October 1, 2016 Mile 2390.6-?? (alternate trail) 13.2 Miles It’s three forty-five in the morning. I have been awake for close to an hour. I can’t open the window more than a crack and I am being slowly suffocated. I finally decide to sit up and watch TED talks on my phone. My eyes hurt and I feel like I have a hangover, but I only drank two beers last night with dinner. I wasn’t feeling that great at dinner, either. Roadside and I each did our own thing, and I ended up reading 1984 in a busy restaurant while I nursed my beers, slurped a tomato bisque and nibbled at a grilled cheese. I could barely finish the sandwich. I hope I’m not getting sick. Please don’t let me get sick. After an hour of TED talks I finally feel tired enough to get back to sleep. I wake again at 7:30, send Roadside a text—breakfast?—and he knocks on my door a minute later. On our way to the Pancake house next door, we encounter Blackout. He’s stuffing things into his pack in the lobby. He’s on his way out, he says, wants to get an early start. After breakfast we see him again, doing the same thing in another part of the lobby. So much for an early start. I need to find some hiking poles. Again. Two days ago one of them broke and I had to borrow one of Roadside’s so I could pitch my tent. Yesterday, the other one broke. What is this, my fourth pair of poles? The closest thing to an outdoor store doesn’t have any. We walk together to the far end of town, but the only shops seem to be restaurants, real estate offices, and a couple of convenience stores. The ski shops are all shuttered for the summer. Walking across town takes time, and by the time we’ve checked three shops and returned it’s already eleven. We decide to pack up and get lunch. We go to the Aardvark cafe, a little outdoor restaurant operated out of a trailer in front of the Chevron where we collected our resupply boxes. The owner is a trail angel, and we ask her if there’s anywhere to get hiking poles. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of hiking poles. Hikers leave them here all the time. They’re all at home, though. Can you wait for a bit? I’ll call my boyfriend and tell him to pick them up before he comes over. He gets off work in an hour.” We’re happy to wait. We eat our lunch in the little courtyard and look out at the ski slopes and dramatic mountains around us. On and off a light rain falls, but we’re under a canopy. I have a couple more cups of coffee while we wait. It’s funny, the mountains didn’t seem this dramatic while we were hiking in them. The poles arrive around 1pm. I am so grateful. “It’s nothing,” the trail angel says, “have a good hike.” We set out on our road walk. There’s a popular alternate trail that goes by some hot springs and cuts a few miles off the main route. We plan to take it. Once we get past town, I notice another hiker behind, slowly closing the distance. “Is that Blackout?” He catches up a little before the trailhead. “I thought you were leaving hours ago,” I say. “Yeah, I was planning to, but I wasn’t feeling well this morning. I think I ate something bad last night.” The trailhead is swarming with people. We make one last stop at the restrooms. People are eyeing us like we’re wild animals. I see one father point us out to his kids. I imagine their conversation. “See those guys? They hiked here all the way from the bottom of California.” “Wow really? That must have taken them forever. How far is that?” “I don’t know. Probably at least five hundred miles.” It makes me feel good to be an object of attention, even though the conversation was probably more like this: “Daddy, something smells.” “See those men over there? They’re hippies. Hippies don’t take showers. Don’t ever become a hippie, son.” We start up the trail, which resembles an airport escalator: steep, constant, and full of people. I take the lead and charge up the rocky trail. As I start to get going, the caffeine begins to surge. Before I know it I’m nearly running up the slope. I pass day-hikers one after another. One lady says “nice pace!” and even though I’m starting to flag, I push through—I don’t want to let her down. It starts to rain. I stop to take out my raincoat and Blackout flies by at much the same pace. He’s gone before I can hoist my pack. I catch up to him again at the pass above Snow Lake, where he looks at his phone. The rain is light. “What does your map say?” he asks. “Mine says the trail is supposed to cut down here, but there’s no trail.” “Your GPS is probably just off a little. I’m sure you’re not supposed to cut down that.” My map is no help. We’re looking down a steep, rocky slope toward the lake. He looks uncertain. I tend to trust the trail on the ground more than any map, so I continue on. To be honest, I rarely even check my maps at junctions anymore, the PCT is usually so obvious. I’m sure he’ll figure it out. He follows. A minute later the the trail cuts downhill as expected. Now that we’re at the lake, the people are gone. It’s quite a dramatic change. We cut around the eastern side. The rain picks up to a steady shower. At a junction above a deep valley view, I take a break to snack a little and wait. Blackout arrives quickly, then Roadside a minute later. We rest for a minute, then continue around the lake. The surface changes from pale blue to dark grey and back, depending on the rain and the angle. Sharp, craggy granite surrounds the opposite shore, and mists hang over all. We cross a log bridge over the lake’s outlet, and I can see the rocky bottom as through glass, a story or more below. Climbing, winding. Each turn in the trail feels like a discovery, another small kingdom with tree-trunk colonnades and granite crenellations. A few backpackers are camped here and there near cliffs overlooking the lake, and the way one of them looks at me—like he’s surprised to see me way out here—makes me doubt myself. If we’re still going the right way, PCT hikers should be coming through here several times an hour. I’ve been avoiding it, but I wrestle with zippers and pull my phone from an inside pocket, taking care to keep it out of the rain. It takes a second for the GPS to find me, and then… “Fuck.” I’m going the wrong way. For close to an hour now. Over muddy, rocky terrain. Remember that junction where I stopped to wait for Blackout and Roadside? We were supposed to take the other path. I turn back and tell Roadside and Blackout. They take it in stride, but I feel like an ass. Another hour and we’re back at the junction, looking at the same deep valley that greeted us before, but this time with new eyes now that we know we have to descend into it. The rain lightens to a pitter-patter. We start a brutal downhill of switchbacks, deadfall logs whose diameter comes up to my shoulders, and rock-filled slopes. One of the fallen trees is on a steep slope; a fall here would be a major injury. Someone has tried to cut two footholds into it, but all they’ve really done is remove the bark. The wood underneath is smooth and slick from the rain, as I learn when I fall hard against the trunk. I make an awkward, painful climb over to the other side and then wait for Blackout and Roadside to pass their packs over and make the treacherous climb. We have two more trees like this to cross, then a couple more switchbacks bring us to a steep rockfall. The trail has been constructed out of its boulders, but a section is simply gone, replaced with an empty scar that slices down the slope. I am glad that I was not here for this landslide filled with heavy boulders. I find the trail on the other side and trace it with my eyes to where it switches back and crosses the empty space again. While I’ve paused, Roadside and Blackout have caught up. It’s steep, but the rocks are rough and have plenty of traction, so I’m not all that worried about falling. What concerns me more is the potential for a loose boulder to come unstuck and crush a leg or a ribcage. “What do you think?” I ask. “Climb down?” They survey the trail. “Better than twice across,” Blackout says. “Yeah,” says Roadside. Difficult terrain, especially on long hikes, has a momentum of its own. Each obstacle you cross commits you a little bit more to your present course, since turning back would require you to negotiate every obstacle again. Since you don’t know what’s around the next corner, this obstacle could very well be the last one, and it could be smooth and easy the rest of the way. Or, things could get worse, one obstacle at a time. If we continue, this could be the last obstacle. Or it could continue to get worse. If we turn back, we know for a fact that we’ll have to cross the same obstacles again, cover all the miles back to Snoqualmie pass, then face an unknown number of obstacles when we take the other trail. It makes more sense to keep going, even if each obstacle is a little more dangerous than the last. Adventurers of all stripes are advised against goal-fixation (the blind pursuit of the goal despite dangers), but I think it’s often a more rational avoidance of the known dangers of turning back that leads people into the unknown challenges that turn out to be beyond their skills. This fear is with me as I start my descent—if the trail ahead continues to get worse, will I have to climb back up this later? And then climb those giant logs again?
I get down to the next switchback without incident, then watch as Blackout and Roadside negotiate the risky scramble. I take a deep breath and unclench my buttocks. I’m pleased with myself, with all of us. I just hope that’s the last of it. The trail plunges back into the trees. We cross a few more giant logs, but the slope is less extreme now and instant death is less of a danger. Eventually we make it to the valley floor, a dark forest covered with smaller deadfall. It’s getting dark and we’re completely exhausted. The mental challenges of the obstacles have been every bit as great as the physical. We find a clearing to set up camp. We cook dinner and talk easily. Blackout adds a lot to our group, and I’m glad he’s here. I hope he continues to hike with us. Halfway through dinner, apropos of nothing, he says “I think we’re in Grizzly country now.” Roadside looks up from his dinner, eyes widened. I’m sure mine are, too, because I feel instantly more aware of our surroundings. As if he’s sensed our anxiety, Blackout hedges. “But I’ve heard there are only like eight in the entire state, and this is right on the South edge of their range.” That might be more comforting if we weren’t headed North. After dinner, I learn that Blackout was a behavioral interventionist before the trail. My sister works the same job, helping kids with Autism to learn the skills they need to function in society. Her son, my nephew, has an autism diagnosis. My wife is an administrator for a behavior health care company, and I’ve taught plenty of kids with autism, so we have plenty to talk about. Roadside goes to bed while Blackout and I work our way through that and other subjects. Eventually we turn in, too. “We usually get up at 5:30,” I tell him. “Want me to wake you up?” “Yeah, I’ll get up with you guys.”
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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