of us rest for a bit after the hard climb, then start down the switchbacks on the other side. We lose Man in a hurry. We’ve planned a campsite, but when we get there we realized that we missed a water stop. The next water is a half mile on, so we plod on hoping that there will be a campsite there. There is, but it’s tiny, enough for a single bivy and not much more. We fill our bottles in the fading light, then discuss whether we should continue on or turn back. I hate turning back. I’d rather hike nine more miles in the dark than go back a half mile. I’m convinced we’d find another site quickly. Space Cowboy is adamant we should go back. There were plenty of spots where we said we were going to stop. Roadside agrees. I’m grumpy about it, but I concede. The three of us walk back in the dusk and set up in a grove of small trees. There are a couple other tents set up, but nobody makes a sound and we try not to disturb sleeping hikers. We make dinner and talk about departure. “What time do you start hiking?” Space Cowboy asks. “Usually up at 5:30, hiking by 5:45,” I say. I really hope he’s not going to try to negotiate us into a later start. We can’t afford it this close to winter. “Okay,” he says. “Wake me up.”
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 |