Day: September 14, 2016

PCT mm 2226.4 – In Trout Lake

Another good day today.  I was able to get up and on the trail by 6:45, the weather was cool but not cold all day, and I was able to hit the road to Trout Lake by 5:30 and got a ride after only fifteen minutes.  The belly is full, the food bag is full, and I got to sleep in a bed and take a bath and wash clothes.  Food bath and laundry is the true triple crown of hiking.  A bed is just gravy.

Three other hikers were camping by the lake with me but none of them were awake yet when I set off in the morning.  The voltaren gel did not work the same wonders this morning as previous mornings, and I had a tiny bit of hiker hobble that went away in five minutes.  I guess the shorter days the last few days were a contributing factor to me feeling better the last few days.  No worries, it’s better than before so I’ll keep using it.

The terrain had a few ups and downs in the morning and I passed by several more lakes in the Indian Heaven area.  This was a nice area, but nothing special.  Most of it was in thick trees but there were some open meadows, a few streams, and some good views of Mt Adams when the trail was high.

When I stopped for lunch at a campsite right at noon, I had done 14.5 miles.  That’s fantastic considering the starting time.  The terrain had been very favorable and I had made coffee with honey in it in the morning and put too much honey in it.  I only drank less than half of it in the morning and it fueled me the whole way.  I was walking briskly all morning, even on the uphills.  They were graded well enough that it did not slow me down much and did not tire me out.  Lunch was ramen noodles and  Cheetos, two of my favorites.  I finished off the last of my freeze dried mangoes and dehydrated mandarins, too.

The afternoon left me with just about ten miles to town. It would be a big climb, a big downhill, then another big climb, and then a small downhill.  Should be cake.

The first climb was very moderate and the reward was a great view of Mt Adams.  We are hiking straight towards it now and it gets bigger each day.  You can see now that it’s multiple kinds of rock under the snow.  The downhill was cake, too.  The grades here in Washington have been quite gentle so far.

The last climb was a little steeper than the others, though.  It wasn’t bad, but I did slow down a little.  I met some southbounders on the way up and they gave me the skinny.on town.  I kept on pushing and tried my.phone at the top of the climb, just two miles from the road, but had no cell service.  The other hikers had given me the list of trail angels and recommended that I try to call one from there to arrange a ride because the road has little traffic.  I tried every half mile all the way to the road, but no service.  Great.

When I got to the road, i saw a truck going the wrong way had slowed, then kept.moving.  I set my pack by the road and went to sit on a log to write down the names and numbers of the angels on paper from the photo I had taken of the southbounders photo of the list.  A car came by, so I jumped up and stuck out my thumb, but no luck.  Oh well, back to writing.  I finished about a dozen numbers and decided I would start walking until I got cell signal.  I was getting one bar occasionally and could tell if I went down the road a short ways around the mountain that the signal would improve.  Just as I was about to hoist my pack on my back, the same truck that had slowed, came back and stopped when I stuck my thumb out.  Success.

My ride was Eddie who used to log this area, but was now retired.  He had decided to just take a drive up the mountain to look at the woods.  Lucky for me.  We talked as we went into town and as we got to the store, he gave me his card and said.to call him if I had trouble getting a ride.out of town.  On his card, it said he was a.livestock dealer.  Looks like we had more talking to do.  He said he is usually at the café at 7:30 in the morning, so I am hoping to catch him there to get a ride back up.  And people don’t believe in miracles….

Once at the store, my luck continued.  Both of the rooms they had for rent were open and there was another hiker there inquiring as well.  So we split the room with three beds and paid $12.50 each for a bed, bath, and access to laundry.  Score.

I ran to the café, and had a Vulture burger, a huckleberry lemonade, salad, and huckleberry pie with huckleberry ice cream.  Heaven.  I ran back to the store, got my.package, bought two beers and a bag of cheetos and went to the room to get a bath.  The other guy had gotten some dvd’s to watch and we watched The Martian and Hunger Games while we did chores and in-between laundry.  There is no cell service in town, but they have wifi, so emails were read and sent.  Everyone in this town is so friendly, it’s been one of the better stops so far.

PCT mm 2202.7 – Chilly weather

I actually overslept this morning, but got out by 6:45 and hiked right up until il 7 PM.  There was alot of climbing, but it was not so steep as to bother my heel.  And even though the morning started out chilly, I swear the temperature never changed all day long.

The ridge above the river where I camped turned out to be a nice camping spot.  There was no wind, no dew, and the temperatures were not too cold.  I slept quite well and didn’t wake up until just after 6 am so I had to skip the morning music and get right to work.

After getting down off the ridge where I was camped, the trail was level for a few miles as it crossed two different rivers in a valley.  I stopped at the second one to fill up on water.  There was dew on the grass and it got my legs wet as I walked through it.  This is probably the first time.on this trip so far I have gotten wet from dew on plants along the trail.  I understand this is common in Washington.  It reminded me of hiking on the AT with the meadow, the climbs, the grasses, and the streams.  So far I really dig Washington.

At the top of the climbs, there were good views of whatever volcano I was facing, either Hood or Adams.  I did not see Ranier or St Helens today.  Perhaps tomorrow.  I was surprised how far I was able to go today.  I forgot I had honey with me, so I added honey to my cold coffee and I ate well today.  I guess if you stoke the engine properly you can motor on quickly.  My feet are pretty sore after a long day, though.  I hope I am not too sore tomorrow since today was such a big jump in mileage.  I had no idea I had gone that far until after I stopped to camp.

Yesterday I saw no northbounders and four southbounders.  Today I saw no southbounders and five northbounders.  I may not be out of a bubble after all.  

I have 23.6 miles to the forest service road that leads to Trout Lake, where my next resupply is.  It’s an 11 mile hitch so if I get there late in the day it might be a difficult hitch into town and might be an even tougher hitch back out.  I may have to make tomorrow a short day just to deal with the logistics of getting into and out of town.

PCT mm 2173.6 – A full day

Today was the first full day after returning to the trail and it felt good to be back in full swing again.  The three shorter days leading up to today worked out all the kinks and the muscle pains went away today.  The feet even felt pretty decent.  Most of the day was spent climbing up and down in the coolness of an overcast day.

I woke up about 5:00 and listened to music until 5:45, then I rolled out of the hammock, ate my breakfast burrito, and headed out at 6:30.  Yesterday had been so hot and lasted well after dark.  I slept on top of the sleeping bag until about 3 am when I was finally cold enough to get inside the bag.

The coolness accelerated in the morning.  It was probably about 65 when I set out from the campsite, but within an hour of climbing, it was probably closer to 45 degrees.  It was very overcast and even though I was not in the clouds or fog, I was right even with them.  Even wearing gloves, my.hands were cold.  The heat generated from climbing kept me.from getting too cold, but several times I almost.put my rain jacket on just for the warmth.  What a stark difference from yesterday.

All day I kept bouncing between 1000 and 4000 feet.  The climbing was a little painful on my left Achilles heel if the grade was a bit steep.  I could walk on my toes without pain, but the extra flexion if the ground slopes up more than about ten degrees would cause pain.  I found two ways to mitigate the pain.  If I could find a rock to land my heel on as I stepped to level out my foot, that would be pain free.  If no rock was at the right spot to step on, I could step sideways to shallow the angle.  Pointing my toe either left or right seemed to work equally well.

Another odd thing going on today was having my phone reboot itself while it was in my pocket.  It has done it five.or six times during the trip and did it a few times yesterday, but today it rebooted five or six times in an hour.  It seems to take a bit of juice to do a reboot, so the most worrisome part about it doing this is the extra consumption of power.  By the end of the day, it had used 50% power where it would normally be 20-25% for a day.  I took it out of its bumper case to see if that was interfering with the power button.  That seemed to work for a while, but then it started rebooting again.  I could see that the bottom side of the power button was depressed when it rebooted, so it is definitely sticking on the bottom side.  When I stopped for lunch, I cut the bottom half of the bumper button out so that it can only depress the top half and will.protect the bottom half.  That seemed to work well, but it did reboot once near the end of the day.  If I can find a pencil, I’ll try to grind some graphite on the switch.  I may also have to stop keeping it in my.pocket just to protect it.

The scenery all day was pretty good.  The view in the picture is.looking back at the Columbia river towards Mt Hood.  I was still able to receive cell signal from the river gorge, too.  The clouds lasted most of the day but did seem to break about 4 or 5 PM.  It never did actually rain, but some of the trees were dropping dew from the clouds.

The combination of thick green forest, moderate uphill and downhill grades and very little level terrain, coupled with all of the views being of rolling forest and the threat of rain all day made me think of the Appalachian Trail.  Aside from the actual species of plants and trees, you would have a hard time telling if I was hiking the PCT or AT today.

Even though I only hiked 23 miles today, I consider it a good day of hiking.  I would have preferred to hike 25, but the morning went so slowly stopping alot and messing with the phone far more than I wanted to.  I hiked until 7:15 so it was a pretty full day.  That’s about as late as I can hike and still have enough light to set up the hammock, but I’m cooking and eating in the dark.  I can probably start fifteen minutes earlier but the days are sure getting shorter much faster than I would like.  I need to knock out miles to make Canada before the snow sets in.