Another Long Walk

'Twas a Rough Night....

2011-10-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

Ron poses with Mount Adams in the background.
And look at those storm clouds enveloping us!

Sorry about leaving you all hanging for so long. Got a bit distracted with that whole "moving" process. It's not done yet, but I'm taking the day off of that work and working on finishing this story today. =)

In case you needed reminding, I left you hanging with Ron and myself trying to outrace an incoming storm. Gotta leave you on a cliffhanger, right? =)

The campsite listed on our map was near a trail junction near Ape Canyon, and when we arrived, we found a distinct lack of water. Which was a problem, because we really needed water. Which is kind of ironic considering that it looked like it could rain at any moment. We'd pushed, we figured, an exhausting 16 or 17 miles to reach this point, and we were beat. But we also needed water.

The map we had with campsites listed wasn't especially detailed, however, and I suspected that it might still be a bit up ahead. When I talked with Jesus and Disciple, they told me they had camped at a small creek their first night out, just before the restricted zone, a little past this junction. If they hadn't told me that, however, I'd have been considerably more worried when we reached this junction and found no water.

Looking up the ridge, I thought I might be hallucinating.

"Hey, Ron," I said, pointing ahead along a ridge, "Pull out that fancy camera of yours with the super zoom lens and tell me, is that a fellow with a bicycle I see up there?"

He seemed skeptical of the claim, but was already pulling out his camera to take photos of Mount Adams, and aimed it where I pointed. "Yes, that is a bicycle!" he exclaimed.

I certainly didn't expect to see one of those out here. A few minutes later, two bicyclists heading back down the mountain passed us, and oddly, they seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them.

"But where are you going to camp? What are you going to do for water?"

The first question didn't worry me very much, but the second one did a little.

"There supposed to be water just ahead--you mean to say there isn't?" I asked.

"There's a little creek ahead, but the water is dirty and gross."

Oh joy.

"Well, that's our drinking water," I told him. =)

A large cairn along the trail.

Ron and I shouldered our packs and headed out again while the bicyclists headed down the mountain. We found the creek about ten minutes later, and it was beautiful water. I'll admit, it wasn't the clearest water I'd ever seen, but it was a far cry from being bad. I've had bad water, and this was was perfectly acceptable in my book.

But we were also completely exposed on this part of the mountain. In fact, we'd been completely exposed and well above tree-cover for miles, and we were starting back into the blast zone. I had a tarp that needed setting up, and to do so, I needed a good, solid tree to hold up one end of it (I'd use my trekking pole for the other end) and soft enough ground to drive in stakes but hard enough ground to hold it all in place. And the terrain we were in was not ideal for this sort of setup.

Immediately alongside the creek, there were a few small trees struggling to survive. The tallest of them was about my own height--hardly as big or strong as I would have preferred--but it would have to do. And the ground appeared to be just above where the creek would flood, if it floods, and it had soil to hold stakes in place. Most of the terrain had no soil--just small rocks with no real grip to them.

First thing's first--set up the tarp. I started setting up while Ron selected a site on the other side of the tree. While setting up, the first sprinkling started. In the nick of time! Whew!

I drove the last stake in, tightened up the ridgeline, and dove under the tarp, safe from the sprinkles. "Looks like I'm in for the night!" I called to Ron.

It sprinkled for another five or ten minutes, and I set about arranging camp. I spread out the ground sheet under the trap, then changed out of my dirty hiking clothes and put on my warm camp clothes. Then I just laid there for a few minutes, resting. I was tired. But I could still see Mount Adams peaking out in the setting sun in the distance. I love a campsite with a view. This campsite would have been fantastic for camping under the stars. No tree cover, fantastic views--it's exactly the kind of campsite I wished I had the night before. In fact, the campsite we had the night before was exactly the kind I would have preferred tonight. In the trees, partially protected from the elements by the trees. I found myself wishing we had gone around the mountain in the other direction. Oh, well.... too late to do anything about that now.

The sprinkles stopped, and I decided to push my luck by cooking along the edge of the cliff. The small creek came to an abrupt stop about 40 feet away, falling over a cliff who knows how many hundreds of feet high. The view was incredible, even as the storm came barreling in. I wanted to enjoy the views while I could. If it started raining again, I could move back under my tarp as necessary.

Wind gusts had started increasing, so I found a few small boulders to cook behind to use as wind breaks. It didn't help much--the gusts seemed to blow in from all sorts of directions. Sometimes from in front, sometimes up my back, sometimes from my left, and sometimes from my right. Sometimes, it felt like I was in the middle of a vortex with the wind swirling all around me but oddly quiet where I cooked. The unpredictable nature of the wind was difficult to handle, though, and the strength of the wind started blowing sand into my mac 'n' cheese. Argh!

Besides using the small boulders as a feeble attempt at a wind break, I also used my bear canister, the lid of my bear canister, and my entire body to further the wind break. And none of it seemed to help. Sand started blowing into my eyes as well. I was starting to wish I stayed under my tarp after all. These were not easy conditions to cook it. Ron didn't seem to be fairing much better behind his little group of boulders either.

Our campsite overlooked this very high cliff!
With Mount Adams again in the background.

Eventually, though, dinner was ready--with a healthy bit of sand for texture--which I finished off quickly and cleaned up. That rain could still start at any moment!

Looking out on the horizon, I saw a flash of light. It seemed to be centered about halfway between Mount Adams and Mount Hood, near where we saw smoke from the forest fire earlier in the day. Lightning.

"Hey, Ron!" I yelled. "Something else for you to worry about tonight--being above tree line in a lightning storm!" =)

I wasn't actually too worried about being struck by lightning. While we were above treeline, we were also surrounded by mountains and hills much higher than our location.

Back under the tarp, I read a bit, admired the views of Mount Adams, and relaxed to the occasional gust of wind racing over my tarp and a lightning strike in the distance. Life was good.... =)

I fell asleep at some point, and woke again to views of stars overhead. The clouds must have blown through already, but the wind seemed to increase a notch. I thought about going out to see the stars better, but the wind was cold and I dived deeper into my sleeping bag and went back to sleep again.

Or rather, I tried too. The wind had increased in intensity and was making quite the racket now, whipping over my tarp and gusting under the open ends.

I tried for an hour to get to sleep, but it wasn't working. The wind was deafening, jerking my tarp, but it went from bad to worse when the clouds came back again and it started to rain. Not a sprinkle, but a real rain.

I pulled my feet up from the far end of the tarp and my head down from the entrance, curled into a fetal position, to avoid the wind-born rain. "What a gloriously wretched campsite for a rain and wind storm," I thought. "I couldn't have hand-selected a worse place had I tried." I'd been expecting rain, but the wind was not something I had heard about, and that makes a big difference!

When I first set up my tarp, I was a bit lazy about anchoring down the edges of my tarp. I usually don't--it's not necessary. I'll set up the ridgeline, anchor down the corners, and I'm done. At this point, though, it was time to batten down the hatches. I pulled out my headlamp, found a couple of extra stakes I used to hold down my ground sheet and transferred them to hold down the edges of my tarp. I also tightened the ridgeline again--it had grown slack with the wind-born rain ripping at the tarp.

And unbelievably, it continued to grow worse. Twice during the night, the wind ripped a stake right out of the ground, and I frantically tried to stab it back into place as the rain pounded on me. The tarp whipped loudly in the wind, and I worried that the wind might actually blow it away completely.

The view from under my tarp. You can see my trekking
pole on the left and the ridgeline holding it up left of center.

"No," I told myself. "Impossible. I had tied the one end with a solid knot to the small tree. That tree would break before the knot did--and it might not have been a very big tree, but this storm wasn't going to knock it out. But I could imagine all of the stakes holding the rest of the tarp in place blowing out. It would start at a corner, then rip through the rest of them like popping buttons off a shirt, and the tarp would start flapping uselessly in the wind. I could also imagine that the tarp might rip in half, flapping around in the wind, completely useless. If either of those scenarios happened, I could be in serious trouble from hypothermia.

I wondered how Ron was doing in his little tent. I knew he had to be awake--nobody could sleep through this storm--but his tent had to be taking a beating as hard as my tarp was. At least he had some walls to help keep him dry, though.

I started formulating plans for what I'd do if my tarp blew loose or shredded itself in the wind. I'd have to get moving. Immediately. Throw everything into my pack and start hiking through the storm. It would be the only way I could stay warm without any protection from the elements. I'd have to hike to stay warm. Keep moving. I'd either have to hike until the storm passed, hike until I reached a natural form of protection from the elements (a cave, or below tree level, I figured), or hike until I reached Ron's truck and got inside.

The tarp, fortunately, did manage to survive the night.
I've already packed up everything (except the tarp itself), but
notice two things in this photo. First, that red spot on my pack--
that's Wassa Jr. =) He didn't blow away! Second, even in this
photo, you can see a gust of a wind pushing in the left side of
tarp and blowing "up" the right side of the tarp. Damn wind!

This could get really bad, I though, and prayed the tarp would hold up through the night. Some of the stronger gusts were so powerful, they pushed the walls of the tarp directly onto me, not even leaving a cushion of air between me and the walls of the tarp. The tarp was acting more like a blanket--at least until another gust of wind pulled it off of me suddenly and tried to yank it into the sky.

It didn't help that condensation was forming on the underside of the tarp, so every time the wind pushed it down onto me like a blanket, my sleeping bag would mop up the water from it. My sleeping bag was made of down--which has absolutely no insulation value once it gets wet. It was growing increasingly difficult to stay warm. As long as I felt cold, though, I figured I wouldn't be dieing of hypothermia. Nope, cold is good. I flexed my muscles a bit to generate a little warmth.

It was a long night, but the tarp held, and eventually the sky started to brighten. The clouds were still out there, but the wind gusts died down a bit (only a tiny bit!) and the rain finally stopped.

"Ron," I called out, "are you still alive over there?"

I heard some knocking around, then he called back, confirming he was still alive, but what a wretched night that was. Yeah, tell me about it. =)

It was still pretty early in the morning, but the rain had stopped. For now. "Let's get out of here before the rain picks up again," I suggested, and he offered no argument.

We quickly ate breakfast, telling each other of our night's woes. While packing up, I found my tie. I had forgotten about that tie. I knew Ron was coming with a wedding dress, and it occurred to me and I should at least have a tie. Look the part, you know? At least a tie was small and light, but I had forgotten about it the whole trip. Seems a shame to let it go to waste. I decided not to change back into my hiking clothes. My warm camp clothes could get wet now--we were going back to civilization. But I put on the tie, then we headed out. Yes, I wore the tie all the way back to the trailhead. =)

"I wonder how the Wheat Thin Boys did," Ron said. I'm a little curious myself--they seemed gloriously inexperienced. A storm like that wouldn't have been easy for them, but then they were probably camped well below tree level where things weren't as bad either.

Proving that even after one of my worst nights
in the backcountry that I can still look good....

We'd only been hiking for a few minutes with the rain started coming down again. The wind was still strong along unprotected stretches of the trail, but then we'd drop down the other side of a ridge and it would be deathly quiet. We figured it was about ten miles back to the trailhead, and we couldn't get there soon enough.

A blue patch of sky came out and teased us. We could see it, always a little out of reach, always moving away from us. A sparkling rainbow delighted us for much of the way, but we didn't stop and rest. It was too wet, too cold, and too windy to do much of anything but keep trudging on.

And finally, we reached the parking lot and were done. We'd made it. I wanted to go into the Johnson Ridge Observatory since it was closed when we had arrived and I'd never been in it before, so I left Ron in the car trying to warm himself up. =)

The observatory had all sorts of interesting exhibits, and I wondered around admiring it all, still with the tie on--a classy touch that nobody else had. People walking in complained about the rain and cold, and I couldn't help but shake my head. Wimps. You guys only had to walk in from the parking lot. The storm had turned me into a bitter old man.

But we were done. We headed back to Seattle. Ron stopped to call his family and let them know he survived. We stopped for lunch at Burgerville and high-fived ourselves. Ron asked what I thought his chances were of being able to thru-hike the PCT.

Most excellent. That last night on Mount St. Helens rivaled anything I had to deal with on the PCT. That large gully at the end of the first day was as sketchy as anything he'd find on the PCT. The lava flows were as challenging as anything he could find on the PCT.

"If you can survive that," I told him, "you can certainly survive anything that the PCT throws at you."

For him, I think that made the whole trip worth it. =)

Ron pushes through the rain and wind. Needless to say,
views on our last day weren't very good.

My camera is suffering from the elements at this point. The fuzziness in the center and
on the left is due to rain that got on the lens and condensation that formed in the lens.

That blue patch of sky teased us most of the morning. So close, but always out of reach....

The rainbow that led us out most of the morning was nice, though. =) It was
remarkably bright at times, and at times, there was even a double rainbow
(but I never got any good pictures of that.)

Stalking Alton Brown

2011-10-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

Amanda paints the guest bedroom.

I know, I know.... there's still one more post in me about that Mount St. Helens hike. I've been a little distracted because Amanda bought a new condo and I've been busy painting, cleaning, fixing up and she's been keeping me quite busy. Hopefully I'll get that last post done soon!

But in the meantime, there's another distraction to post about: My stalking of Alton Brown. Alton and I have a history of sorts. I try to stalk him, and do it very badly. He ducks me, and does it very well. =)

Amanda is related to him. Her cousin is married to the guy. Quite the inside track she's got, right? I actually never even heard of the man before I met Amanda. A Food Network celebrity? Who watches the Food Network? I'm more of a History Channel guy myself. =)

So anyhow, my first brush with celebrity-ism was to be a family funeral. Perhaps not the best of circumstances, but Amanda's granny died, and Alton would be in attendance. I was instructed by Amanda that we'd be riding with Alton. Cool! My flight would arrive about an hour before Alton's flight, and then Amanda's flight would arrive shortly later. I was to meet Alton at his gate when his plane arrived in Charlotte.

But, alas, I got bumped from the flight. The next flight out, the next morning, was still possible, but I'd miss the funeral. So it never happened. I was stuck in Seattle, and Alton was "enjoying" the funeral without me. =)

But he's one of the family--surely our paths will cross again, right?

Fast forward another year or two, and you'll find me in Key West, walking to Springer Mountain. The nearly major airport at the end of that little hike was in Atlanta--Alton's little part of the world. Amanda called up her cousin, DeAnna, and nabbed us a free place to stay at their place.

But, once again, I missed Alton, who was off filming in the Caribbean or something. I don't know what he was really doing, but I'm sure ducking me was high on the list. ;o) However, I did get to meet his wife (DeAnna), his daughter (Zoey), and his mom (who's name I don't remember.... Hmm.....) And I got to spend the night in their guest room. =)

I asked Amanda what she thought we could get if we "borrowed" some cinnamon from their cupboard and put it up on eBay. "This cinnamon comes from Alton Brown's cupboard...." Or maybe not.... Anyhow, who would believe that the cinnamon really came from Alton Brown's cupboard?

Fast forward another year or two, and then there was another death in the family--Amanda's mom died. Maybe I'd see him at that funeral? But once again, he ducked me. Allegedly, he was getting ready for some big anniversary show back in Atlanta and couldn't take the time for this funeral. I did see DeAnna again, however, but she left Zoey behind. Which is a shame because Zoey is absolutely adorable. Or at least she was--I'd imagine she's quite a bit older now. Kids have a bad habit of growing out of "adorable." =)

Alton does a little Q&A.

As for that show, we did see it on TV a couple of nights later, and could even spot both Zoey and DeAnna in the background as the credits started to roll....

Well, there'll be another time to meet Alton.....

And fast forward to today. I had just finished painting a couple of doors in the new condo and was on my way out when Amanda arrived and asked if I'd like to meet Alton.

Which normally would be a strange question, because I know he lives in the Atlanta area, and we were in Seattle. I was pretty certain she didn't intend for us to jump in a plane and fly out to Atlanta overnight, and I wasn't aware of anymore deaths in the family. A book-signing, perhaps?

Yes, as it turned out, he was having a book signing here in Seattle. Tonight. Amanda was talking with her cousin and her cousin happened to mention that Alton was in Seattle, so about 4:30 this afternoon, she told me that he was having a book signing at 7:00. Sure, why not? The only plans I had for tonight was writing up the rest of my Mount St. Helens hike. (Sorry about that, again....)

So off we drove to the University Bookstore. We got there about a half hour early and the place was PACKED with people, but Amanda assured me that there was another author scheduled to talk from 6:30 to 7:00. They were probably there for that.

Except they weren't. The other author Amanda had read online wasn't there. He was at a library a few miles away. Nope, all of these people--every last one of them--was here to see Alton. I've been to a few book signings before, but this one was like nothing I had ever seen before. And we were a half hour early!

"He's not even an author!" I whispered to Amanda. "Not really...."

The mob--at least the part that fits within
my camera's viewfinder!

The place was claustrophobic, and Amanda and I decided to leave for a half hour and get some dinner. =) We ate at Qdoba nearby, then returned at 7:00 just as Alton was beginning a little Q&A session. And the size of the crowd had more than doubled since before. OMG. Aren't there fire safety limits that need to be enforced?

Alton took questions from the audience for about an hour, which was quite entertaining, and he was very funny. I wonder how much of it are canned answers he's answered hundreds of times before. I can't imagine this was really the first time anyone asked him what his favorite plate was ("round--oh, you mean food?!)

Amanda and I chuckled when someone asked about what food he prepares better than his mother. "I've met his mother, you know," I told Amanda. Of course she knew that already--she'd met his mother before too. Zoey and DeAnna got mentions along the way as well.

It was entertaining watching the customers who walked into the bookstore who didn't know what was going on as well. Amanda and I were solidly in the back of the pack. Amanda had trouble seeing over everyone's head. I didn't have as much trouble in that regard, but I am taller than her. =) But it put us directly next to the entrance of the bookstore where people were coming and going the whole time. Invariably, someone would walk in and be surprised at the crowd and ask, "What's going on?"

Alton Brown. That's what's going on.

This would be the closest I'd get
to Alton... this time.....

One girl who walked in turned to her companion without having to ask the question. "That's Alton Brown!" She clearly didn't expect him there, but seemed excited to stumble upon the book signing.

Eventually, though, he brought the Q&A to a close and the signing began. There wasn't really a line--more of a packed mob. Surely, though, we had "connections" and could cut to the front, right? Well, okay, perhaps it would be morally wrong to do so. But good grief--if we waited in line, we could be there until midnight. In fact, we'd probably still be there RIGHT NOW instead of my typing this up.

I wanted to get a photo of the mob and went up to the second floor and got photos of the mob on the first floor. Turn out, Alton was quite accessible by sneaking around to the second floor. But still, it didn't feel right to try to cut in front of that long line. We watched Alton signing books and taking photos with fans, so I finally got a couple of closer-up photos of him. Amanda hung back further than I did, which is a shame--I kind of hoped he'd look up, see her, and wave us in. But he didn't notice her, and we eventually slunk away.

I may not have "officially" met Alton today, but I'm getting better. This time, I actually did see him in the flesh. =) Those photos of light that bounced off his skin entered my eye sockets! Next time, though.... there's always next time.... In a way, it would be kind of disappointing if I actually got to meet the man face-to-face at this point. =)

By Gully, We'll Beat the Storm!

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ron takes my pack to the bottom of the cliff.
You can see the rope still attached to it.

We left last time with a cliff-hanger--our struggling heroes, Ron and I, looking over a small cliff hanging over the South Fork of the Toutle River, wondering how safe it would be getting down.

I suggested that we could lower our packs with rope, then we could navigate the treacherous scramble unencumbered. Ron pulled out some rope and went down, making it look easy. I threw our trekking poles down to him first, then lowered my pack which he grabbed onto and moved it to a safe spot. I had to be careful lowering my pack--I didn't want to lose control of it winding up with rope burns on my hands or knocking Ron out with it. =) I put on my gloves to help alleviate the rope burn problem, and wound the rope around a tree and my arm a few times to spread out the frictional forces slowing the backpack's descent, and it went well. I repeated the process with Ron's pack--which felt quite a bit heavier than my own pack, but then it was encumbered by the weight of a wedding dress that my pack didn't have. =)

When all of the gear had been lowered, I released the rope and lowered myself down into the ravine. We'd made it. Well, we made it down, at least. We still had to get back up the other side, but it wasn't nearly as vertical as the way down. Yep, we'd be fine.... =)

The river looked just wide enough that jumping across would be difficult and I decided to plow right through getting my feet wet. Ron, on the other hand, saw a small rock in the middle of the river and figured he could use that to get halfway across, then hop on to the far side. I wished him luck, but secretly, I wanted him to fail. I took out my camera and prepared myself in case of failure. I was going to make sure him falling into the river was going to be well-documented.

Ron thinks he can cross the South Fork of the Toutle River without getting his feet wet....

He made one large step to the rock, then stopped--straddling half the river. I wasn't sure if he'd have enough momentum to get the other foot onto the rock or not, and backing up would not be an option anymore. He floundered around, but eventually pulled himself up onto the rock. "Very good, Ron," I thought, "but that was the shorter step." And he barely made it.

Okay, you got one foot halfway across. Now what? =)

Ron tested the depth of the water ahead of him with his trekking pole. It appeared to be about knee deep. Not dangerous, but deeper than where I crossed the river. Once again, he took another large step to the other side of the river, and once again stopped--straddled halfway across the river. And once again, he floundered around for awhile, clearly trying to get a grip on the situation.

Woo-who! You made it halfway! And didn't even overshoot and
land face first in the river. Good job!

Click! Click! Click! I was working my camera hard.

"Come on, Ron! You're gonna go in! Just do it and get it over with," I shouted, encouraging him. If I was not around to encourage him, who would? =)

Yeah, deep right there, isn't it? Well, what are you going to do?

He continued floundering around, for nearly two minutes, before he finally pushed himself off the rock....

...and his one leg went into the river. Yep, no avoiding it. His other leg made it to the shore, however, and he seemed pleased that he only had to get one foot wet crossing the river.

Are you going to stand there all day like that? Oh, go on, just put your
foot in the water and get it over with. =)

We quickly scrambled back up the other bank--which was a heck of a lot easier than going down--and found a side trail to Sheep Canyon. Our guidebook suggested a good campsite could be found in that direction, so we followed it to a beautiful site along a creek. When we arrived, two day hikers were there--where they came from, we weren't sure. They suggested that they were going around Mount St. Helens clockwise, but clearly they didn't have enough gear to go completely around the mountain.

Ron makes a valiant attempt at crossing the river, but alas, he's going in....
Unfortunately, my camera can only take about one photo every three seconds and
he was already out of the water before my camera was ready for another photo.
So this photo of the toes of one foot in the water is the last one I got before
the afternoon's entertainment was over.

They didn't stick around long, though, and Ron and I set up camp. I laid down and rested. I was tired. Woke up early, hiked long and hard, and the crossing of the South Fork of the Toutle River wore me out. I was exhausted. Ron went off to take more pictures of himself in his wedding dress as I napped.

Ron climbs out from the gully, which was
considerably easier than getting into it!

The campsite was nice, but I complained to Ron about there being too many trees. I wanted to sleep under the stars--I love sleeping under the stars--and we had finally cleared the blast zone and were now surrounded by giant trees everywhere. I would have been thrilled to stop and camp before leaving the blast zone--that Toutle River crossing pretty much marks the boundary of the blast zone--but all camping is strictly prohibited in the blast zone. Nope, if we had stopped earlier, we'd have been camping illegally, and I do try to follow the rules when I can. But still, I would have preferred a campsite out of the trees. Ron seemed to love the trees, however.

We woke bright and early the next morning planning another long day that would cover about 16 miles--slightly more than halfway around the mountain. Our goal for day two was to loop as far around the mountain as possible and set up camp as close to the restricted camping zone on the other side of the mountain.

Immediately, the trail climbed up the South Fork of the Toutle River, gaining all of the elevation we lost the day before and then some. On the climb, I saw a pack resting by the side of the trail, alone and abandoned. Hmm... Yep, there it was--a bare butt, about 30 feet off the trail, facing in my direction. The morning constitutional. I decided to push on without saying hi. It probably wouldn't have made anyone very comfortable to be surprised by me walking up behind him. =)

Climbing back up above tree line, looking across
the canyon with the Toutle River.

Another couple of hundred feet up the trail, I found another hiker sitting on the side of the trail. Obviously, the hiking companion of the fellow doing his business in the woods. I sat down on a nearby log and introduced myself. They were going in the same direction as us, around the mountain, but they started at June Lake and intended to finish their hike this afternoon. They camped right next to the river crossing which is why we never saw them at the site we camped at, but they must have been behind us on the trail or we would have seen them after crossing the river. Hiking in the same direction, I expected we'd be crossing paths with each other most of the afternoon.

Several minutes later, the companion joined us, and I swear to God--he looked just like an image of Jesus. Long, brownish-blonde hair with a full beard and mustache. But the thing that really got me was the staff. He didn't carry a hiking pole or a stick improvising as a hiking pole--he carried a staff! Except for the technical clothes, he looked exactly like the images of Jesus you see just about everywhere.

"Holy cow! I just caught Jesus taking a dump!"

I kind of felt sorry for these poor,
lonely flowers in the morning sunlight.

I kept my thoughts to myself, however. Well, these thoughts, at least. =)

And if this was Jesus, then I must have been talking to one of his disciples this whole time. I wonder which one.... They all kind of look the same to me.

Ron walked up mere seconds after Jesus. I left camp before him and had a several minute head-start on him. Now that he was caught up and Jesus was done taking care of business, all four of us continued the relentless climb up the mountain with Ron and I pulling ahead of Jesus and Disciple.

The trail finally reached treeline at which point it stopped climbing elevation and started following the contours around the mountain again. The next mile or so was wonderfully flat with great views above treeline. I expected this terrain to last several miles, but much sooner than I expected, we were once again crashing back into the woods and down the mountain along a big canyon. Clearly, the trail was headed to a better place to cross safely, but I was annoyed. My map didn't show this detour down the mountain again. I think there was a reroute--a trail clearly used to go straight at one point but had been rerouted down the mountain. When did the reroute happen? How long was the reroute? We didn't know. We already had a long day of hiking planned, and this reroute was not making things any better for us.

Another gully to traverse. These gullies were really starting to annoy me....

Ultimately, the reroute probably took us a good one or two miles out of our way, and once again we had to scramble through the gully at the bottom of the canyon. Nothing near as challenging as the South Fork of the Toutle River, but an annoying detour no matter how you looked at it. Once we crossed, we headed back up the other side and returned to the treeline. ARGH!

We didn't see any cairns marking this route across the gully, so Wassa Jr
starts to build one himself!

The next couple of miles were absolutely wonderful. Green grasses, and the first hazy sighting of Mount Hood to the south. The walking was fast and easy, and the trail crossed by a few patches of snow. SNOW! *shaking head* Snow.....

We passed a few more day hikers along the trail, all of them warning us about a storm that was headed our way. Which wasn't a surprise--the last time I checked the weather before leaving Seattle, there was a 60% chance of rain Sunday. Today was Saturday--the first day of fall and last day we could expect nice weather. But it seemed like every day hiker described the impending storm as growing larger and worse with each passing hour. The first day hiker described, "Rain tomorrow." The next day hiker described a "storm" headed our day. Then they were describing a "big" storm. And then a "huge storm." Yeah, thanks for trying to cheer us up, folks! =)

Wow--what a view! This is what I live for!

Ron asked me if I thought it was just scare-mongering. Probably some of it, but there was definitely a change coming. That's what the weather forecast I saw said the day before. Probably lots of rain, but I didn't otherwise think much of it. Rain isn't fun, but it wasn't going to kill us either.

At the next trail junction, I saw two hikers sprawled out, resting. These two, clearly, were not mere day hikers. They had packs the size of Texas. I saw three large boxes of Wheat Thins resting outside of one of the packs, and the one fellow had a ZipLock bag of what appeared to be Jelly Bellies. If I had to guess, there must have been at least five pounds of Jelly Bellies in that bag. It was enormous!

Snow, for Pete's sake! Snow!

I stopped and introduced myself, learning that they had just started their round-the-mountain hike that morning from the Climbers Bivouac, heading clockwise. I probably wouldn't see them again, unless it was on the opposite side of the mountain.

Ron caught up quickly and we chatted for a bit before they moved on. Ron and I rested a little longer--we intended to take a break here even before we knew about the other hikers. After they left, Ron turned to me: "Did you see the size of their packs?!"

And I couldn't help but laugh. Yes, I noticed that before I had even said hi. "Did you see the three--THREE!--large boxes of Wheat Thins the one fellow had? And the entire box?! They didn't even repack it!"

I wondered if they had ever been on a backpacking trip before. They had some of the largest packs I've ever seen--and I've seen a lot of people with over-weighted packs before. Ron started referring to them as the Wheat Thin Boys, and that became their nickname--unbeknownst to them--for the rest of the trip. =)

The ancient lava flows I found rather easy to walk on, but the going was slow.

The trail quickly cut into some old lava flows--large, broken rocks where we often lost the trail. The trail was marked by large plastic poles and wooden posts along these sections, and we'd scramble over the rocks from one pole or post to the next. It was beautiful, and while hiking along it was slow going, but it was easy going too. The rocks were solid and generally didn't jiggle or move, and my shoes stuck to the rough surfaces like glue. No slipping on these rocks! But the going was slow, and I was growing increasingly frustrated at our time. We left camp later than I expected. The detour on the trail slowed down the next segment. And now this. At the rate we were going, I was growing increasingly concerned that we wouldn't make our campsite until after sunset.

Wooden posts marked the trail through the lava flows, and
Mount Adams rises in the background.

Not much to do about that except push onward.

I started growing increasingly concerned about the lack of water. My topo map showed half a dozen streams crossing the trail, but they were all dry when we passed. I wasn't terribly worried--while I had originally planned to fill up with water at any creeks we passed along the way, I knew with absolute certainty we could get water at June Lake--slightly more than halfway through our hike for the day. But it was a quarter mile off the trail, and I didn't want to walk a quarter mile off the trail for water.

Somewhere, a forest is burning.....

We looped around the south side of the mountain, passing Jesus and Disciple multiple times along the way, then they'd pass us again. In the distance, Mount Adams rose above the horizon--majestic and towering above everything around it. Between Mount Hood and Mount Adams we could see a wildfire burning out of control. Exactly where it was we didn't know, nor did any of the hikers we passed. I wondered if it was burning on the PCT--perhaps somewhere near Indian Heaven, but I never did learn the source of the fire. The wind blew the smoke from the fire in front of Mount Adams, creating a hazy and less-than-perfect photo op. Drats.

You'd be surprised at the number of snakes we found along the trail. I saw four of them!
This is the only one I got a photo of, however.

Finally, at Swift Creek, we reached a drinkable water source. We would not have to make the extra side-trip to June Lake for water. *whew* We stopped to eat lunch here, then continued on.

Near the junction for June Lake, I noticed the clouds coming in. A thick layer of them, blotting out the entire blue sky to the west. The storm was a coming. And it was coming in faster than I expected.

Swift Creek, going over a cliff.

Onward we pushed, trying to reach camp before dark. The clouds raced over us, pushing to the east, and I noticed some of the clouds in the distance were actually dropping rain. Occasionally, I felt a drop of water hit me. It wasn't raining, not yet at least, but for the first time that day, I wondered if it would rain on us before we even reached camp. According to the weather forecast I last checked, the chance of rain today was zero percent. ZERO! My pack was not prepped for rain. My camera and wallet weren't in ZipLocks. My clothes bag wasn't in a trash bag. My book and magazines weren't waterproofed. I wasn't prepared for rain, and this sudden turn in the weather was a problem.

Beyond the June Lake junction, though, the trail was relatively easy to hike. No jagged lava flows to step carefully over. No steep climbs to slow us down. No more unexpected detours. Which was good... because we were now in a race. We were in a race against the storm, and it was starting to look like the storm was going to win....

The clouds were moving in fast, and we started racing the storm to camp.

We'll Be Going 'Round the Mountain....

2011-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

Wassa checks out the Hoffstadt Bridge along the
blast zone for Mount St. Helens. The forest on the other
side had been completely wiped out by the Mount St.
Helens eruption, but it's growing back here!

I got an e-mail a few months ago from a fellow on Atlas Quest named NW Adventurer, asking about my experiences on the PCT. He was particularly interested because he intended to thru-hike the PCT himself next year. We swapped a few e-mails, and eventually made tentative plans to do a short backpacking trip late in the summer.

Finally, we agreed on a time and a place, and ultimately we decided to visit one of the most famous mountains of the Pacific Northwest: Mount St. Helens. For those of you who sleep under a rock, Mount St. Helens is the volcano that erupted so spectacularly back on May 18, 1980, wiping out hundreds of square miles of forest and reducing the top of the mountain by 1,300 feet. Prior to the eruption, the peak was the 5th highest in the state. After the eruption, it doesn't even break the top 20. This mountain is a geological wonder!

I had done some hiking on the south side of the mountain before, but you couldn't really see into the crater from that direction and was well outside of the blast zone. Considering it was only a few hour drive away, it's remarkable I haven't explored the area in more detail. I intended to change that with this trip. This trip, I decided, would take us completely around the mountain mostly following the 28-mile-or-so Loowit Trail.

Mount St. Helens, lurking in the clouds

NW Adventurer, a.k.a. Ron, picked me up in Seattle Thursday afternoon and we started driving south toward The Mountain. We'd get there in the evening, though, and camped for the night at a pullout along the windy road to the Johnson Ridge Observatory. He slept in the cab of his pickup truck. I slept in the back under the stars. Saw several shooting stars during the night, and listened to elk bugling to each other. Not a bad night, really, even if I was only camped in the back of a pickup truck . =)

We woke the next morning to a beautiful view of Mount St. Helens. We saw it a bit the evening before, mired in clouds and partly obscured, but during the night the clouds mostly left leaving an absolutely stunning view directly into the crater. Wow.

Sunset from our waywide camp.

We parked at Johnson Ridge, packed up our gear, and headed out. After about a half hour, Ron stopped to take off a layer of clothes--the day was warming up rapidly, and I pulled ahead. After about ten minutes, my spidey senses started to tingle. Something about the trail felt wrong. I was expecting a junction, which would take me south towards Mount St. Helens, but the trail seemed like it was going more north than south. Trails wind around obstacles often enough, but I started getting the feeling that I somehow missed the junction.

Sunrise over Mount St. Helens

But that was impossible, I thought. The trail was clearly marked. I couldn't possibly miss a major trail junction... but my spidey senses continued to tingle. Five more minutes, I decided. I'll go for another five minutes and see how things stand.

I'm ready to hike around the Great Mountain.

Five minutes later, I still hadn't found the junction. Looking at my watch, I had expected to come across it ten minutes earlier. I pulled out my topo map of the area, and unless I was badly misreading it, I was certain I was on the wrong trail. It was time to turn around. If I was lucky, Ron would catch up with me after a few minutes of hiking and confirm that we hadn't reached the junction and I was on the right track all along.

But I didn't see Ron. I continued backtracking, following the trail for ten minutes until I reached the junction. A giant sign marked it, pointing the direction I needed to go. And I couldn't help but think, "How the hell did I miss this junction?!" I'd hiked about 10 minutes in the wrong direction, and 10 minutes back, which I figured put me about 20 minutes behind Ron at this point. Probably close to a mile. Crap. He probably still thought I was in front and was hoofing it as fast as he could trying to catch up to me.

This is the trail junction that I somehow,
inexplicably, failed to notice.

Coming down off of Johnson Ridge, I crossed over parts of the largest landslide in recorded history--and the lumpy hummocks it left behind that slid completely up and over Johnson Ridge. Wow. Down from the ridge, the trail followed a largely flatish plain, desolate with only the smallest of trees and bushes. This area used to be a thriving old growth forest until Mount St. Helens blew.

Ron takes off a layer of clothes to
beat the heat--would this be the
last photo I ever took of him?

There was a view of Spirit Lake, filled with hundreds and hundreds of logs destroyed in the eruption. I'd heard about those logs filling Spirit Lake, and seen photos of it before, but it was still quite a sight to see in person. I once read that every month, one or two of the logs become so waterlogged that they finally sink to the bottom of the lake. I'm not sure who sits around counting how many and how often logs sink to the bottom of the lake, but I thought that was interesting. At that rate, however, the logs will clutter the lake for years more to come.

Spirit Lake fascinated me. The waters of the lake sloshed 800 feet up the hillside, and lahars and pyroclastic flows filled in the old lakebed raising the surface level of the lake by over 200 feet. Most geologic processes move so slowly, it's hard to see any changes within a lifetime.

This is a closeup of the crater's still-growing dome. You can see steam rising off of it,
which just fascinates me. =) Hiking within the crater is not allowed for safety reasons.

A few streams ran through this low area and frogs seemed to jump out from absolutely everywhere. Hundreds of little frogs. I had to be careful not to step on any of those cute little things. If they didn't move, though, they were practically invisible, blending into their backgrounds better than a chameleon.

Spirit Lake, filled with logs that once made up a thick forest around it.

The hummocks left on Johnson Ridge weren't to be seen in the lower valleys at the base of Mount St. Helens--which were largely flat and devoid of features. Later I would learn this was because of pyroclastic flows--superheated gases and rocks reaching temperatures of 1,830°F flowing over the landscape burying the hummocks from the landslide. Parts of the valley we were walking on was 600 feet higher after the eruption than before it. Six hundred feet higher! The Toutle River was already carving out new channels through the flattened terrain.

I don't know who did this,
but I really enjoyed admiring their
work. =)

As amazing as my surroundings were, however, I was still worried about Ron. Not that he was hurt or injuried--I didn't believe that for a second--but worried we'd be chasing each other around the mountain all weekend unable to find each other. I hoped and prayed he had the common sense to realize that I must have missed that junction and that I was behind him. I hoped that when he reached the Loowit Trail and didn't see me, he'd realize I wouldn't have left there without him. We hadn't even decided which way around the mountain we would go. We discussed the pros and cons of going clockwise or counter-clockwise, but I told him we didn't have to commit to a direction until we reached the junction.

Certainly he'd realize I wouldn't go beyond that junction, considering we hadn't even agreed on which direction we'd go. Right? I hoped so.

What rotten luck, I thought, to miss the very first trail junction of the entire hike. We hadn't even been hiking together for an hour yet. He wasn't familiar with how I think or my patterns. He might think I'm some super-human freak that hikes a million miles per hour and would leave him in the dust at a critical trail junction. I'm not and I wouldn't, but he didn't know that yet.

The hummocks the trail crosses over used to be land that was once part of the
northern slope of Mount St. Helens before the 1980 eruption. The valley
between where this photo was taken and the mountain is as much as 600 feet
higher than before the eruption!

And if he did go on, thinking I was somewhere ahead, which direction would he have taken? Which direction should I go hoping to catch up with him? If I go the wrong way, I might not see him again until we're crossing paths on the complete opposite side of the mountain! This is so not good. Please, I hoped, don't go past that junction. Stop at that junction and wait for me.

Can you see the frog in this photo?

There he is! It's a great camo job! If these things weren't moving around so actively,
I probably wouldn't have noticed them at all. I was all but chasing this frog!

I reached the next junction, and Ron wasn't there. Crap. One sign pointed to the Loowit Trail, 3/4 miles away, going right. The other direction, I also knew, connected to the Loowit Trail, further to the east, three or four miles away, but it wasn't labeled as such. I guessed that if Ron went past this junction--which he clearly must have done--he probably followed the sign pointing to the Loowit Trail, probably assuming I did the same thing. I went right.

Elk were everywhere! We'd pass several herds of them, each herd with dozens of them.
The 1980 eruption killed 1600 elk, but it created their ideal grasslands habitat afterwards
and the elk are prospering better than ever! This used to be a thick forest before the eruption.

"Please, please, please," I thought, "don't have gone past the next junction!"

I crossed over a small hill, from which I could see a herd of Elk nearby. Majestic creatures, they are, but I didn't stop to admire them. I needed to catch up with Ron.

Wassa helps build a cairn to mark the way.

I rounded another turn, and--yes!--there was Ron! He was at the trail junction! Relief. I waved at him, wanting to make sure he saw I was behind him, and he waved back. Yep, he knew where I was now.

When I got closer, he asked, "How did you get behind me?!"

And I told him I just missed that first trail junction. There was no excuse for it. I couldn't even explain how I missed such an obvious junction. We caught up a bit. He was worried that I was some super-human hiker and would be upset that I was slowing him down. Ha! I'm the one slowing us down. So far, at least....

You really have to see it to believe it....

We hiked a bit further before Ron stopped again. He wanted to put on his wedding dress. Yes, you read that correctly. Wedding dress. White. It's part of his plan to raise money for his PCT thru-hike next year. 26 weeks. 26 wedding gowns. 2600 miles. Hiking 26. Just when you think you've seen it all, a guy wearing a wedding dress on a backpacking trip comes along to prove you wrong. =)

Gotta fix that train!

Naturally, I took a lot of photos. Nobody would believe it unless I had photos. I also pointed up at the Johnson Ridge Observatory. "If anyone up there looked through a telescope at us right now, they're gonna wonder about you." If someone did happen to notice Ron, I suspected every telescope up there would soon be pointed at him. Oh, look, elk--but really, you can see elk any time. How often do you get to see a man backpacking around Mount St. Helens in a wedding dress? Now that's a sight to see!

He hiked in the dress for about an hour, jumping across creeks, up and down gullies, through the blast zone of Mount St. Helens. It's really a perfect place, as far as wearing a wedding dress goes. There's no brush for it to get caught up in. It might have been hot and uncomfortable, but it's a relatively easy area to walk around with a dress on. =)

The elk are captivated with the hiker in the wedding dress. Most of the elk we saw tended
to walk away from us. These elk kept getting closer and closer to the trail....

Eventually it came off, however, and we continued on, closing in on the South Fork of the Toutle River. Rumor had it that this would be a difficult little river to cross. The ranger I talked to back at Johnson Ridge described it as 'sketchy.'

Ron took this photo of the elk and captioned their conversation. =)

The steep drop itself didn't worry me as much
as the all of the loose boulders that could
rain down upon us if we knocked any of them
loose.

The trail reached the edge of a deep canyon, and we could see the trail drop quickly down into it. Most of the canyon didn't worry me--it would be a long downhill and a long slog back uphill, but it wasn't dangerously steep or worrisome. No, the size of the canyon didn't worry me. It was a narrow little crack at the bottom of it that worried me. From a distance, it looked like a sheer, vertical cliff. Not very far across--probably 50 feet at the widest--but I can't jump across 50 feet.

We crashed down the mountain, finally arriving where the trail runs right over a near vertical cliff. It looked passable. Sketchy, but passable. The drop itself didn't look particularly dangerous, but there was a large boulder embedded in the sandy soil which concerned me. If that boulder shifted when one of us were under it, it would likely be a fatal flow. I decided to scout downstream a bit to see if there might be a safer alternative, but after five or ten minutes of walking, I found nothing better. Way downstream, perhaps two miles away, it looked like the canyon flattened out and there would likely be a better place to cross, but we didn't want to walk several miles out of our way to avoid this particular challenge. Nope, we'd cross here....

Ron examines the route down to the South Fork of the Toutle River.
Would he make it? Would we survive the most treacherous part
of the entire hike? Tune in next time to find out! =)

As the Hike-a-Thon Turns....

2011-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

I put on my pack and head off on the
Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail from the Home Depot.

It's almost the end of the month, the end of the Hike-a-Thon. I haven't done anything particularly exciting recently, but I do have some more photos to share. =)

Back the 27th, Amanda and I headed off to Home Depot. I'm not sure how many of you know it--it's not something we've been posting about--but it looks like Amanda plans to buy herself a condo in the very near future. We heard about free workshops about interior painting and such and figured we'd poke around. How much does this stuff cost anyhow?

We spent about an hour and half there looking around but buying nothing (not yet, at least!), then went our own ways. Amanda wanted to do some hiking elsewhere in Seattle, but I wasn't too keen on the idea of hiking a dull trail after a long drive, so I decided to take the dull hike that required no drive. The Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail happens to pass directly in front of the Home Depot. I hopped on the trail and headed south, ultimately winding up at Barnes and Nobel at Westwood Village.

I started reading through a couple of computer books there, and was interrupted when a fellow named Terry Brooks showed up for an author signing. Anyone know of him? I've never read any of his books, but by golly, that place was crowded with fans. I listened to his little talk and he read from part of a book that's supposed to come out next year or something. I'm not familiar with any of the characters, though, and my mind started to wander after awhile.

Blackberry season is fast approaching!

And afterwards, I followed the Longfellow Creek Trail back to the north end of the trail. I did this trail once before early in the month, but it was late when I started and completely dark by the time I finished. I didn't have many photos to share, and those I had generally didn't turn out well. This time, it was bright daylight and the photos are much improved. =)

I've also done a couple more of my Alki Trail walks. Nothing particularly exciting to report, but this evening I went shortly before sunset and got some nice photos of said sunset.

The Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail passes this stadium. I have
no idea who's playing, but I can tell you according to the scoreboard
when I passed by, the home team was losing.

Lest you think the entire Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail is urban,
this photo shows a gaggle of birds hanging out on a log in a pond. =)

This bridge has always puzzled me. It dead-ends, right there on the other side.
It's truly a bridge to nowhere, even if it's not as impressive as the one
Alaska tried to get for itself. =) And this isn't just any bridge, but it's a
curved bridge. Why? For what purpose? Perhaps someday they plan to
extend the trail in that direction? I don't know, but I wonder about it
every time I pass it.

I really like the rhythmic patterns in Fishbone Bridge. It's starting to look
a little dirty, though. Seems like it was only a couple of years ago this
bridge was last painted and it looked great then!

There's a reason this place is called the Dragonfly Pavilion. =)

I saw this plume of smoke to the south shortly after finishing the
Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail but before I made it home. Clearly, I couldn't
know the details of what was going on, but this is not normal and
just as clearly bad news or somebody out there. Turns out, it was a
house that was a complete loss. Adding insult to injury, when
firefighters arrived, the first two hydrants they tried didn't have sufficient
water pressure and they lost a great deal of time getting water from a hydrant
three blocks away from the fire.

As the sun sets over Alki.

A ferry boat glides through Puget Sound under the setting sun....

Definitely near high tide right now!

This is an Argosy cruise ship--tourists going for a little boat ride.
I've done them couple of times and enjoyed it. =)

And that's all I have for photos. In Hike-a-Thon related news, I got an e-mail from the WTA saying that pledges made today, August 31st, will be match dollar for dollar (up to $2,500). So if you've been thinking about it but haven't gotten around to it yet, TODAY is the day! Make it happen and double your contribution for a good cause! =)

You'll see that Amanda's already made her goal for the month (over $1,000!), but I still need a few more sympathy contributions to make my less ambitious goal. Thanks to everyone who's sponsored us so far.

Yes, I'm a Slacker!

2011-08-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Flowers on Alki

I haven't posted here for awhile because, yes, I'm a slacker. That should come as no surprise to my regular readers. The term 'slackboxing' was even invented to describe my style of letterboxing.

However, I have continued to do hikes, even if I've been lazy about posting them. I did three consecutive Alki hikes which you haven't read about yet. The first time was during the day, and I found myself having trouble trying to find something new and interesting to take a photo of. Ultimately, I settled on some flowers, but I don't even like how the picture turned out.

The second Alki hike was at night, and my problem was compounded because it was dark which limited what I could take photos of even more. I did bring my tripod, however, so at least I could get relatively steady photos, and I ended up taking pictures of the Seattle skyline and the moon. (I did not, however, bring my telescope, so the moon photos aren't particularly impressive.)

The moon over Alki

And the third Alki hike was also at night, and I remembered to bring my tripod and camera, but ultimately took photos of nothing. I just couldn't think of anything new to take photos of--at least something new that was somewhat interesting. I really need to widen my hiking radius.

So after that, I took a day off. On August 19th, I didn't hike. I was tempted to, just to continue my streak of consecutive hiking days for the entire month, but in the end, I just didn't care about that anymore. The idea of doing a hike I didn't really feel like doing didn't appeal to me, so I took a day off.

Or was it a day of rest? Because the next day, Amanda and I packed up and drove off for her very first backpacking trip. Ever. After a lot of driving, and being snowed out from Plan A, we ended up at the trailhead for Baker Lake, along the skirt of Mount Baker. Despite the fact that I can see Mount Baker from Alki, after all these years, I've never made a trip to Mount Baker. The closest I've come to it was driving by along I-5. Even the PCT manages to swing well to the east of it, although I was able to see it from a distant vantage point along the PCT.

Amanda prepares to take her first steps of
her very first backpacking trip.

Baker Lake was ideal for Amanda because it was relatively flat (she's not a big fan of ups and downs), and short (this would be her first time ever on a backpacking trip--no reason to run her into the ground!) Initially we planned for one night in the wilderness, but after looking over our maps and getting to the trailhead early enough in the afternoon, I suggested a two-night backcountry adventure. The first night would be a short 2.5-miles hike up the Baker River to Sulfide Camp. And for the second night, we'd backtrack to Baker Lake and camp along its shores at a site about 6 miles from our first campsite. Then the next day we'd hike 4.5 miles back to the car and call it a day.

The 2.5 miles up to Sulfide Camp went well enough. Amanda was concerned that we wouldn't arrived until after dark. We definitely arrived after sunset, but there was still a little light out when we arrived. We did hit two minor snags, however. The first was that the campsite was technically over the boundary and in North Cascades National Park. We did not realize this when we started, so we technically camped illegally because we didn't have a necessary permit for camping in the national park. We decided to go anyhow, however, because the nearest ranger station was much too far away by the time we realized our error and the short half-mile or so that the trail entered the park didn't appear to be connected to any other trails in the national park. It seemed very unlikely that a ranger would happen upon us by accident--unless he drove out all the way to Baker Lake and hiked up from outside of the park.

Amanda looks over a suspension bridge
over Baker River.

Our second snag was that there were already people at both of the campsites at the camp. We were hoping to have the place to ourselves since nobody had signed into the register at the trailhead saying they were overnighting at the campsite. We certainly didn't expect not to have a campsite at all when we arrived!

So we smooshed ourselves between the two campsites. On the one side of us, there was a couple with their infant. I was both impressed that they would backpack with an actual baby--not a young child, but an actual baby--and worried that its crying might keep us up all night. As it turned out, the baby probably slept better than Amanda did--who woke me up during the night saying she was cold and pushing me off the groundsheet. =)

Mosquitoes, fortunately, weren't bad, but the no-see-ums were terrible. And, as I only brought a tarp, we had no protection against them. Once it started getting dark, though, the bugs died down.

The next morning, Amanda was pretty pleased with herself for surviving a night in the backcountry, and ready to go home, so we scuttled my plans for a second night along Baker Lake.

Amanda hiked the 2.5 miles back to the car, but I wanted to stretch my legs a bit and decided to hike around to the far side of the lake--about 16 miles away.

The hike was largely uneventful. Despite following more-or-less along the edge of the lake, the views were obscured by trees most of the time. The campsite we had originally planned to crash at for the night seemed spectacular--right along the edge of the lake and with fantastic views. But it wasn't meant to be....

Amanda crosses a small bridge.

By about the halfway point, my feet started getting a little sore, and normally I would have stopped for a long, leisurely lunch break, but I told Amanda that I'd finish at around 2:00. That didn't give me a lot of time to sit around lounging. Onwards and onwards I pushed.

I covered the 16-or-so miles by 1:40 that afternoon, arriving a full 20 minutes ahead of schedule. It was a thru-hiker schedule. I was pretty tired by the time I arrived at the trailhead, but during my thu-hiking days, I'd have taken a half hour break, got back up, and pushed out another 16 miles by sunset.

Amanda was already at the trailhead when I arrived, with cold drinks in an ice chest. My trail angel. =) This came something as a surprise to me, though, since when we first arrived, we had no cold drinks or an ice chest. Clearly, Amanda had driven back to civilization somewhere and resupplied while I was off hiking. I assumed she'd do a short day hike on one of the nearby trails to kill some time, then take a nap or read a book until I emerged from the woods. Instead, she went into town and letterboxed. =)

Then once again, it was back to Seattle, a long drive with surprisingly heavy traffic for a Sunday afternoon.

This old log had quite a few rocks resting on it. I went ahead and added to the pile. =)

I carried a tripod with me, which is how we could take a picture of us together here. Look at that--after a night in the backcountry, Amanda is still smiling! =)

A cascade flowing towards Baker Lake.

The view from where I had planned to camp the second night.
That's Mount Baker in the background.


Kayakers in Baker Lake.

Another stream running towards Baker Lake.

And one last view of Mount Baker. The skies really cleared up by the end!

Quartz Creek

2011-08-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

Wassa Jr. goes on his first backpacking trip!
It's also always cool with you can carry a giant
saw in your pack. (Okay, maybe not giant, but
I bet it's bigger than anything you carried into the
backcountry!)

For the first time since I finished the Pacific Crest Trail, I was heading back into the backcountry. This time, it was with the Washington Trails Association. After all, if you're going to sponsor our participation in the Hike-a-Thon, wouldn't you like to know what kinds of things the money is spent on? =)

Amanda and I camped at the Lewis River Horse Camp overnight--which was exceedingly convenient since that's where I was to meet for the Backcountry Response Team I had signed up for at the unholy hour of 8:30 AM. (Needless to say, I usually wake up much later in the morning than that!)

Little did they know, I planned to bring my little friend, Wassa Jr. Wassa would be going on his first backpacking trip!

Shortly before the appointed time, cars started pulling up. In all, there would be six of us. Well, seven if you include Wassa Jr: Ryan, Carol, Chris, David, Kurt, and myself. No, I'm not referring to myself in the 3rd person--the trip leader was a nice fellow named Ryan.

Who, as it turns out, I met twice before. The first time I met him was April 23, 2010, at approximately 3:43 PM in the afternoon. I usually don't know this sort of information with such precision, but this was an exception moment for me because it was the exact time I started my PCT thru-hike. I didn't blog about it that day because it didn't seem important, but there was one other hiker at the border when I started my hike. He wasn't thru-hiking--just planning to go as far as Agua Dulce then it would bump up to Washington because he had a job with the WTA that would be starting. I happened to photograph my watch when I started, and I looked up the photo and could find the precise time I started my thru-hike. =) I took the photo only a few minutes after I met Ryan, the other hiker at the border.

Ryan, who as it turns out, I met a couple of times before.

Never thinking I'd ever see him again, I didn't think about him again. At least not until I bumped into him again in southern Washington on September 2nd. I don't know the exact time, but I distinctly remember meeting two trail maintainers from the forest service while hiking with Hui, and that was the day I hiked with Hui. (I had to cheat to check my blog, though--I didn't know that date off the top of my head.)

I didn't mention this encounter in my blog either--since I had failed to note him the first time I met him, it seemed strange to mention him this time. But it seemed like a bizarre coincidence to run into him a second time more than 2,000 miles later in a completely different context. He explained that he was between gigs with the WTA and was doing some work for the forest service at the time, and he mentioned that he was at the PCT kickoff earlier that year. I didn't recognize him, but the story sounded familiar, and I realized--that's the same guy I met at the border! Only him and my mom were the only two people who actually saw me at the Mexican border!

And, once again, I didn't recognize him this time either--except that after he found out I thru-hiked the PCT last year, he mentioned that he was at the kickoff last year and I thought, "Wait a minute.... I've heard this story before! In fact, I've heard it twice before!"

Wassa kept wanting to stop to eat berries.

And so for the third time, our paths would cross.

We made introductions, Amanda drove off into the wild blue yonder, and the rest of us picked up some hand tools and headed off into the backcountry along the Quartz Creek Trail.

We didn't really go far--only about two miles, just to the other side of a small tributary of Quartz Creek that would get our feet wet. No bridges, though a couple of others crawled under and over giant trees and bushes along a log jam to cross without getting their feets wet. It looked like too much effort to me, though, and I charged directly across.

Along this creek would be our camp for the next three nights.

But before we set up camp, Chris told us a wild story. This would be Chris's first backpacking trip. Ever. He bought a brand new sleeping bag, a new compression sack for it, and tied it poorly to his pack. He said he thought about running a rope through it or something to make it more secure, but ultimately, didn't bother. This would prove to be a huge mistake because just as he was going down that last big hill down towards the creek, his sleeping bag escaped and bounced down a cliff.

Trying to get over the river on the log jam seemed like
more effort than it was worth to me.

Ryan and Chris would go back across the creek and try to retrieve the sleeping bag, but eventually they came back empty-handed. They could see the sleeping bag resting on a nook on a cliff, but the cliff was too unstable to get down to retrieve it. Chris was in the backcountry. Without a sleeping bag.

This would be a very discouraging development for anyone. Even more so for someone who had never spent a single night in the backcountry. Chris thought about going back and quitting before he had even begun, but decided to try doing without. The nights were relatively warm, and with extra layers of clothing and a tent to trap warm air, he was going to try to stick it out without the sleeping bag.

As for myself, I brought no tent at all. The weather forecast was favorable, so I decided to carry nothing more than my tarp as shelter, and to only set it up if it actually started to rain. Otherwise, I would be cowboy camping.

I also brought a bear canister. I wasn't particularly worried about bears, but I had no intention of carrying all of my food with me to the work site every day, and I didn't want to leave it in camp unattended. Even if no bears happened along, some rodents would undoubtedly take advantage of such a situation. So, as much as I hate carrying them, I brought along my bear canister this time.

David (right) and Chris (minus a backpack) decided to ford the creek like I did. =)

No other mishaps happened for the rest of the day, and by sunset, we were all ready to hit the sack.

The next morning, though, it was time to get our hands dirty and do some work. We donned our hard hats and gloves and hiked another mile or so north along the Quartz Creek Trail. The trail was a wreck. Especially where large trees had fallen across it. The forest service already sent in people to cut out the large logs blocking the trail (although they didn't finish it all!), but the trail was still covered with bark, sawdust, pinecones, branches, and other debris and severely overgrown after years of neglect. The Quartz Creek Trail made the list of "endangered trails" in Washington last year. We were to fix that. =)

Wassa tries on my hard hat, but it doesn't
really fit very well.

I set up Wassa on a nearby log to be a supervisor. He's very good at that. *nodding*

My first task was to cut down a tree that was growing a bit too close to the trail. It was a few inches in diameter and stood probably about ten feet tall. Not exactly a giant among trees, but that's just as well because we didn't bring a cross-cut saw. Nope, just small hand saws, but that was enough. Timber!

Then I picked up a grub hoe and started bring the trail to life. It didn't take long before I declared the work backbreaking. Or at least back-aching. Along with my arms. It's exhausting work. When we got to the first major part where large pieces of bark blanketed the trail where some large trees had fallen, Ryan said we do some swamping first. "Swamping?" I asked. Yes, swamping. It seems that's the technical term for throwing debris off the trail. Learn something every day! =)

So I did some swamping, then picked up Pulaskis, grub hoes, and McLeods--whichever was needed at any given time--and brought the trail to life. Barely discernible at times, we brought it back to life.

My favorite activity was whacking trees, logs, and stumps with a Pulaski. Half axe, half grub, it could chop through anything given enough time. On the second day of work, even Wassa took a few swings with the Pulaski.

Speaking of Wassa, everyone on the team looked out for him. Once, I picked up my pack and some tools to move them further up the trail, and Carol saw Wassa still sitting on a log playing supervisor behind me. "But... what about Wassa?! Are you forgetting Wassa?!"

Carol and David sitting in camp.

No, I wasn't forgetting Wassa. My hands were full. I intended to move my pack and tools ahead, then return for Wassa. Sometimes Kurt would pass where I was working and stop to look around--looking for Wassa. He knew wherever I was, Wassa wasn't far behind.

Our last night in camp, I decided to dress up with a tie and a fancy collared shirt. It was an extravagance, but a tie and shirt didn't take up much space, and I thought it would be amusing to put on something as useless as a tie on a backcountry adventure. =) And anyhow, it was a Wallace and Gromit tie. How could I not wear it?!

By the end of the trip, we figure we restored about a half-mile of the Quartz Creek Trail. After we finished our work, we hiked back to where we started working and walked the entire length of our work--which seemed like an astonishing amount for just six people, five of which are purely volunteers. What paid for these tools and paid the salaries of the trip leader (Ryan, in this case)--donations to the WTA. The money Amanda and I have raised so far probably covers all of the expenses for several of these kinds of trips.

On the forth day, we hiked out again, back to the trailhead. Amanda wouldn't be there to greet me--she was off in Zurich working (and hiking!). But David volunteered to drive me to Tacoma, where he lives, which is close enough to Seattle that I could catch buses and trains the rest of the way to Seattle.

We didn't cut out this large tree, but the trail
is barely visible under all of the debris left
behind. Note Wassa supervising from
his perch on the log.

He dropped me off by the train station in Seattle, but alas, the last Sounder train direct to Seattle had already left for the day. I really like riding trains and was a little disappointed I couldn't take the train to Seattle.

I walked across the street and started looking at the transit maps at a light rail station for a hint about which bus I'd need to catch to get to Seattle, but I had only been looking for a few seconds when a light rail train stopped and a hippie-looking guy popped his head out asking where I was going.

"Seattle," I told him, and he proceeded to explain exactly which route I should take and where the relevant bus stop was located. There was a bus stop on the other side of the block, but he suggested I ride the free (free!) light rail two stops down and there was a bus stop he'd point out to me directly. Sweet. I jumped in.

I chatted with him a bit between the two stops learning that he had recently been arrested and everything he carried had been confiscated. And that he almost lost a leg last week trying to hop a freight train. He grabbed onto a ladder of a moving train and his foot slipped through the rung nearly cutting off his leg.

Wow, my life is boring. =)

When I arrived at the anointed stop, I got out and checked the bus schedule. Yep, there it was. Bus 590, 592, and 594 all went to downtown Seattle. Excellent! The next bus should arrive in 15 minutes or so.

This is the same photo as the previous one,
except taken after some of the work in fixing
the trail had taken place. It's the best
before and "mostly" after photo I have.

It was dinner time at this point, and I had to pee something awful, so I popped into a nearby Subway store to kill two birds with one stone, as it were. When I came back out, a nice old lady was sitting at the bus stop and I sat down next to her, asking if the Seattle bus had already come and gone. I didn't think so--I even took my Subway order to go to help insure I made it back before my bus came and went, but it must have been early. My bus had indeed come and gone without me. The horror!

What to do? What to do? I know, I'll eat my sandwich, and that's what I did. =)

Another Seattle bus would arrive in another half hour. As it turned out, I misread the schedule and the buses came five minutes earlier than I expected. Oh, well, no big deal.

I paid my $3.50 fair to Seattle, a little concerned about how long it would take to drive to Seattle. Buses always make all those stops seemingly on every block, taking every non-freeway road they could throughout the area. I never road the bus between Tacoma and Seattle before, and worried the trip might take hours.

As it turned out, the bus made one more stop in Tacoma, got on I-5, then headed directly to Seattle using the carpool lanes without a single stop between the two! Dang! In rush hour traffic, the bus was probably faster than driving your own car! Yeah! Wee! I never enjoyed a bus ride so much. I'm not sure I've ever been in a bus going freeway speeds before. =)

Again, Wassa supervising the work we had done.

The bus started taking the ramp for the West Seattle Bridge--the very ramp I'd have taken to get home, but I knew the bus was supposed to go downtown--not West Seattle. The left-hand side of the ramp leads to West Seattle. The right-hand side, however, exited into the south end of downtown. I got off at the very first stop in Seattle--near the corner of Spokane St and 4th Ave. (Only a couple of blocks away from the world's first Costco.) Perfect! I couldn't have imagined a better place for the bus to have stopped unless it gave me door-to-door service!

I could have taken another bus into West Seattle, but at this point, I was only a few miles away from home. My pack was relatively light now that I'd eaten most of the food that was in it during the backpacking trip. The air was crisp and cool. And I felt like walking. So I walked the rest of the way home.

My Quartz Creek adventure was officially over. All told, I figure I hiked about 14 miles along Quartz Creek during those four days. Not exactly big mile days, but very satisfying ones.

And please, if you haven't sponsored Amanda and I yet, please consider doing so! Even a dollar can help sharpen or fix a tool!

Wassa checks out the poor quality of the trail.

This log was sticking out part way into the trail. (That greenery on the right is actually
the trail--it just hasn't been cleared yet.) I had a lot of fun lopping off the end with
this Pulaski. It makes a very satisfying thud when it bites into the wood. =)

Wassa takes time off from supervising to climb a tree. =)

Wassa also hiked out to this small waterfall along Quartz Creek.

I found the refracted light on the rocks in Quartz Creek hypnotic. =)

Chris tries on a new kind of hat--totally vegan, too!

Wassa finally does get his hands dirty with real work, using loppers to trim
branches hanging over the trail. He finds them awkward to use,
however, and gives up quickly.

Then Wassa gives the Pulaski a whack or two.

Talk about burying the hatchet! Or the Pulaski, as the case may be. =)

A boy with his moose. =)

Wassa tries to walk a mile in my shoes.
(He doesn't get far!)

I stored Wassa in my bear canister overnight to protect him from
marauding bears. (It would also give him an excellent perch to watch
marauding bears eating me if they had the inclination.)

Back at the trailhead at the end of the trip, Kurt prepares to a take
a group shot with his camera and tripod. (Alas, I do not have the
picture he took to share. Not yet, at least!)

Alki, Alki, and Not Alki

2011-08-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, I continued hiking, but once again, it wasn't particularly noteworthy. The next two days, I hiked Alki because it was close and convenient. This time I walked around with my camera thinking I should take pictures for this blog, but found myself increasingly frustrated because it seems like I already took all of the most interesting shots I could think of at some point or another. Gotta find something new, but what?

So that first day after the Green River Trail, I hiked Alki. Again.

Hey, look, paddling boards or something. That's new!
I hadn't taken a picture of those before! =)

Later in the afternoon, after my Alki walk was done and I was walking home,
I found this little message. Hey, that's new too! And I couldn't help myself--
I giggled. I sense some pent-up anger from the person who wrote the message.

The next day, I took another evening stroll around Alki, which limited my photo opportunities even further. At least I brought my small, portable tripod along this time, so my night photos aren't nearly as blurry this time. =)

Downtown Seattle

And, of course, the Space Needle, at night!

The next day, Amanda and I shook things up a bit and left West Seattle and Alki. =) I signed up with a work party with the WTA--the very organization we're raising money for--but the work site was a several hour drive away and we were expected to meet at the trailhead at 8:30 in the morning. We figured we'd drive down the day before and do some hiking and camp out overnight near the trailhead.

So Amanda printed out some letterboxing clues, we loaded the car with camping gear, and we were off!

We stopped at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, just off of I-5, along the way, where I hiked every trail in the refuge, along with my buddy, Wassa Jr.

Hey, is that what I think it is?

Yes! It is! A turtle! =)

I loved tossing these helicopter seeds into the air
when I was a kid. I refrained from doing so on this hike, however. =)

Wassa Jr. takes a closer look at the views!

I gave the camera to Wassa Jr. for awhile,
but he kept getting his thumb in the photos. *shaking head*

This photos shows what is the single longest and most impressive boardwalk I've ever seen in my life. Amanda told me that the hike out to the end and back was four miles. The first part of the hike wasn't along the boardwalk, but from end-to-end, the boardwalk was easily more than a mile long, held up on stilts with an observation tower, a bird blind, and two viewing decks.

I'm not sure why Wassa took this photo of the viewing deck's bird-poop-covered roof.
I don't think I'll let him use the camera anymore....

After our hike, we built up a huge appetite and satisfied it further down I-5
at Burgerville. Wassa was especially excited about Amanda's onion rings!

Late in the afternoon, we did a short hike near the Lewis River.
I don't remember what this waterfall is called, though.

The Green River

2011-08-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

After three days of hiking Alki, I wanted a change, and started poking through Hiking Washington's History for ideas, and focused on a hike along the Duwamish River. Not because it sounded particularly interesting, but rather because it was closest to where I lived and frankly, I hate traveling. I like being in new places, visiting new places, but I hate the process of getting to those new places. I'm lazy that way. =)

And that's how I ended up at the North Wind Fish Weir along the Duwamish River. The trail I'd follow is actually labeled the Green River Trail, which kind of annoyed me. Why is the Green River Trail following the Duwamish River? My geography is a little fuzzy on this point, but I think the Green River Trail mostly follows the Green River, but further upstream before the Green River dumps into the Duwamish River.

Anyhow! This particular history has to do with Native Americans and early settlers. As the book describes, "For more than 2,000 years, the Duwamish lived in longhouses and camped on the shores of the river. They fished from large tripods and hunted for birds from blinds along the banks."

Let the hiking begin!

They fished from large tripods? How does that work? I have a few tripods for my cameras and telescope, but I'm not sure how I'd be able to catch a fish with any of them.

I never did see the fish weir. I'm not sure if that's because I was looking in the wrong place or if it's because it was underwater, but I didn't spend too much effort worrying about it either.

Shortly down the trail, I passed under the light rail between downtown Seattle and the airport in Seatac. Which was strange, because I thought the light rail was on the other side of I-5 miles away from my current location. I guess I never really took a close look at the route it followed. I'd probably have had the same reaction had I stumbled onto the giant arch in St. Louis. "That's weird.... I could swear that wasn't located around here...."

I got off the trail a bit at this point, however, to walk past the Carosino House--an old farmhouse, and that the light rail now runs through the front yard. I didn't find the house particularly interesting, though, so continued moseying further off trail to pass Beaver Monster Hill, known as Poverty Hill to local residents, important in Native American stories. Later, it was used as a defensive position from which the Duwamish could watch for raiding parties coming from the north, which fascinated me more. It's now called the Dumwasmish Riverbend Hill and has a set of trails leading to the top--with commanding views in all directions poking through the trees.

Native American themes line the trail.

As it is now, I doubt it would have been as useful as a lookout tower because of the trees, but I assume during those days, the top was cleared of trees and the views were even better.

At the top, I found a guy, dressed nicely as if he were on a break from an office job, looking for his keys. He explained that he lost them the day before and to let him know if I happened to find them. I didn't, but I said I'd keep my eyes open.

Then I continued even further off trail by visiting Fire Station Company 53 to check out a "legend pole" carved out with three different-sized chain saws. I assumed it was something like a totem pole, and it was--but thicker around and cut out from a tree directly where it grew. Fascinating. I took pictures, then returned to the trail where I left it.

The trail meanders along the Duwamish most of the way, occasionally going away from the shoreline where there is development blocking access to the shore. I live closer to the mouth of the Duwasmish where the river is straight as an arrow to facilitate shipping interests, but here it curved in long, lazy loops following it's natural path.

A light rail trail crosses over the Duwamish River.
(I walked across the lower road to do some off-trail sight-seeing.)

The trail went under I-5, then came out along Interurban Avenue for a mile or so--a busy road and not especially pleasant. At a bus stop I passed, however, there was a lot of action going on. A bus with its hazard lights flashing and a fire truck and police car parked immediately behind it, and as I got closer, an ambulance pulled up in front of it. I wasn't sure what happened, but there was certainly a lot of activity going on! A medical emergency of some sort? I could see what appeared to be a figure laying on the floor near the front of the bus as emergency personal got and and off the bus. Passengers sitting in the back of the bus seemed bored, or maybe a little annoyed at the delay.

But onward I continued. Always onward. Just before the trail veered off from Interurban Avenue, a car honked at me from an adjacent parking lot. Amanda! I wasn't sure if she'd be shuttling her sister around town or not and would be able to pick me up at the end, but she said she hadn't gotten any calls from her (as of yet) so Amanda was still in the area. She walked a bit of the trail from the other end, then went to look for me where the trail followed the road.

"So," I asked her, "where's the cold soda and snacks?"

The views to the south were actually better than the views to
the north from this hilltop due to trees. When the Native Americans
used this hill as a lookout, I presume that most of the trees at the
top would have been removed for better visibility.

"I just knew you were going to say that!" she said. But she didn't have any trail magic. =(

I was less than a mile from the end of the trail at this point, though, and Amanda drove off to meet me at Fort Dent Park.

Just before the end, the trail passes Black River Junction, or at least where the junction used to be. The Black River is no more, destroyed when the waters of Lake Washington was lowered in 1916. Back in the day, water from Lake Washington flowed down along Black River, where it combined with the Green River to form to the Duwamish River.

The book describes this junction: Here the Black and Green rivers formed the Duwasmish River. The Duwamish people claimed the land here too, with a village called Mox la Push, which meant "two mouths." In the spring, high waters in the White River coming down from Mount Rainier could reverse the current in the Black River, forcing it back into Lake Washington; hence the Black River had two mouths.

Fascinating.... a river with a mouth at each end. I'd never heard of such a thing before, and it seems a shame that the one example that used to exist no longer does.

I continued on, and found Amanda waiting for me at the end with a cold drink and a cupcake that she acquired at a nearby 7-11. My trail angel, and another 5.5 trail miles done. =)

The legend pole at Fire Station Company 53.

Birds on a pole. =)

Bzzzz! Bzzzz!

Bzzz! Bzzz!

Firetrucks! Police cars! And even an ambulance (not in photo).
Lots of action going on around this bus!

I was amused about this sign describing the drinking fountain (which I underlined in red).
I hope that's not what the drinking fountain echos! =)

The pump station. (That drinking fountain and plaque are just off the left
side of this photo.)

Trail magic! =)

Thanks, Amanda! =)

Alki, Alki, Alki....

2011-08-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Day 1 hike: Overcast. (See the Space Needle, just
to the left of the ridge in the middle?)

"So, Ryan, where have you been hiking since getting home to Seattle," I hear you thinking.

That's a good question, and the answer is Alki, Alki, Alki. I no longer have a car readily at my disposal like I did at my mom's house, and even if I did, the nicer hiking trails are considerably further away to get to. So I've been walking Alki a lot.

The route is called the Alki Trail, and it has absolutely fantastic views of the Olympic Mountains and downtown Seattle. But you won't get your boots muddy on this trail. It's paved the entire route, and popular with those on inline skates and bicycles, tourists, and those just hanging around to pick up a tan. On nice weekends, the place can be so packed it feels claustrophobic. So I have something of a love/hate relationship with this trail. I love the views, but I hate the crowds. But it's really the easiest place for me to walk when I'm itching to get out and walk. I sometimes wait until late at night long after people have gone home, or on cold, wet winter days when people stay home.

It's a hike I've probably done hundreds of times over the years, and most of the time, it's completely uneventful, and for each of the three days I got back into Seattle, I hiked this trail. And every single time, it was pretty uneventful. But I'll share the photos I took along the way anyhow. =)

One of the more colorful houses along Alki.

An oil rig, in Elliot Bay? Not really.... That thing with the big dome on top is some sort of
oil rig, but according to news reports I read, it was re-purposed for use by the military
(thus that radar dome thing now on top), and it was sent to Seattle for maintenance for
a few months before it'll go back out to sea somewhere.

Day 2: I hiked at night. And what a beautiful night it was! However, I did forget to bring
a tripod, so none of my pictures turned out well. Even with a tripod, the ferry boat
in the front would have been blurry since it was moving, but I took a picture of the ferry
boat anyhow for two reasons: One, they're really cool, and two, they're lit up so
bright, I think they look like floating prison ships. =)

Day 3 (yesterday): Back to hiking in daylight, and this time it was one of the absolute
worst times to hike Alki. The sidewalks and beach were crowded with people--lots of
people. Much dodging between people, leashed animals, bikes, and vollyball
tournaments. And it was hot. I normally avoid this time of day for all of these reasons,
but found myself eating dinner with Amanda, her sister, and her sister's friend
at Pegasus Pizza on Alki, and since I was already down there.... I figured I may as well
talk the talk and do the walk! =)

What do you see when you look at this photo? I see a bunch of people,
walking under a large bird, completely oblivious to the dangers of
doing so. While you can't see it in this photo, there are a lot of "splat marks"
under each of those light posts. I've never seen anyone get hit by the
birds, I'm sure it has happened. I'm also careful never to walk under these
birds. I look up and watch out for them!

The sun, reflected in the choppy waters of Elliot Bay.

An Unexpected Hike

2011-08-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

Dinner: a slice of pizza from Giannoni's.

I didn't originally plan to do any hiking yesterday. No, yesterday would be a day of flying. Flying from my former home in California to my current home in Seattle. Between arriving at the airport, flying to Phoenix, waiting a couple of hours for a connecting flight to Seattle, then making it back home, where would I possibly have time to hike? Nope, wasn't going to happen.

Until it did.... =)

The travel went well. I got a front row seat in the small plane out of San Luis--lots of legroom by those bulkheads!

And I was originally assigned a middle seat in the plane to Seattle, but as I approached 17E, I noticed the guy who would be my neighbor in the window seat of 17F chatting with another guy in the row behind him in the aisle at 18D. Friends? Coworkers? Didn't matter to me--what did matter was that they clearly were deep in a conversation, and I wanted that aisle seat he was in. =)

"You know," I said, as I pushed my duffel bag into an overhead bin, "I'll be happy to trade that middle seat I have with you if you want to sit next to your friend to chat."

And he took me up on the offer! Sweet! No empty seats, and I still managed to finagle an aisle seat giving up nothing more than... a middle seat. Totally awesome. =)

I had to let my slice of pizza cool a bit--burned
my mouth, I did. *nodding* You can
actually see the Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail
in this photo. It crosses the street where
those pedestrian crossing signs are in the street
and enters the park on the left.
It's always convenient when food is so close
to the trail. =)

My new neighbor was a flight attendant from Continental, who seemed fascinated by the ways of US Airways. Even the trash bags fascinated her because they had handles. She was envious of the handles. I guess the trash bags on Continental have strings to cinch the bags closed, but no handles. She played Angry Birds on her cell phone, which fascinated me since I had heard of Angry Birds, but never saw it in action. =)

So my flight got into Seattle on time, at about 7:30 in the evening. I got off and walked over to a payphone (I don't have a cell phone, after all!) to give Amanda a call and find out how close she was. And she was already waiting for me in the cell phone lot. Excellent!

Minutes later, we were reunited. =) On the drive home, she asked if I'd like to be dropped off somewhere to hike the rest of the way home. This isn't unusual--I often do this to stretch my legs--and I considered my options. If she dropped me off before we crossed the West Seattle Bridge, I'd have to walk home along some busy roads that really aren't fun to walk. If she dropped me off after getting off the West Seattle Bridge, it wouldn't really be much of a hike. And then Amanda suggested the Longfellow Creek Trail, for the Hike-a-Thon.

Oh, yeah... the Hike-a-Thon.... I forgot about that. This wasn't supposed to be an official hiking day, after all, and the Hike-a-Thon was the last thing on my mind. =)

Yes, I thought, that would be a nice little hike. Let's do it! Amanda drove me to Westwood Village where we did a little shopping at Target because, hey, it was there, and so were we, and why not? Then I grabbed a flashlight and my camera out of my pack and Amanda drove home and I walked.

Some art to be found along the trail.

Well, not at first. First thing I did was buy a slice of pizza because I was hungry. It was already a little after 8:00 and I hadn't had dinner yet. I got my pizza, ate it up, then walked across the street to the start of the Longfellow Creek Trail. Or the end of it, depending on one's point of view. And finally, I walked home. =)

The hike was uneventful. It's not a particularly pleasant trail--probably half of it goes up onto surface streets, through Westwood Village, past a Home Depot and the Southwest Seattle Police Precinct, through neighborhoods where I strongly suspect I've seen drug deals happening. But the trail sections are pleasant, passing a beaver dam, fluttering trees, and an occasional rabid squirrel. Okay, maybe it wasn't rabid, but let's say it was. =)

I didn't get to enjoy even that very much, however, because by then it was so dark, I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

But the walk was invigorating. Being cooped up in planes and airports all day isn't something a "wanderer" such as myself does well with, and getting a chance to stretch my legs--really stretch them--feels wonderful.

The other end of the Longfellow Creek Trail is marked with a fishbone bridge and giant dragonfly. I tried taking pictures of both. The fishbone bridge you can see pretty well because I would walk right up to it, but the dragonfly was problematic. Even with a flash, it didn't photograph well in the dark. And by the time I got close enough for the flash to do its job, I was too close and the whole effect was muted.

Oh, well. It looks better in daylight anyhow.

And that's how I got an extra (and unexpected) 4.3 miles of hiking in yesterday evening.

Even with a flash, there wasn't much to take photos of along the trail.
It's just too dark....

I was a little surprised that the flash worked so well with the
Fishbone Bridge after it failed me on most of the rest of the trail.

This was the best photo I could manage of the giant dragonfly. Oh, bother....

Over the Mountain....

2011-08-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Steve drops me off at the trailhead just out of town.

The nice thing about being at my mom's house right now--there are a lot of hiking trails very close by. Real hiking trails, that aren't crowded with hundreds of people. I don't go hiking when I'm in Seattle as much as I'd like to because of the hassle in traveling to such trails, but here in San Luis, they're even within walking distance of my mom's house. Driving across town might take 15 minutes if traffic is heavy--usually because of construction. I grew up thinking that bumper-to-bumper traffic was just an exaggeration. Sometimes, it's nice to live in a small city. =)

I'm flying back to Seattle tomorrow (if all goes well), so I figured I should make use of these convenient trails while I had the chance, and this time I set my eyes on Reservoir Canyon and a ridge that, so far as I know, has no official name but I like to call Reservoir Ridge. Because, you know, it's next to Reservoir Canyon and it slides off the tongue very well.

I've done both sides of this trail in the past, but I've never hiked between both sides before because making the complete trip, round-trip, seemed a little more ambitious than I wanted to do. That still had not changed, but this time, I asked my mom for a little help so I could turn it into a one-way hike. Drop me off at the trail head for Reservoir Canyon, and I'd walk back to the house from there. =)

The light was at a terrible angle for any
decent photos of the waterfall. There seems to
be a cave of sorts right next to it, but
the guy with the dog (just outside of the frame
of this photo) discouraged me from looking
into it.

Mom was busy--had to perm someone's hair or something--but she talked Steve into giving me a ride, and ten minutes later, I was hiking up Reservoir Canyon.

Almost right out of the trailhead there's a small waterfall. Nothing spectacular--especially compared to the waterfalls we have in the Pacific Northwest--but still a pleasant diversion. If it wasn't for the fool letting his dog run around without a leash and splashing water all over me. Thanks #*@$&.

I didn't want to loiter there anyhow. I hadn't even been hiking for two minutes yet--much too earlier for a rest.

The trail followed up the creek for a little over a mile, nearly level the entire distance. I'd done this level part years ago as part of a biology field trip years ago, and it was the one and only time I ever hiked here. It was nice, but a bit far for me to walk from home, and if I drove, there were other areas I always preferred to visit. So except for that one visit about 15 years ago, I'd never been here since.

Then the trail crossed the creek and started gaining in elevation. I was headed up Reservoir Ridge now, and into lands I had never before explored. The trail was mostly in shade--I started late in the day specifically for this reason, and was pleased to see how well I timed things. I don't really like hiking in the sun, and I knew the backside of this ridge would likely be in shade late in the afternoon. I hoped to reach the ridge top just before sunset, and be back down the other side before dark.

Ten or fifteen minutes after the trail started rising, I ran into an encampment of sorts. Not a homeless encampment, but more like an abandoned former something kind of camp. Strange heaps of delicately balance trash cans littered the area. A teepee made of corrugated metal roofing material rested on the side of the trail. It's pretty in the middle of nowhere, and I'm not even sure how all this junk got up there. There are no roads to the location--at least not now. I'm sure there's a story here, but I don't know what it is.

I just really like this tree. =)

Someone also installed a swing on a large oak tree, and I dropped my pack and pulled myself up onto it. The swing was about four or five feet off the ground so it required a bit of effort to get myself up onto it, but I did, and I rested. Content, swinging slightly side to side. =)

The sun still hovered just over the ridge top--the canyon I was climbing out of would be completely enveloped in shade soon, but it was that time--the time when even weeds seem to glow in the light of a setting sun. The time photographers like best. The time when I needed to start taking more pictures. I took a few, then tried to get a photo of me sitting in the swing--but being up on the swing, I figured a lot of the effect would be lost. A self-timer wouldn't help me here either--it took me way long than 10 seconds to work my way up the swing. At best, I'd get a good photo of my butt while trying to pull myself up onto it again. =)

So I tried to take the picture myself while sitting in the swing--click!

I looked dark in the photo--almost a silhouette in the glowing sun. I should use a flash, and I turned it on, and my camera shut down. Battery dead.

Well.

I believe this is a flower from a wild rose.

Damn.

That sucks.

Hmmm.....

I thought about options. Flashlight! I still had a flashlight in my pack! Maybe it used AA batteries and I could switch things out! I looked longingly at my pack on the ground. I didn't want to get off the swing. Not yet.

Hmm...

Well....

Damn.

This sucks.

I know--I'll listen to my iPod for awhile. It was in my pocket, and I took it out, turned it on, and tuned into the likes of Neil Diamond and Pink Martini, swinging from side to side rather than back and forth, because I liked the feeling of moving from side to side better than back and forth.

I kind of liked how the oak trees seemed to
lean over the trail as arches. =)

I lingered like this for probably 20 minutes or so before deciding it was time to continue on. I hopped off the swing, drank some water, and checked my flashlight. I unscrewed the end, popped out the batteries. Three of them. AAA.

Well...

Damn.

That sucks.

Okay, then, no more pictures for this hike. That's a bummer. I hoped for an awesome sunset at the top of the ridge, and I no longer had a means to record it.

I put the batteries back in the flashlight, schlepped on my pack and continued up the ridge

The climb was steep, but only lasted about a mile before I reached the ridge top where I found a perfectly formed bench made out of rocks in the ground. It was an amazing little setup, and I was absolutely astounded because I had never seen it before. As soon as I reached the ridge top, I was on familiar terrain again. I had hiked up this ridge from the front many time before, but this rock bench somehow always eluded me. It's set off a bit from the main trail, and I knew that was obviously why I missed it before--I always stayed on the main trail. But wow! Who created this work of art? How long did it take? Why did they do it? I don't know, but there had to be a story there. The workmanship was amazing! This was no one-hour project!

Of course, along the creek, you can
always except to find plenty of
poison oak! =)

I admired the views of San Luis, now laid out below me, with the sun setting behind Madonna Mountain and Bishops Peak. The sky was rather hazy--not the best sunset I'd seen from up there, so I didn't feel too bad about my camera not working. Except darn it--I really wanted a photo of that rock bench!

While I was up here, I checked up on the Sacrifice at Reservoir Ridge letterbox I planted years ago, and was surprised to find a hitchhiker when I popped it open. A hitchhiker! Then I looked through the logbook to see who had left it. Amanda. From Seattle. Hmm... I looked at the hitchhiker again. I was with Amanda when he planted this hitchhiker. In 2007.

My letterboxes in this part of the world really get no respect. =)

The contents of the box were in good condition, but the lid of the box was badly cracked. It would need to be replaced, so I stuffed the box in my backpack. Next time I'm up there, I'll replace it.

Then it was time to head down the other side of the ridge. The trail followed the ridge top for a short ways, before turning down the ridge at a giant cairn (and when I say "giant," I'm talking about a pile of rocks taller than I am!). The going down was slow--the trail is steep and it's easy to slip, but I got down okay.

I expected to come out at the old junior high school, but due to a housing development, the last part of the trail had been rerouted to the end of a new dead-end street. No big deal, though--close enough. Then I walked into downtown for a much deserved yogurt with rainbow sprinkles on top before I walked back to my mom's house well after dark. =)

And another five or so miles done for the Hike-a-Thon. =)

How could I walk past without jumping onto the swing for just a moment?
It's just begging to be used....

I'm sure there's a story here.... but I have no idea what it is....

More junk.

I didn't notice this pole at first--it's tied to a branch high in the tree,
clearly meant for people to slide down like a fire pole. =)
I didn't bother sliding down the pole, though. My heart was
set on the swing!

I found this photo of the rock bench on hikespeak.com -- I just had to include a picture of this
even if my camera wasn't working at the time!

Chickens, Tortoises, and Rabbits!

2011-08-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

Taco tries to slide under the fence to be with me
and the chickens. =) Yes, the dog really is named Taco.

Yes, you read my post correctly yesterday, I was taking care of chickens and tortoises. I thoughtlessly didn't post any photos of them, which I will now rectify today. =) Actually, I'm just posting some pictures of them. Trying to herd three chickens into a photo is about as easy as herding three cats together, so my best photo only has two of them. And the tortoises like to hang out in their den--way, deep down in there where they're difficult to see. But with my flash, I was able to get a photo of one of them. The animals make terrible models. Nobody seems impressed with two dogs, though, so I didn't bother taking pictures of them, but ironically, they are much easier to herd around. However, one of the dogs followed me out to the chickens, so you'll see her trying to slide under the gate. The dog, Taco, gets along pretty well with the chickens, even though the chickens clearly have a huge weight advantage. =)

My mom has returned, so the animals are no longer my responsibility anymore. Whew! They all survived! =)

As for today's hiking, I decided to do what I originally wanted to do yesterday: Montana de Oro State Park.

The day was sunny and clear, but as I drove towards Los Osos, I drove into what the local weathermen like to call the "marine layer" which is just a fancy name for fog. By the time I arrived in Montana de Oro, it was cool and overcast. Just the way I like it. I'm not a big fan of the sun--hot and mean, it is. *nodding* But I knew the fog would likely burn off and the sun would probably pop out later in the day. In the meantime, I was going to enjoy the overcast skies. =)

I don't actually remember the names of the tortoises.
Heck, I can't even tell the two apart! You can barely see the
second one hiding behind this one in the front.

I parked near the park's headquarters and headed up to Oats Peak, a moderately steep incline the entire way. It only took a few minutes before I spotted my first widelife: rabbits. Rabbits, rabbits everywhere. At certain times of the year, when I hike out in Montana de Oro, I see more rabbits per mile of hiking than anywhere else I've ever hiked in my life. The place is practically infested with them! I only saw a few of them this time around--not the hoards I sometimes see at certain times of the year--but it's still more than I usually see anywhere else.

The hike was non-eventful. I passed not a single hiker along the way, and near the end, the trail lifted out of the fog and it was sunny and uncomfortably warm. Darn. And I forgot to bring sunscreen.

Spooners Cove, and where I'd start my hike from today.

I'm always a big fan of loops, so I didn't turn around and go back from where I started. Nope, I veered down a different side of Oats Peak down to Cook Creek along a short connector trail. I stopped once along this section to check up on a letterbox I planted ten years ago. At least it will have been ten years come this November--close enough, right? The box is named Bubbles. Cute, heh?

I was planning to remove the letterbox if it was still there--I figured after ten years, it probably would be in ratty condition and I'm not around often enough to check up on it anymore, but when I found the box, it was in absolute pristine condition! The box was still sturdy, the logbook dry, and it was such a fantastic little hole in that tree for a letterbox. I changed my mind, instead looking through the logbook to see who all had found it.

And do you know how many people have found it? Three. Three people. In ten years. The first was Amanda--which she found while hiking with me in 2002, so it wasn't even an attended find. Then there was Martini Man and Wisconsin Hiker, who found it without me in tow two years later in 2004. Then there was a couple who found the box by accident when one of them had to pee in 2007. After ten years, only Martini Man and Wisconsin Hiker ever looked for that box deliberately, and without me around to drag them along. Sad, so sad... It's a lonely little box, but that was undoubtedly why it was still in such good condition!

The problem with rabbits--they
never let me get close enough
to get very good photos of them.

Then I intersected the Coon Creek Trail, very close to the end of that trail. I followed it up to the very end, a minute or two towards the left and the psychological halfway point of my hike. It is the approximate halfway point. I figured at this point, I was slightly less than halfway in terms of distance traveled, but more than halfway in terms of energy expended. The climb up to Oats Peak is all uphill. The rest of the trail would be all downhill or flat.

So I took a short break at the psychological halfway point. It's surrounded by tall trees, in a nice clearing, and I've always liked laying down here and listening to the wind blow through the trees. Often times, I don't get this particularly place to myself, but so far today, I still hadn't seen another person anywhere on the trail.

Then I remembered my tripod. After my hike yesterday, I stopped at Borders because they were going out of business, and maybe I could find some books on sale that I wanted. Books were on sale, but I was disappointed to see that they were all only 20% off. I could probably get those kind of prices at Amazon.com--or even better in many cases. Not really a big shock that Borders is going out of business--they can't even compete on price with Amazon during a going out of business sale!

Then I wandered over next door to the Best Buy--because I had a $50 gift card from Christmas for Best Buy still burning a hole in my pocket. I didn't really need anything, and I didn't really want anything, but I poked my head into the store in case something jumped out and tried to bite me. And a small tripod did. =) It's a small thing, that extends up to 11 inches tall or something, which is perfect for short day hikes in case I ever wanted to take pictures of myself.

Blue skies, straight ahead!

Fast forward to today, and it was time to take photos of myself. =)

I whipped out the tripod, attached my camera, set the self-timer, and click GO! Dashed back to the log I had been laying down on and laid down as if I didn't even know the camera was there. I did this several times, to make sure I got at least one pictures of the "real me." =)

After a half hour or so, I started getting a little cold--a cool breeze blew through--so I hefted on my pack and headed off to the other end of the Coon Creek Trail.

Finally, I passed the first of several people I would see, but I didn't stop to talk with any of them. Took pictures of some of the flowers along the creek--the creek was rarely visible through all the brush but could be heard most of the way. And finally I ended up at the parking lot for the Coon Creek Trail 2 1/2 miles later.

The problem, of course, was that I was parked at the park's headquarters, not this parking lot. But no problem--another trail, the Bluff Trail--connected the two, and it happened to follow some of the most scenic portion of the entire park.

Oats Peak, just ahead!--the first waypoint of my loop hike.

The Bluff Trail is very well named because it follow along the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful formations have been carved out of the terra firma, and waves continually pound it down further with each passing year. Seems like every time I hike along the bluffs now, you can see where a section of it slide down into the ocean. Fortunately, the new formations are always as neat as the old ones. =)

This trail is probably the busiest of the entire park as well, and I passed what seemed like a hundred people along this section. I have a love/hate relationship with this trail. I love the trail, but I always hate how crowded it seems.

And finally, I arrived back at my mom's car, as good as new. As I started getting into the car, I noticed that the back tire on the driver's side seemed especially low. I hesitated to call it flat, fearing if I used that term that I might jinx myself. No, I thought, it must just be low on air. I looked closer at the tire, and didn't see anything like a nail sticking out of it--always a sure sign of a flat. Yes, I hoped, it was just low on air. I could fix that at the next service station I passed, back in Los Osos. =)

This letterbox is *almost* ten years old now!
(It was hidden under the leaves when I arrived--this
is not how I found it or left it!)

I jumped in the car and headed off, kind of watching that rear tire from my side mirror. Yeah, wow, it did seem really low....

The car made it to Los Osos, probably a good ten-minute drive away, and pulled into a gas station. I filled the car up with gas--I figured it's the least I could do for my mom letting me borrow her car. And it's the least I could do if I somehow gave her a flat tire as well. =)

While the tank was filling, I riffled through the glove compartment for a tire gauge--I always kept one of those in my glove compartment back when I used to have a car, a habit I started because my mom had the same one and it turned out to be useful more than once. Yep, there was the tire gauge.

I went back to the tire and, wow, it still looked really low.... But I tried the tire gauge, and.... wow, it was really low. It didn't register any PSI at all! Yeah, that's definitely not good.... I looked all around the tire for anything that might have caused a puncture, but saw nothing.

Doesn't it look like this oak tree is
'barfing' up a bunch of leaves and debris?
You see this kind of thing quite often around
here--the middle of the trees are hollow,
and debris falls into it from above, then spills
out through orifices lower down the tree.

I pulled the car up to the air hose and started pumping the tire full of air, and the tire filled with live. That's what a tire is supposed to look like! I didn't hear anything like air leaking out of the tire, so I crossed my fingers and drove back to San Luis, occasionally checking the tire with my side mirror along the way. I still wasn't entirely sure if the tire was just really, really low--or if the tire had a slow leak and needed to be fixed. I'd find out eventually one way or another. =)

Back at my mom's house, the tire still looked fine. Maybe it was fine after all. But all the same, I should tell my mom to keep an eye on that tire the next time she wants to drive it and see if it's deflated at an unexpectedly fast rate. So I called her on the phone to tell her about it.

"Hey, Mom," I said, "I think your tire might have a slow leak in it...."

"You mean that back tire on the driver's side?"

"Yes," I said, a little surprised. "How'd you know that?"

"I filled it with air about a week ago, but wasn't sure if it was just low or if it had a leak."

"YOU LET ME DRIVE AROUND FOR THE LAST TWO DAYS IN A CAR WITH A FLAT FIRE?!!!!"

Sheeze, moms--sometimes you expect more from them. =)

Well, then, I guess it's official--the tire does have a slow leak. Glad I was able to confirm that for her. Several hours later, I went back out to see it, and the tire still looks full. But I know... it's leaking air. Slowly but surely. Maybe in the morning it'll look flat again. Maybe it'll take two or three days. I'm not sure how fast it's leaking air, but it's leaking....

Amanda and my team page
My personal page
Amanda's personal page

Hike another 9 miles or so today. I need to find a map with mileages listed if I'm going to get a distance accurate to the tenth of a mile.... I like measuring tenths of a mile...

I always love forests like these--it's like something I'd imagine in a fairytale nightmare,
where perceptions are distorted, and the trees are out to get you. =)

I lay down and listen to the wind blowing through the trees....

My new handy-dandy tripod! =)

Just look cool.... Make it look like you didn't dash here quickly
because your camera is an a 10-second timer....

California poppies are everywhere!

The habit along Coon Creek is very thick--if they hadn't
cut a trail through this, it wouldn't even be passable!

The Bluff Trail--clearly an obvious reason why they call it this!

Can you spot the small arch in the center-left of the photo?

I often see sea lions lounging around on the rocks near this beach,
but not today. Sorry folks, nothing to see here....

Day 1: The Hike-a-Thon Begins!

2011-08-01T23:28:00.000-07:00

This signage at the trailhead is new since my
last visit--and it conveniently had a great map
with all of the area trails on it! Which was good,
because I'd never followed all of these trails before--
I didn't know where they all went! =)

I've been meaning to update this blog the whole month of July. Remove all those PCT references--that adventure is over--and update it a Hike-a-Thon theme because this month, August, is once again the WTA's annual Hike-a-Thon, and I plan to blog all about my hiking adventures. Perhaps not long in distance, but certainly long in philosophy, right? Right? Anybody?

Well, fine, be that way. =) I still hope to get this blog updated sometime this month, but darn, Atlas Quest does keep me busy!

I'm at my mom's house right now, here in sunny San Luis Obispo, CA, taking care of the animals. (Three chickens, two tortoises, and two dogs.) My mom went off to help my sister move all of her worldly possessions to her new home in Arizona, and somebody had to feed the animals! That's my job.

So here I am, living the good life in California, and I woke up this morning with the plan to do a solid 8-mile-or-so hike in Montana de Oro State Park. It's a beautiful place--one I've hiked in countless times over the years, but I haven't made a trip out there in probably five years now. It's about time I went back for a visit.

Except.... stupid work sucked me in. Ran into all sorts of problems on Atlas Quest. (And for those of you who think you know what I'm talking about--the shadowed text wasn't the problem. That would sort itself out automatically as the cached CSS pages got refreshed.) It wasn't until about 6:00 in the evening that I was ready to get out and hike! Between the drive to Montana de Oro (my mom--silly her--left me the car keys so I could get around if I need to) and the length of the hike, I bagged that idea. Maybe another day.

The map photo I used to navigate my way around.
Look at all those curvy, windy trails! Lots of loop
opportunities, and places to cut out early if
it started getting late.

But what to do? I had to do some sort of hike today. Even a little bit--a mile or two--just for the opening day 'festivities.' I decided to do the Irish Hills along the southwest side of town. The trailhead was mere minutes away, and I knew there were at least a couple of miles of trails back there. In fact, there are trails back there that I don't even know where they go because I never hiked them before. In fact, I still had never seen a map of the area's trails, but I decided to hike on some of those trails anyhow, even though I had no idea where they might lead me. =)

So off to the Irish Hills I went. I brought a flashlight with me--it was already getting pretty late, and depending on how long I hiked, I could get back after dark.

I parked, and at the trailhead, there was a beautiful new sign about the area, including a fairly detailed map of all the area's trails! Sweet! I had a map to follow! I took a few photos of the map. They didn't have any handy-dandy paper ones that people to carry with them, so my camera would have to do.

Four of the nine mountains making up a chain called the Morros. From left to right:
Cerro Romaldo, Chumash Peak, Bishop Peak, and Cerro San Luis Obispo (a.k.a. Madonna Mountain)

The sign describes the area, in part:

Wide open grasslands and dark green patches of coast live oak woodlands stretch across the Irish Hills Natural Reserve, providing food and shelter for many species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects.

Froom Creek and Prefumo Creek meander through the Irish Hills, lined along their banks with mature native trees. Willows, cottonwoods, sycamores, California bay, and coast live oaks shade and cool the water, providing habitat for aquatic wildlife, including the threatened southern steelhead.

The most widespread plant community growing throughout the Reserve is chaparral. Dense masses of shrugs include chamise, deerweed, manzanita, coffeeberry, California buckwheat, islay (hollyleaf cherry), bush monkeyflower, toyon, yucca, wild cucumber, and black sage.

Blah, blah, blah... the usual stuff. I'm rather proud to be able to recognize every one of those plants the sign listed--but then, I grew up in this area. I can probably identify the plants and animals found in chaparral better than any other ecosystem. Honestly, chaparral I find kind of boring--especially in the summer when everything around it is brown--but to each their own. =) I kept reading, however, and did learn one thing new:

The serpentine soil common in this area supports a distinctive plant community that can tolerate the heavy metals and lack of nutrients that most plants need to grow. As a result, native plants have not been overrun by nonnative grasses and crop plants, and hundreds of species of native wildflowers bloom here throughout the year.

I've never seen this at a trailhead before!

I did know that serpentine soil is common around here--you trip over the stuff everywhere! I didn't realize, however, that it has helped protect the native plants and grasses from those nonnative cousins overrunning the world.

I made a plan of attack, and charged up the Mariposa Trail, almost to its very end. It passed near a mine (a mine!!!) and I wanted to see the mine. I knew this area had lots of old mines, but I didn't realize that any of them were accessible by trails until I saw this map. I've heard that they used to mine chrome around these parts, but I don't know what they were looking for specifically in the mines of Irish Hills. Maybe it was chrome. *shrug* Maybe not. It always amazes me that there's anything worth while in what looks like otherwise boring rocks. =)

At the junction with the Mine Trail, I took the detour down--a steep and sketchy path filled with lots of loose rocks--and almost immediately slipped, fell on my butt, then somehow rolled over into a bush. That hurt too! It probably wasn't more than a 1/10th of a mile to the mine, and what a huge disappointment that was. There was no hole in the ground anywhere. It just looked like they dug out part of the hillside and pushed it over a small slope. (The mine tailings, I think they're called?) I really wanted a giant hole that I could throw a rock into and see how long it hits bottom, so I was pretty disappointed when I didn't find any hole in the ground at all. And I hurt myself for this?! *sheeze*

The signage was pretty good, but I can't
figure one thing out. What the heck is
that thing in the picture for the King Trail?
I'd have expected a crown or something, but
it looks more like a sprinkler head to me!

I scrambled back up to the Mariposa Trail, and cut over to the Poppy Trail to intersect with the Froom Creek Trail. I didn't see any creek at first, which isn't surprising. In the summer, a lot of creeks run dry. But further downstream, by golly, there was trickling water. I could hear it--even if I couldn't exactly see it through the brush.

There were two other mines on the map--both near the end of Ocean View Trail. My plan was to hit them both and head back to the trailhead. The sun had finally set along the Froom Creek Trail, but it was still plenty light to see. By the time I reached the mines, though, it would probably start getting dark very quickly.

The Powerline Trail connected the Froom Creek Trail to the Ocean View Trail. Now, you would expect a trail called the Powerline Trail to be pretty obvious. Probably has powerlines nearby. And so far, all of the trail junctions have been well marked. I took pictures of every one I passed!

But somehow, I missed this trail. Completely and totally missed it. There was one place where I saw a trail sign that was not at any trail junction, which I thought seemed odd since all of the ones I had seen were always at junctions, but there was nothing about a Powerline Trail in the area, and I never did see any powerlines.

It wasn't until I hit a dirt road blocked off with a 'private property' sign near civilization that I knew I had missed the trail junction, so I studied the map on my camera and decided to extend my hike with a different loop made up of the Ocean View Trail and the Shortcut Trail.

Don't be fooled by the Mine Trail--it's
sketchy and so not worth the effort!

Except, ARGH! Where the heck is the Shortcut Trail? It's supposed to be RIGHT HERE!!!! Originally, that's where I meant to exit at after seeing the two mines, but now I can't even find it as an entrance.

Stupid trails... It was starting to get dark anyhow. May as well hike out. So I followed the Froom Creek Trail to its end where it intersects with King Trail, which I followed back to the trailhead. My hike was done. According to the map, I covered 4.1 miles.

And I'm thinking that maybe those trails I wanted to take but missed--I wonder if that's because they aren't even built yet. Maybe the map was a 'forward-thinking' map with plans to build those trails but it hasn't happened yet. It would certainly explain a lot!

I also really liked the icons they had for each of the trails on the trail markers, and I've got this idea in my head to carve stamps of all of them then hide letterboxes on each respective trail. Who knows when that will happen, though--another idea that may or may not happen. =)

So! It's not too late to support Amanda and myself for the Hike-a-Thon!

Our Team Page

I also have a Personal Page, but admittedly, I've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with it so far. I was going to do that when I updated this blog to be more than just the PCT and, well, you know how that went. =) I still plan to update, though. Maybe tomorrow.... Amanda has a page as well, but I don't think I should share it. She's a fundraising machine and it's embarrassing how much more money she's raised than I have. If I gave you a link to her page, you might feel inclined to embarrass me even more. ;o) So just go to my page and click that "Sponser Me" link. It would be a huge help! =) If I reach my goal of $200... I'll even throw in a premium hat day on Atlas Quest sometime in September--if that sort of thing matters to you. =)

I've already taken one bad fall for your blog-reading pleasure! How many more do I need to get y'all to sponsor me?! =)

This is the "mine." I told you that it's so not worth hurting yourself over! =)

Froom Creek is represented by an image of a steelhead trout.
It astounds me that fish could survive in such a small creek!

Can you see the water in Froom Creek? There a little peeking through the brush
in the upper-right corner of the image!

I took a picture of myself because, hey, I need proof I was
really here, right? =) I even took my hat off for this photo.
I think it messed up my hair, though, and turned my
forehead red....

PCT Epilogue

2011-02-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not quite done blogging about this adventure. There are a few loose ends that I felt needed to be tied up. Like... what happened to a lot of the characters in this story?!

Tomer finished the trail nearly a month after I did. Mad Hatter, last I heard, was seen taking a side trip to Disneyland after getting to Wrightwood. I'm not sure how much further he made it after that, though.

Charmin reached the Canadian border two days after I did, still hiking with Hasty. She's back in Switzerland, and last I heard, was already itching to thru-hike the Continental Divide Trail.

Running Wolf twisted and injured his ankle near Sister, OR. It took him off of the trail for a week or two, and by the time he was ready to hike again, he was so far back that he felt it was unlikely he could catch up the miles and finish before the first winter storms hit the north part of the trail. So he decided to quit and try again, starting from Mexico, in April 2011. I'm rather impressed myself. If it was me, I'd be heartbroken about not being able to finish, but I would have gone back the next year and picked up from where I left off. I wouldn't have gone back and started at the Mexican border again!

Fidget finished the trail a couple of weeks behind me. I don't know her exact finish date, but she did slog it through all the way to the end. Cold and wet!

Tradja and Jess also finished the trail a week or two behind me, and I managed to catch up with them at the airport in Seattle as I was flying to California and they were flying to New Jersey. They practically look civilized in street clothes! =)

Motor finished the trail about a week before me. She's living in Guam for a year now, posting really cool images of the place on Facebook. I'm not sure why this photo is so distorted, but I grew tired of trying to fix it. =)

Morph and Moonshadow didn't manage to finish the trail. I'm a little fuzzy on the details since I haven't talked to either of them directly since I took this photo of them together, and I have no idea if they plan to come back and finish whatever section they didn't do.

Dinosaur and Swayze finished the trail a few weeks after I did. I hadn't heard about them since Southern California and was a little concerned that perhaps that was because they weren't on the trail anymore. Glad to have found them on Facebook after I finished the trail and learned that I was wrong! =)

Hiker 816 was hampered by an ankle injury and "real life" and never really caught up after that. He still spent the rest of the summer hiking and several times it looked like we might meet up somewhere up the trail including near Crater Lake and Stehekin, but it never worked out. But he says he's living in the Denver area now and I've always wanted to visit those Rocky Mountains. ;o)

Yellow Pants, a.k.a. Shang-hi, a.k.a. Brian, rushed ahead of me after we left Yosemite and I never saw him again. Based on the registry entries, he finished the trail at least a solid week before I did. Maybe it was closer to two? But he definitely finished!

Karma and Detective Bubbles only made it as far as Sierra City before foot problems on Detective Bubbles derailed their thru-hike. Go Go.... I'm not sure how far he made it, but I found him on Facebook about a week ago. I should ask. =) I assume he made it the whole distance, though!

Sticky Fingers only hiked as far as Yosemite, that was her plan, and she stuck with it. Nothing I haven't mentioned in my blog before. But after I finished the trail, I finally read her book about the sinking of the Titanic. Very interesting stuff! Who knew that rivets could be so riveting!

This seems to be the only photo I can find that has Little Engine and Plain Slice. I was sure I had a better photo of those two. *shrug* Plain Slice is the fellow standing on the trail looking right. Little Engine is the blonde in red sitting next to the trail. They reached the border the day after I did--no surprise there since I had seen them in Stehekin! The reason I mention them was that I found these videos of their hike. If you watch the one about the rain and finish, you'll see the scene where this photo was taken, except that I'm actually in the video. =) You can also see Little Engine crossing a creek without any pants on--always a plus in my book! =)

Mr. Mountain Goat only made it as far as Cascade Locks before he ran out of time to finish the trail. He says he plans to come back another year and finish the Washington part of the trail, and I hope to catch him crossing Snoqualmie Pass or something. I last saw him back in Yosemite, but I kept following his blog--probably the funniest blog I'd ever read. He's got a new blog now, The Goat That Wrote. I'll certainly keep reading it! =)

Fozzie, whose real name is Keith Foskett, which I mention only so you can buy his book (The Journey in Between) about his hike on El Camino de Santigo, finished his thru-hike in mid-November after stomping through hundreds of miles of snow. I read all about it on his blog. He detoured off the official PCT due to the accumulation of snow and navigation difficulties for the last three hundred miles, but he did succeed in walking the distance from Mexico to Canada. I never actually hiked with Fozzie, and only met him briefly in Warner Springs. I didn't even think to get any photos of him. He'd barely even be a footnote in my hike except for one thing.... After reading his book, I'm suddenly very interested in hiking El Camino myself. Hiking in France and Spain seems infinitely more interesting than another long walk in America!

This ugly character got his beard shaved off, more-or-less in one piece. I didn't even know that was possible!

Since finishing the trail, I've flown down to California a couple of times--a route that crosses the PCT in several places. I couldn't help myself but to take a few aerial shots. This is Mount Adams, and the PCT is down at the base of that mountain somewhere. =)

The bustling trail town of Big Bear. You can even see the ski slopes in white. I'm assuming that must be man-made snow since I'm not seeing snow anywhere else around it!

I think this snow-covered mountain might be Baden-Powell. (The very mountaintop that Charmin is jumping on in the photo of her above.) It was the only snow-covered mountain I could see, and that mountain is higher than any others in the area, so I assume it must be Baden-Powell. But honestly, I can't find any obvious points of reference that makes me think, "Yes! That's it because...." So it's possible I could be wrong. =)

This would have been along the section Charmin and I walked around the Station Fire detour. I'm not especially familiar with the landmarks so I'm not sure exactly where along the hike this would have been, but the civilization might be Pearblossom, or somewhere pretty close to it, so I waved to Dezert Ratty and Lorraine who must be down there somewhere. =)

And one last photo... the PCT Completion Medal I got. =) It's remarkably heavy, made of solid brass. Those who thru-hike the trail can get this or a certificate when they finish, and I've gotten lots of certificates over the years, but I don't think I ever got an actual medal before! So I opted for the medal. Which, even more cool, I have Eric Ryback to thank for this. He's the first guy to have completed a PCT thru-hike, and he wanted to create an Olympic-quality medal for those who complete a thru-hike and donated the funds to design and create these things.

Cool! But I'll tell you this..... I'd never friggin carry something this heavy on a thru-hike. *shaking head* =)
Seems kind of ironic to win a medal for doing something that I'd absolutely never in a million years want to actually carry with me when I'm doing it.

Yep, I think that's it. I have no more to write. Thanks to everyone who left comments and encouragement. It's often times one of the things I most looked forward to catching up on when I got into trail towns. =) Until the next adventure, farewell!

Reentry and the "Lost" Photos

2011-02-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

Morph took this photo of me eating breakfast
the morning we hiked out to Walker Pass.

The first few days after a thru-hike is over, there's a "reentry" period. My first full day home, I walked around our neighborhood a bit. You'd think I'd be tired of walking, and I was, but I still wanted to look around and see the area, but I made it a short walk! I walked past an elementary school where kids were playing, and it seemed like a different world. I'd walk past them all the time before I started my hike and never really thought much of it, but then I walk past it just then and realized I hadn't seen that sight for five months. Some of them were playing tetherball, which I remembered playing in elementary school, and wondered if any of those kids would turn out to be thru-hikers in another 20 years.

I didn't linger, though. I figured someone might call the cops if I watched the kids for too long. I still had my gruffy beard and looked pretty homeless. Definitely a "shady" character. I don't think it would help if I explained that I had been hiking for the last five months, from Mexico to Canada. They might think I was insane too!

About a week after getting home, I dropped by the Baskin Robbins and had an ice cream in honor of the truck driver that picked me up. I've been back a couple of times since too, but admittedly, for my own guilty pleasures. ;o)

I flew down to California a couple of weeks after finishing the trail and finally shaved off that horrible beard.

As I write this now, nearly five months after having finished the trail, I've gained back pretty much all of the weight I lost on the hike. I also spent some time trying to find trail friends online, and they sent me some photos of myself that I didn't have while originally writing these blogs. Some of the photos I thought would be fun to share. Many of them I knew about and wished I had when I was writing the blog posts. Others I didn't even know about. Facebook is a great little tool for finding photos by other hikers when they start tagging me on them! =)

I took this photo of Charmin celebrating reaching the summit of
Baden Powell. I was using her camera, though, and didn't get a copy
of the photo until after our hikes were done. Even though I was there,
it still doesn't seem possible that she can jump that high!

Charmin snapped this photo of my mom buzzing my head in Wrightwood.

Charmin took this photo of me maneuvering under this tree. In this
particular case, I just used my arms to "walk" me through, which
felt as ridiculous as it looks, but it worked! =)


I don't think I have any photos of me actually cooking with my stove. =) Charmin took this photo that first day we started hiking together. I usually don't cook lunch, but I took a long lunch break this day and had the time (and plenty of water!)


I'm explaining to Running Wolf where we are, after he followed the detour for seven miles and didn't realize it! I didn't know about this photo's existance. =)

Bigfoot took this photo while I was soaking naked in the hot springs
along the trail. Yes, another naked photo of me! Fortunately, still PG stuff.... ;o)

Fidget took this photo of me taking a break at the top of Pinchot Pass.

I took my share of photos where Fidget was postholing badly. She did the same to me, though! =)
You can see the hut at the top of Muir Pass in the background. ALMOST THERE!!!!

I did say that I hated snow, right? This is why!

Fidget took this photo of me taking a break. I had thrown my fleece jacket over
my head so the sun didn't blind me. =)

One of the less treacherous creek crossings....

Fidget took this photo when we went off trail to essentially skip two
dangerous river crossings. It was a bit of a rock scramble to get up the hillside!

Fidget took this photo. I have one just like it, but it amused me to see that
she took a photo of it weeks after Amanda had written it. Being on the
vertical surface like that, it hadn't washed away in the rain like the
notes Amanda wrote on the ground. I'm sure it'll wear off over time, though!

There's No Place Like Home....

2011-02-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

The Canadians continued to call the trail the PCT,
but the Canadian portion isn't officially recognized
as official PCT by any organization except the
Canadians, so far as I can tell! =)

September 21: By morning, the rain had stopped. Tree snot was still falling, but even that would taper off eventually. The brush along the trail was thoroughly wet, however, so my legs wouldn't dry out along the hike out to civilization, eight miles away.

All of the literature about the PCT has the trail ending right at the Canadian border. Even Erik the Black's maps aren't very useful beyond that point, which seems criminal since almost everyone continues on to Manning Park--the closest trailhead to the end of the trail. Those Canadians were kind enough to post a map of their side of the border at the border, however, and I took a photo of it as I passed. I also made sure it wasn't so blurry that I couldn't read it! These last eight miles or so, I was better prepared than I had been since almost the entire distance since I left Stehekin.

The rest of the miles flew by quickly. I took no breaks, except to check the map on my digital camera to track my progress and direction. For the most part, even that wasn't necessary. The trail junctions had good signage, and the distance flew by now that I was working in kilometers rather than miles. =) There's something nice about kilometers that I just really liked. I noticed little red tags attached to the trees marking each kilometer as they counted down to zero.

Near the end of the trail, the sun started peaking out. A beautiful day! But I didn't care about that anymore. I just wanted to finish. Get off the trail.

The trail finally dumped me out at a road near a bridge with a single car in the parking lot. It wasn't Amanda. Hmm.... I wasn't sure what to do at this point. I thought the trail was going to dump me out at the Manning Park Lodge, but I didn't see any buildings at all nearby. I wondered if I took a wrong turn somewhere. Which direction along the road is the lodge? That's where Amanda and I had planned to meet.

Trail junctions were well marked in Canada.
Thanks, Canada! =)

I looked around the trailhead for signage and found a temporary sign warning hikers that the trail to the US border I just took was closed due to some sort of trail damage. "That's strange," I thought. "I got through well enough and didn't notice any damage to speak of."

After examining all of the facts I had available--including the map I took a picture of--I made an educated guess and started walking along the road to the right. Eastward. It didn't take more than a few minutes before I saw a building and I was certain I had chosen wisely.

A few cars drove by, and the sun was shining bright. I wondered if the people in the cars had any idea that this homeless-looking fellow walking along the side of the road had walked in all the way from Mexico. What an adventure! I hoped Amanda would drive by looking for me and end my hike right then and there, but it was never Amanda driving. Drats.

I finally reached the lodge, and rather than walking around to the driveway, I scaled directly up a steep hillside instead, and saw Amanda's car in the parking lot. Yes! She was there already! When I got closer, I realized she was still in the car, sleeping in the driver's seat. I knocked on the window, startling her.

"Think you can give a ride to a poor, dirty hiker?" I asked. =) Of course she could!

I threw my pack in back, and Amanda whipped out her camera to get pictures of my big finish. It seemed rather anti-climatic at this point, though. I had already finished the trail the day before! I took off my shoes and settled into the front seat. Hui and Colter were out on the front porch of the lodge and yelled hello, and I yelled back, "Whoo-who!!!! We did it!" Yes, indeed, we had. Our hike was over.

I try to take a photo of myself hiking out. And to
think, I was bald and clean-shaven when I started
this hike!

Amanda asked me if either of them needed a ride back to Seattle since that's where we were headed anyhow, and I didn't know. Maybe. *shrug* So she swung back through the parking lot and I leaned out the window asking if either of them needed a ride to Seattle. They turned us down, though, planning to go to Vancouver, and we waved goodbye and started driving home.

Amanda made a couple of stops to find letterboxes along the way, and I stayed in the car not wanting to walk two feet for even a drive-by letterbox. At that moment, I felt like I didn't want to ever walk again. I knew that feeling would go away eventually, but I basked in the glory of sitting. =)

I did get out at the entrance for Manning Park--Amanda wanted to get a photo of me with the entrance sign.

At the US border (now that I was actually in Canada, I thought of the border as the US border rather than the Canadian border), we handed over the paperwork the Canadians had sent me approving my arrival into the country on foot via the PCT. I wondered if the fact that I walked into the country at an unmanned entry point would cause issues at the border, but it didn't. The border agent asked a few questions and waved us through.

We arrived back in Seattle during the evening rush hour. I took a photo of me stepping into our little apartment. The last step. I was finally home, and this time, I didn't have to leave. =)

In Canada, the trail is marked in kilometers.
I like kilometers--I can hike them faster than miles! =)

5,259,276 Steps (estimated)
750,336 Calories burned (estimated)
75,142 Hits on this blog
13,225 M&Ms consumed (estimated)
4,833 Photos taken (by me!)
4,274 Kilometers covered
2,656 Miles covered
1,322 Bad jokes (estimated)
1,321 Good jokes (estimated)
1,224 Hits on most popular blog entry
488 Pounds of food consumed (estimated)
300 Days of blog posts (every other day)
162 Gallons of water sweated (estimated)
152 Days on the trail
109 Days of camping
35 Days of hotel/motel/hostel camping
34 Snake sightings
29 Pounds lost
12 Days of hiking in rain
12 Days of Ibuprofen
10 Blisters
10 Zero days
10 Apples ripped in half
8 Pairs of shoes
7 Days camping in homes
3 Bears sighted
1 Naked hiker

and....

1 Pacific Crest Trail

Glad they didn't put this sign up at the border. Might have caused
me some concern if they had! =)

Searching for the lodge at Manning Park.

NOW they tell me! *rolling eyes*

Made it to the Manning Park Lodge and found Amanda.
Wow, I look skeletal!

I managed to get out of the car long enough to hobble over to this sign for
a goodbye photo.

Almost home!!!!!

Home, at last..... =)

Oh, Canada! Oh, Canada!

2011-02-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

Woke up to rain... look at that water running down the trail!

September 20: I woke up to rain. Again. I was getting sick of Washington and the PCT. Stupid #$*@ rain. The trail went up, it went down, it went all around. I passed a few hunters in their camo outfits along the way. And they call this fun? *shaking head*

The trail climbed towards Woody Pass, and the rain turned to snow. SNOW!? I had a few choice words for the PCT, but I really shouldn't say them on this blog. =) I had to trudge through a lot of snow in the High Sierras, but it never dared to actively snow on me. I wasn't terribly concerned about the snow. Snow had not been in the forecast, and I doubted it would accumulate much. Route-finding without a map was not my idea of fun, but I didn't expect it to come to that. It's just the principle of the matter. I felt like the PCT was just trying to rub me out, adding insult to injury. The trail hated me. I just knew it. It wanted me to get off. I agreed--I wanted to get off the trail too.

Here's a close-up of that trail. Wet and muddy!

I knew Hui wasn't far ahead because I started seeing his footprints in the snow. I assumed it was his footprints, at least. He was the only person who was hiking northbound who had passed me recently. The Graduate was up the trail somewhere, but I expected him to be much further ahead than I was. The Graduate planned to finish at Manning Park today. Hui had passed me the day before. Yep, it had to be his footprints. Nobody else was around to have left them.

Most of the day, I was trying to decide if I would actually hike all the way to the Canadian border today or not. I could set up camp at the Canadian border if I had to. I'd seen photos of the border before, and I could camp there. The data points from the page Walrus gave me showed an official campsite less than a quarter mile away on the Canadian side of the border I could also use.

But I was also a little bothered at the thought of reaching the Canadian border, officially completing the trail, and still being stuck on the trail for another night! Damn it, when I reached the Canadian border, I was done! I should be off the trail and indoors where it was warm and dry that same night! But there weren't any campsites listed as being near the border on the US side.

Late in the afternoon, I finally decided to make a run for the border, and use the campsite on the Canadian side of the border. Once the trail descended in elevation again, the snow turned back to a cold, wet rain. It pretty much rained or snowed constantly the entire day.

Snow begins to accumulate near Woody Pass.

At a couple of trail junctions without markers, I wasn't 100% certain which direction to hike. I tried pulling up the photos of the maps I had taken on my camera, but when I zoomed in, I realized that they were too blurry to read. I studied the junctions, and tried to figure out how it matched up with my blurry photos, and chose a direction. It would take a couple of miles of hiking before I'd reach a landmark on my data sheet to confirm if I went the correct direction or not. If only the snow had fallen this low, I could have followed Hui's footsteps! Drats.

Late in the day, I reached another trail junction with a sign pointing towards the "U.S. Border."

"Crap!" I thought. "And all this time, I thought I was hiking to the Canadian border!"

It was rather a shock to see that sign. I had been so focused on Canada and the Canadian border, it completely slipped my mind that it could also be called the US border. I really wanted a sign that pointed the way to the Canadian border! But at least I knew I was walking in the correct direction still.....

I estimated how long it would take me to reach the Canadian border, and expected to reach it at around 5:00 in the afternoon. It was too cold and wet to stop for a break, so I pushed on.

Ahead, I looked for that line through the trees marking the Canadian border. A line of trees had been cut down along the border, marking the boundary of the United States and Canada. I'd seen it in photos and knew it was out there somewhere. I was sure some of the mountains I could occasionally see in the distance was Canada, but I looked for signs of Canada--I looked for that line cut through the mountains, but the fog and rain was so bad, I couldn't see much of anything. If Canada was out there, it was hiding from me.

The dusting of snow is rather scenic.....

At about 4:30 in the afternoon, I heard a "Whoop! Whoop!" ahead. It sounded like a hiker, whooping it up. Hui? I checked the time, and it was only 4:30. I wouldn't reach the Canadian border for another half hour or so. What's he so excited about? Did he see me through the trees and is trying to get my attention?

I whooped loudly in return, and he--or someone--whooped again in return. Hmm... Okay....

I picked up my pace a little, to catch up to whoever it was, and found Hui crouched on the ground with his camera, with his umbrella positioned over the camera to keep it from getting wet, pointing it at the monument marking the end of the trail. Whaaat? I was a little disoriented. Why was this monument here and not at the Canadian border? I blame the cold for my slow reaction.

I had reached Canada! I made it! Mexico to Canada! I dropped my pack and Hui and I threw an impromptu celebration. It didn't look like I remembered in photos I had seen. The swath cut through the trees was a lot narrower than I had expected. And the photos always seemed warmer and drier than the weather we had today.

Those footpints... they must be Hui's, I thought.
And he must not have been far ahead, because
those prints haven't been there long!

Hui had already been at the border for a short while when I arrived and had taken lots of photos of himself with a self-timer. Since Hui was there, though, I didn't bother with a self-timer. I handed over my camera and asked him to take photos of me at the monument. I'm done! I'm done! Well, I still had eight miles to hike out to the nearest trailhead, but the trail was done! We were thru-hikers! I left an uninterrupted trail of footprints from Mexico to Canada!

Hui set to work to retrieve the register from Monument 78. The monument is hollow and the register is inside, so he tried to lift the top, and I started taking photos. He pulled up, hard, saying how heavy it was, and I couldn't help but laugh--it looked like he was trying to vandalize the monument. Like someone knocking over the gravestones in a cemetery.

"This is heavy!" he said, straining his voice. "I might need your help here!"

I didn't help, though. I was too busy laughing and taking photos. The monument started to tip over, a little at first, then finally fell over with a significant thud and broke into two pieces. Hui and I didn't realize that the monument came apart in two pieces. It would have been a lot easier to remove them one at a time than both at once like he did. =)

Hui took photos of each of the last dozen or two pages of the register--people sometimes write e-mail addresses or contact information, or notes to other hikers behind him. He didn't want to copy it all down, so he just took photos for later reference, then signed the register himself. I noticed that White Beard, Third Monty, and The Graduate had logged in earlier in the day. Danny--who I thought was behind me and I kept hoping would catch up with my maps!--had logged in the day before! Damn!

Then the snow turned back into rain as soon as the trail
started descending again. (There are actually flurries when
I took this photo, but it was turning back into rain by this point.)

Hui decided to hike out to Manning Park that evening. Eight miles away, he wouldn't get there until well after dark, and we parted ways. I picked up a pen to sign the register, and found my fingers were not working well. I couldn't grip the pen with my fingers--they were so cold and numb. I breathed on them trying to warm them up, but my fingers just weren't working, so I finally gripped the pen in the palm of my hand and wrote something like, "It's a long way to come just to quit, but I quit!"

The scrawl looked like something written by a first grader learning their letters. The letters were an inch tall--hesitant and crooked, not following the lines on the paper at all. But it was so darn cold, I just couldn't get my fingers to work. I put the register back in the hole in the ground, then picked up the base of the monument to replace it.

$@*%! That thing was heavy! I suddenly had a new appreciation for how difficult it was for Hui to knock the monument over in the first place. I was only trying to pick up half of it and was having trouble. My frozen hands weren't helping matters either, and I had to be careful not to pinch my fingers between the base and the monument. My fingers were so numb, I could probably have pinched one off completely and not even realized it. I finally maneuvered the first piece into place, then set to work on the second piece, getting it into place as well.

I needed to get into camp and warm up. I put my pack back on, picked up my umbrella, took one last look around, bade goodbye to the United States, and walked into Canada.

The US border?! And all this time I thought
I was hiking to the Canadian border!

I reached the campsite about five minutes later, and set up my tarp in a light drizzle. It was already getting quite dark, and I changed into dry clothes, slipped into my sleeping bag, and tried to warm up again. I had been relatively warm while hiking, but during the stop at the Canadian border the cold got into me deep. Tying the necessary knots for my tarp was a huge challenge with my useless fingers, but I finally got it up and slipped into my sleeping bag. I put my hands in my armpits to warm them up, and it must have looked like I was having a seizure because I deliberately shivered large, exaggerated shivers and tensed my muscles to generate more body heat and warm up again.

After a half hour or so, I was sufficiently warmed up enough to set about cooking dinner, or my "last supper" as I decided to call it. After dinner, I wrote in my journal for about five minutes--I didn't actually write very much since I was pretty certain this day would stand out in my mind for quite some time--then went to sleep. The trail might be done, but my hike was not.

The end of the trail!

Hui attempts to "vandalize" Monument 78. That first monument marks the end of the PCT. This monument marks the 78th mile/monument of the US/Canadian border, thus, the name of Monument 78. (I'm not sure if there's a monument at every mile, or if this just happens to the be 78th one. But this monument is to mark the US/Canadian border--not the end of the PCT. The wooden one marks the end of the PCT.)

Hui signs the register. Notice the line cut through the trees marking
the US/Canadian border. The US is on the left (in this photo) and Canada
on the right.

Gotta check the time that I finished the trail! =) About a half hour before I expected!

I did it! I did it! Even the cold can't wipe the smile off my face! =)

The Dreary Weather Continues....

2011-02-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

September 19: It rained again during the night. Good lord, Washington had been miserably wet. What is wrong with this state! I'd only been able to cowboy camp once for weeks! And the nights were growing increasingly cold. I was having to bundle up in all of my dry clothes, then crawl in my sleeping bag where I cooked dinner and ate breakfast.

I lingered under the tarp until about 9:00 hoping to dodge the rain, somewhat successfully, as it turned out. I broke down camp and started hiking, finding a fantastic place to camp about five minutes up the trail. Well, shoot. I was much closer to Brush Creek than I thought! Camped at a crappy little place off the trail, and if I had only pushed on another five minutes, I would have been good. Curse my lack of a map!

I passed Walrus and Foxtrot heading southbound from the Canadian border--thru-hikers who had finished their hike and were now getting off the trail. These were the first successful 2010 thru-hikers I'd seen!

"So," I asked Foxtrot, "why not just get off the trail in Canada?" Manning Park was about 8 miles from the Canadian border and the end of the PCT, but Hart's Pass--the closest trailhead on the US side was considerably further away than that. I assumed that he had been denied entry into Canada, like Red Head had told me had happened to him back in Cascade Locks.

I got a few more views than I did yesterday, but the
weather still sucked.

His answer surprised me, however. His passport burned up. He had it stored at his parent's place, and they suffered a house fire while he was hiking the trail. He found out around the time he reached Etna that his passport burned in the house fire, so he had permission to enter Canada.... but didn't have a passport anymore and trying to get a new one while hiking the trail seemed like too much trouble. So without a passport, he was hiking back to the nearest US trailhead. Bummer.

The other southbound hiker, Walrus, ripped out the last page of his data book to give to me. I still had no maps, but at least I now had information about points along the trail--water sources, campsites, prominent passes and gaps along the way. He was only willing to rip out the pages that he had already passed through, though, so it only covered the last ten miles of the PCT. I was grateful for it, though--it was more than I had before!

For the most part, the day was largely uneventful. There were few views due to the bad weather, and it rained lightly several times during the day. I set up camp early, at around 5:00 in the afternoon, at a wonderful little campsite just past Foggy Pass. At least I think that's the name of the pass. Hui passed by after I set up camp and I invited him down to join me, but he was anxious to get a few more miles in before he stopped for the day, and Hui told me that he thought we were just past Foggy Pass. I asked him if he happened to have found and picked up my Erik the Black book, but alas, he had seen nothing. *sigh* Still mapless, I camped alone, trying to stay warm and dry.

The trail reaches this pass, then goes around the side of the mountain in the background.
If you look closely, you can even see the trail cutting through. =)

I have no idea why I took this photo. I do know that it was so cold all day,
I never did take off my gloves! The gloves were pretty wet due to
rain as well, which didn't really help matters much.

The marmot seemed happy enough. =)

The Canadian border! Just 35 miles away!!!!

Harts Pass--the last trailhead until Canada. This is the very last place to stop and
still be in the United States. Next stop.... Canada!

Miserable, rotten weather......

Listless and Lonely.....

2011-02-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

It wasn't raining, but it wasn't exactly dry either....

September 18: The Graduate left camp about a half hour before I did. I was lingering, hoping the rain would stop and the trees dry out a bit, and I was not in any particular rush. My goal was to meet Amanda in Canada on the 21st, and it wouldn't require big mile days to get there then. The Graduate intended to meet his family members on the 20th, however, so he needed to get a bit more distance than I did.

He poked his head under my tarp, shaking hands, and wishing me good luck with my journeys in case we didn't see each other again--a very likely scenario at this point.

And the rest of the day, I saw absolutely nobody. Not a single living soul. I knew The Graduate was somewhere ahead of me, and I knew of quite a few people who weren't far behind me, but there was absolutely nobody along my little section of trail today, and I felt a bit listless and lonely.

The trail crossed over Rainy Pass, which largely lived up to its name. It wasn't exactly raining, but the fog was thick and wet, coating everything it touched with water. If only they named it Sunny Pass, I thought, the drizzly fog wouldn't be here. It also marked the last paved road I could expect to cross. The last easy place to bail.

I'm told that the North Cascades is spectacular, but I wouldn't know. The weather never cleared up to any degree.

Late in the afternoon, it was time to start finding a place to camp. Without my maps, I wasn't exactly sure where I could find a place to camp or where water was located, or even an optimal place to stop. The notes I jotted down did show Brush Creek that should have been somewhere up ahead, but I was already loaded up with water so that wasn't a great concern. Mostly, I just needed a place to set up my tarp, and that was the hard part. I've camped directly on the trail when there wasn't a suitable location, but it was supposed to rain overnight. I needed a location not only to sleep on, but also a location where I could set up my tarp. That limited my options severely, and I hiked for about a half hour before I found a small place in the trees down a steep slope from the trail. It would have been easy to cowboy camp, but that just wasn't an option. I figured I probably stopped about a mile before Brush Creek and could fill up with water there in the morning. (As it turned out, Brush Creek had perfect places set up to camp! But I didn't know that when I stopped for the night.)

Rainy Pass largely lived up to its name. This was also the last paved road I'd cross until Canada!

Waterfall ON the trail. =)

It seemed like the views could have been awesome if only the clouds went away!

Approaching Cutthroat Pass. (And isn't that just a wonderfully descriptive name for a pass?!)

OMG! It's a view! A real view!

Well, that view didn't last view long.... On another note, notice
the pine tree with yellow needles? That's the main reason I took this
photo. =) I read an article in the WTA magazine about a particularly strange
pine tree that turned yellow and loses its needles each year.
They had photos of these trees, and it was bizarre. Pine trees?
Deciduous pine trees? Who'd ever heard of such a preposterous
thing?! I could never remember seeing such a thing... until now! I don't
remember what kind of trees these were, but I was sure I just found one!

Where, oh where, can I set up my tarp.... Nope, this won't do!

Disaster Strikes!

2011-02-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

The Graduate catches a snake and plays around with it.

September 17: The Graduate and I checked out of our room at 10:30, the official checkout time. I'd have liked to have had it for an extra hour since the bus didn't leave for nearly another hour, but it wasn't too terribly inconvenient. We just went into the lounge and watched TV to kill the time. Danny dropped by too and was shocked--shocked!--to learn about this lounge with the TV, and was immediately sucked into a football game. When he checked in, the rooms were already clean and I guess nobody thought to inform him of this little waiting area.

A little after 11:00, The Graduate and I headed out to the bus stop to catch the 11:15 bus back to High Bridge. Danny decided to stay in town and watch TV, claiming he'll just catch the next bus three hours later. The Graduate and I wondered if he really would catch the next bus or get sucked into town for an extra day. So we left the town of Stehekin. Someday, I thought, I'd bring Amanda here. She'd like this place. And we left Stehekin carrying everything that we would need for the rest of our hike. No more resupply points. No more maildrops. Next stop.... Canada!

I have a policy with wildlife. I leave them alone, and they'll leave
me alone. The Graduate seems to have a different policy. =)

The hiking was largely non-eventful. The weather forecast called for rain all afternoon, but it managed to hold off, much to our relief. A few miles into the hike, The Graduate and I stopped for a short break and we checked out my Erik the Black maps, then pushed on for a couple of more hours before catching up with Colter who took the earlier bus out of town. We sat down to take another break with Colter, and I went to pull out my Erik the Black book to check our progress, and it was gone! My maps! My precious maps! In the wilderness, charging through the backcountry of North Cascades National Park, and I had no maps! No information about water sources or campsites!

Colter let me borrow his maps to take down a few notes and I took photos of the rest of the book in case those turned out to be useful, but I was heart-broken. My maps.... my precious maps.... I hadn't felt so naked since, well, Hike Naked Day. Disaster! How could I have left my maps behind?

Colter harassed me as I took down notes from his map about upcoming water sources and campsites telling me, "It's really nice. You should get one!" Bastard.

Tiki gods seem to protect this fire pit.
(This is also where I think I left my Erik the Black
book. *whine whine*)

I must have left the book at that last stop, and I hoped Danny found it after catching the next bus out of town and would catch up and reunite me with my precious data. Please, Danny, don't fail me now! But I certainly wasn't going to backtrack a couple of hours to look for it myself. Nope, if I was ever get my hands on it again, it would have to catch up with me. I crossed my fingers and hoped....

The Graduate and I stopped to camp after about 15 miles, and he was so industrious, he even built a campfire. A very smokey campfire since all the wood was still wet from the rain the night before, but a warm campfire. The Graduate and I gossiped about thru-hikers behind us, wondering who would still make it and who had already left the trail.

Colter hiked on a bit further for the night, never to be seen again. (Well, not by me, at least. Presumably, others have since seen him. I never heard about any hikers going missing on this section of trail!) It was a little sad every time someone pulled ahead or behind. We were so close to the border now, we knew it would likely be the last time we ever saw some of these people again.

A lot of mixed emotions started flooding me. Anxious to be done with the trail, but already missing it too.

I just love the color and clearness of this water! It looks more like a painting than a real creek!

I took photos of Colter's handbook to get me the rest of the way to Canada.
I didn't realize it until later when I tried to zoom into the photos, but they were
rather blurry and difficult to use. I suppose it's still better than nothing!

The Graduate tries to look macho, taking a break by this creek. =)

Stehekin, the Most Amazing Town EVER!

2011-02-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

September 16: The rain finally stopped overnight, and by morning, the skies had cleared. And... Stehekin! I had about 12 miles to hike to reach High Bridge and catch the bus to Stehekin. The last trail town. Canada was so close, I could practically taste it. As much as I enjoyed the PCT, I was more than ready to finish and return to the real world.

The bus from High Bridge to Stehekin only ran a few times each day, so as anxious as I was to get into town, I didn't rush to get out of camp either. I'd either have to leave well before sunrise to catch the first bus, or linger and take my time for the second bus. I chose to linger. A few miles into my hike, The Graduate caught up with me. It was good to see another familiar face. I had been wondering what happened to him. I knew he had planned to get off the trail long enough to hike the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, but saw in a register that he decided to put that idea on hold. So I hd assumed that he was long far ahead of me. How did I get ahead of him? As it turned out, he took a week or so off at his parent's place near Mount Hood providing trail magic. Sheeze, he takes over a week off the trail and still catches up with me. Show off. ;o) He still wanted to hike the Wonderland Trail, but Canada Fever had bit him and he wanted to finish the PCT first. After that, he told me, he'd still like to go back to Mount Rainier and finish the Wonderland Trail. Crazy. *shaking head* I, for one, couldn't wait to get off the trail! He couldn't seem to get enough of it.

In fact, he started telling me that he was already thinking about thru-hiking the Florida Trail this winter, then the Arizona Trail, connecting up to the Continental Divide Trail, and deep into the Canadian Rockies.... From the sounds of it, the PCT was nothing more than a "practice hike." It didn't start out that way, but it was turning into that! The Florida Trail part of his hike, I'm rather pleased to admit, was inspired (partially, at least) by my own stories of thru-hiking the Florida Trail a couple of years earlier. I tried to warn him off of it. The road walks.... the loneliness.... But he wanted to keep hiking, and the options in the winter are a bit more limited. The Florida Trail and Arizona Trail are two distinctly winter hike destinations. He has a map on his website at http://benmayberry.net/map/?trip=4 showing his intended route from Arizona into Canada. At the moment, he's currently hiking the Florida Trail, but wisely started with a "thru-paddle" of the Everglades--a 100-or-so mile water path from Flamingo to Everglades City. In a sort of "reverse inspiration," I find myself strangely compelled by this idea. Perhaps someday, I'll do that little segment myself! The Graduate doesn't have a detailed blog of his journey, but you can at least follow along where he's at on his trip map. He's got a little SPOT device that pinpoints his location on a map every ten minutes. (At least while it's on.)

Almost to Skehekin!

Anyhow, The Graduate and I walked the rest of the way to High Bridge together, talking about the Florida Trail and all of our adventures since we last saw each other at Burney Falls back in California. =)

We caught the 12:15 bus to Stehekin, making numerous stops along the way to pick up and drop off passengers. High Bridge was the end of the line and not many people got on the bus with us, but it grew increasingly crowded the closer to Stehekin we got.

The bus also makes a stop at the legendary bakery we'd been hearing about for hundreds of miles. I stayed in the bus--I'm always a little leery about leaving my mode of transportation behind me--but The Graduate jumped off for a cinnamon roll along with about half the other passengers. After about five minutes, everyone was back on the bus.... except The Graduate. What happened to him? Was he buying out the whole store?! The bus waited a couple of more minutes, and finally we saw him step out of the store, loaded down with several bags of food. WTF?

"It's like this," he explained. "They have a $20 minimum for credit cards. So I had to buy $20 worth of stuff."

"Seriously?" This cracked me up.

The Skehekin River, as seen from High Bridge.

He had grabbed a whole bunch of stuff, and at the register, said it amounted to something like $15. So he grabbed a couple of more items. "Now how much?" he asked.

"$19.36," was the reply.

"And they wouldn't let you use a credit card for a $19.36 order?"

"Nope, so I had to go find something else to buy!"

I guess this took a few minutes before he finally had enough to cover the $20 minimum.

"Hey," he told me, "you want a cinnamon roll? I have three of them!"

"Yeah, sure, I'll be happy to help you out of this bind." =)

So I ate an enormous, head-sized cinnamon roll on the rest of the way into Stehekin. The Graduate refused to let me pay for it. I even had cash to cover it--surely he needed cash so he wouldn't be suck with a $20 minimum credit card order the next time he visited a business, but no.....

The bus followed the Stehekin River, a scenic little river, from High Bridge into Stehekin, but my jaw fell off when we turned the last curve into Stehekin and saw the town nestled on the side of a steep gorge holding Lake Chelan. I've heard about the beauty of Stehekin, but WOW! This one rates, hands down, the most scenic town EVER!

The bus to Stehekin.

Stehekin is an unusual little town, and not just because of the unsurpassed beauty of the place. The place is so remote and difficult to access, there are no roads to Stehekin. Absolutely none. The only way to get into this town is by boat, by plane, by foot, or by horse. Not even any forest service roads lead to this little town along the shores of Lake Chelan. There are vehicles and traffic in town (even this one bus route I took from High Bridge into town), but all of the vehicles had to be barged in on a boat. All food, supplies, and everything--it's brought in with boats. The town didn't get standard telephone service until 2007. Before then, expensive satellite or radio telephones were necessary to communicate with the outside world.

The town is situated at the north end of Lake Chelan. Lake Chelan is 55 miles long, but only 1 mile wide, and is the third deepest lake in the country, nestled into a deep gorge that's kept the town so remote.

The town does have a post office, and that was the first place The Graduate and I hit. We arrived just before the boat with the mail was expected to arrive (even the mail was delivered by boat!) and the one worker there
got us our packages. Fortunately, it was in the cabinet right there in the post office. If it was downstairs or upstairs, she told us, we'd have to wait until after the boat came since she wouldn't have had time to retrieve it. Seems like town life is centered around the arrival and departure of boats. She had a load of mail to deliver to the boat, and had to pick up whatever mail the boat brought.

Giant cinnamon rolls at the bakery.... And the thing
is about two inches thick!

The Graduate and I decided to share a room at the lodge. The cost was horrible, well over $100/night, and there was a campground further out of town, but I wanted a room. It was supposed to rain overnight, and I didn't want to camp in the rain. No, not again.... I wanted a nice, warm room. Dry and warm. With electric lights. So we got a room and split the cost. The rooms weren't cleaned yet, but they allowed us into their lounge to wait around until our room was ready. A couple of guys were watching television, and one of them kindly allowed us the use of his computer to get on the Internet for a short bit. I was on just long enough to read some e-mail, but nothing was urgent and I didn't reply to anything. The Internet connection was terribly slow--even dial-up connections worked better than the wi-fi available here.

We finally got our room, and I started laundry going at the public laundry facilities, and mosied around town performing necessary tasks. I made a couple of phone calls from a public phone--a satellite phone--which I was relieved wouldn't cost any more than a regular pay phone. Whew. I could just imagine calling Amanda. "Hi! I made it to Stehekin! On track to arrive in Canada as expected. Gotta go because every word I say is costing me a dollar!"

The most beautiful town EVER!

I also bumped into Danny, another thru-hiker I hadn't seen since southern Oregon. It would have been nice to split the cost of our room with Danny as well, but Danny had already checked into another room by himself. (Yikes! He didn't even have anyone to split the cost with!) We agreed to meet later for dinner, though, and catch up.

I went back to move my clothes from the washer into the dryer to discover that I didn't have enough quarters to dry my clothes. I was one quarter short. =( Oh, screw it. I don't need dry clothes anyhow! I carried the wet clothes back to my room and laid them out on lamps, the window sills, and on the bed. They weren't cotton. They should be dry by morning.

Danny dropped by, and The Graduate, Danny, and I headed over to the restaurant for dinner. I ordered the "thru-hiker dinner burger" because I was a thru-hiker, and it sounded good. =) After ordering, Shades and Neon came in and joined us. I'm not sure when they got into town--I think they might have just arrived on the last bus of the day along with several other hikers and were still quite dirty. But food was food, and us thru-hikers have no shame. =)

The last post office of the trail....

The thru-hiker dinner burger was absolutely enormous, and sadly, I could only finish down about half of it. I blamed my pitiful showing on the fact that I hiked a mere 12 miles to High Bridge that day. All the junk I ate before dinner (including the huge cinnamon roll) probably didn't help either. =) I took the rest of the burger to go to eat in the morning for breakfast.

And that was that. After dinner, we broke up and went our separate ways. The Graduate and I went back to our room where we read most of the night away the books and magazines we had. The Graduate was engrossed in a book about lightning which he picked up from the book exchange at the post office. I was trying to finish my Agatha Christie book so I could leave it at the book exchange and not have to carry it the rest of the way to Canada.

I had to take a photo of The Graduate's register entry at the post office.
Just in case you wanted to know how much $20 could buy you. =)

I really should have put something next to the "thru-hiker dinner burger" to
get a better sense of size, but I didn't. I like that they needed a knife
to hold the whole thing together, though. Nice touch! =)

Glorious Sunrise!

2011-02-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Waking up to perhaps the best sunrise of my life! =)

September 15: And what a beautiful sunrise! I lingered in camp a little longer than I normally would have, just to admire the sunrise. Glad I'm not using film in my camera anymore because I probably would have used up everything I had on this sunrise. As it was, I took a liberal amount of photos, doing my best to use up the memory card as quickly as possible. (I'll only post a few of the sunrise photos here, though!) White Beard and Third Monty didn't linger. I'm not sure exactly where they camped, but they passed by early in the morning as I was still admiring the sunrise. =)

Once I got hiking, the trail headed down from Glacier Peak through a series of thick blowdowns. Enormous trees--some the biggest I've ever seen blocking the trail--and a lot of them. It quickly grew frustrating and annoying. The biggest tree of them all left me wondering how to get to the other side. The tree was laying on its side, but was so thick, the thickness of the truck was taller than I stood. Getting under it wasn't an option. And both ends stretched out into the thick brush on both sides. The tree, at first glance, seemed impossible to get around.

I knew that wasn't the case, though. First of all, White Beard and Third Monty would have had to have passed it already since I never saw them double back up the trail. And second of all, I've never come across a tree that couldn't be passed. It might require a lot of bushwacking, but by golly, I would get through. I set my pack down while studying the situation.

Close up, I could see a few small bumps that I could use as handholds and footholds and finally decided to go over the tree, and I scrambled up without pulling too many muscles. Once I made it up to the top of the trunk, though, I started having second thoughts. Getting down the other side looked positively dangerous! There might be footholds down there, but I couldn't see them from my vantage point. I walked along the length of the tree a bit, trying to figure out the best place to get down at. I didn't want to break a leg by jumping down from this height!

One step at a time. First, I'd lower my pack down with a rope. I could have dropped the pack, but no reason to be any harder on it than was strictly necessary. I pulled out a length of rope, attached it to the loop at the top of the page, and started lowering it down the other side. The pack was still heavy, though, and its weight started to get away from me, pulling the rope through my fingers a little quicker than I anticipated, and I finally let go completely when it was halfway day due to rope burn. Crap! The pack dropped hard the rest of the way, and I threw the rest of the rope down after it, and I sucked at my hand where I suffered the rope burn. I felt a little stupid to have not identified that as a potential problem. Had I wrapped the rope around my wrist so it couldn't slide through my fingers so easily, it wouldn't have been a problem. Oh well.... At least my pack was down, and that would make it a little easier to get myself down.

I grabbed a couple of handholds and lowered myself as far as I could, then dropped down the rest of the way. Stupid blowdowns!

The bridge across the Suiattle River was missing, the last of the bridges washed away from the 2003 flooding and the only reason the PCT was officially still detoured around the east side of Glacier Peak. The river didn't look too bad, though. Certainly rambunctious, but no worse than the river crossings in the High Sierras. I didn't even need to get my feet wet, though. A log had fallen across the river, and it was clear that that was what people were using to get across, and I followed suit.

I had reservations about using the natural bridge, though. It was pretty high over the river. If I slipped or fell, it could have been a serious injury. The creek fed through a narrow channel at this point, fast and furious. Had I crossed the creek directly, I'd go downstream where it was slower and shallower. The log bridge looked solid and dry, though, and I decided it wasn't too bad and went for it. If it was wet, I'd definitely have forded the river on foot. A wet, slippery log just wouldn't be worth the risk.

About halfway across the log, I decided that a dry, non-slippery log wasn't worth the risk either. I was looking down at my feet--you have to, to make sure of your footing--and you can't help but notice that fast-churning water far below. Big breaths. Steady, Ryan..... This is so not the place to get a panic attack! I was already halfway across when I started losing my nerve, though. Going back would be just as dangerous as to continue forward, so I kept pushing forward, one slow step at a time.

Okay, that's the last of the sunrise photos.....
I just love how you can see the sunlight streaking through
the mountain ridges in this photo. =)

I finally made it to the other side, and sat down to get ahold of myself. I felt like I could have thrown up. That was a stupid thing to do. I should have just forded the river. Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but it was a stupid, needless risk to take just to keep my feet dry. It didn't seem so bad looking up at the log. It looked big and easy to cross. And if it was two feet off the ground, it would have been big and easy to cross. On it, though, it didn't seem as big or easy and was just a stupid, needless risk.

A short distance further up the trail, I caught up with White Beard and Third Monty, and we compared notes about the Suiattle River crossing. Third Monty admitted that crossing the log made her so nervous, she scooted across on her butt. White Beard walked across it, but didn't much care for the experience either. =)

The rest of the day was uneventful. Somewhere along the way, I passed the 100-mile mark--less than 100 miles to the Canadian border! I was tempted to mark the moment in rocks on the trail, but by late afternoon, the clouds started to look like rain and I pushed on hoping to beat the rain. It did start to sprinkle, and I stopped at Hemlock Camp for the night before it turned into a heavy rain.

Hemlock Camp is perhaps the cutest backcountry camp I've ever had the privilege to use, with trails lined by solar powered lights and an elaborate entrance with a welcome sign. It was only 5:00 in the afternoon, but by golly, I managed to have my tarp up and was safe and dry underneath before the heavy rains started without a moment to spare.

It was a beautiful morning!

Some sort of nest in this tree.... Wasps? I don't really know my insects very well. =)

There was no one around to put in the photo to get a sense
of scale of three tree, so I put my trekking pole in the photo.
The darn thing was as tall as I was!

I made it up the tree, but how to get down safely? In this photo, I already
dropped my trekking pole down the other side, but I hadn't lowered
my pack down with a rope yet.

You can see the original bridge that used to go across this creek
on the far shore. This creek was positively easy to get
across hopping on rocks, though. This wasn't the Suiattle River, either!

This blowdown I decided to go under. There were probably over
a hundred trees blocking the trail along this section. Very annoying,
and it slowed me down considerably!

It's almost embarrassing to admit this river crossing scared me because it doesn't
actually look very bad in this photo--probably the reason I fooled myself into
crossing over the log because it doesn't "seem too bad." It's a lot more nerve-wracking
when you're crossing it, though! And unfortunately, nobody else was around
so you can really get a sense of scale. The river and log actually looked a lot larger
in real life. *shrug*

The Suiattle River was a ferocious little thing!

It's so green, you'd think we were in a rain forest!
(Technically, I don't think this counts as one, but it's certainly typical
Pacific Northwest!)

Nearing a pass, but I forget what it's called.

Clouds are starting grow increasingly angry!

Hemlock Camp is open for business! =) So I did my business.....

Such a cute campsite. They really out-did themselves here!

Around Glacier Peak

2011-02-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

Sunrise from camp!

September 14: I woke up to howling winds on Red Pass. My tarp protected me from the worst of it, but I had actually set it up to protect me from condensation which turned out not to be a problem at all. Funny how things work out.

The trail dropped back down into a tree-filled canyon for much of the morning, but by afternoon, it was back above the treeline with million dollar views in every direction. The trail wound around the west side of Glacier Peak so close that I could see the crevasses in the glaciers. Spectacular!

I caught up with two more hikers early in the afternoon, White Beard and Third Monty. This wasn't completely unexpected since Colter had mentioned that they were just ahead when I hiked with him the day before. I hadn't met either of them before, but White Beard had a thick, white beard and I assumed that must be him. =) What I did not know, however, was that White Beard was 70 years old and could kick the ass of people half his age. Holy cow! I did, admittedly, move faster than he hiked, but not by much. And yes, White Beard was a thru-hiker, having started from the Mexican border. And, in fact, this was the second time he was thru-hiking the PCT after having done it his first time in his 60s. I hope I'm still that active in 2045 when I turn 70! =)

Today, I'd pass Glacier Peak.

I'm not sure about the age of his wife, Third Monty, and it seemed kind of rude to ask so I didn't. She might not have been 70, and while I don't want to call her "old," she definitely wouldn't need to be carded either. Those two are nothing short of inspirational, though, and we passed each other several times during the afternoon as we took snack breaks along the way.

High on a ridge, I looked down on the canyon where Milk Creek rushed through at the bottom, with Glacier Peak to the east, when a low-flying aircraft flew over the ridge, just above Milk Creek. A practice bombing run? The jet was so low, it was actually flying below me, and I couldn't help but be a little envious of the pilot of the plane. While the noise was loud and obnoxious, it was still pretty cool seeing that plane hugging the ground below me.

Much of the trail along this section was severely overgrown, except going down into Milk Creek where it looked like they rerouted the trail and I saw evidence of blasting along the trail. Nobody was working on the trail then, and the trail seemed to meander a lot longer than I expected before crossing the bridge at Milk Creek. It took at least a solid hour longer than I expected, which annoyed me to no end. Best I could figure, the trail had been rerouted and added an extra three-or-so miles I hadn't planned on. Blah. For awhile, I thought maybe I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was going in the wrong direction--surely I should have crossed Milk Creek by now? But I never saw any other turnoff, so I kept going forward. It wasn't until I crossed Milk Creek and finally started heading back up the other side that I was confident I was going in the correct direction, and on the other side I spotted a junction in the trail that I figured was the end of the reroute. I never caught the beginning of the reroute, but it was nice to realize that I wasn't going crazy.

Much of the morning was spent
in the trees.

Coming out of Milk Creek, the trail climbed a steep slope in a seemingly endless serious of switchbacks, which I affectionately called Bitch Mountain because I bitched so much about it while going up. =) It went up a south-facing slope where few trees grew, and the sun beat down unmercifully, climbing a couple of thousand feet while the overgrown brush ripped at my arms and legs. You bet I was doing a lot of bitching!

I finally reached the top of the mountain late in the afternoon, and pushed on several more miles until just after sunset, stopping to camp at Dolly Vista.

The views from Dolly Vista were nothing short of awesome. I camped under a small cluster of trees cowboy style--the first time I hadn't used my tarp in the whole state of Washington! Condensation hadn't been bad the night before, and I figured the cluster of trees would help protect me from any condensation that otherwise would form. The campsite was largely above treeline, though. Except for the few trees in the campsite, there weren't any others nearby providing a huge, expansive view.

Blasting! Oh boy! I new kind of obstacle to overcome! =) Even if this sign
was posted two years ago. Even if someone wrote in that blasting continues the
year after that. Nothing about blasting in 2010, but who knows?

I understood the symbol for an outhouse, but I wasn't
sure what the PCT sign attached to it was about.
(Well, the PCT and arrow part I understood. I wasn't sure about
the writing below it, though.)

I think this bridge needs to be fixed....

Glacier Peak in all its glory!

White Beard and Third Monty up ahead!

This trail looks freshly built--and that rock looks like it would have
required a bit of blasting to get through!

There's a trail in there somewhere....

There's still a trail in there somewhere.....
(Notice Glacier Peak in the background.)

What a wonderful photo of Glacier Peak with the moon rising behind it! =)
At first, I thought that was a small hole in the ridge in the front. Cool, an arch!
When I got closer, I realized it was just a patch of unmelted snow. Oh, well....

Canada is out there somewhere.... I could almost smell it!

It's been awhile since I had an icky-foot photo. =) They look bad, and they're
always a little sore, but despite how bad they might look, it doesn't really actually hurt much! =)
It's mostly just dirt that can easily be washed off in water.

These are a few of my favorite things....

2011-02-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

Janus Lake, at sunrise.

September 13: The weather had greatly improved my morning. A few wispy clouds blew around, but nothing that looked remotely like rain. Still quite a bit of tree snot falling, but that would diminish as the trees wrung themselves out. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day!

The trail climbed out from Janus Lake to some absolutely fantastic views that reminded me of the Swiss Alps in The Sound of Music. I stopped early at the first of the incredible views to throw some of my gear in the sun to dry out. Amazing! For the first time since the Goat Rocks, I could see Mount Rainier--but now it was far to the south of me rather than the north. Went right by that enormous mountain and never even saw it close up.

I also got my first views of Glacier Peak, another snow-covered glaciated peak dominating the horizon to the north. And I was amazed--the scenery was absolutely incredible, and even though I lived all of about a two hour drive away, I never knew all this existed! *shaking head* Shame on me. Oh, I knew that there was a Glacier Peak Wilderness, and I knew the PCT went through the terrain out here, but nobody ever told me how incredibly awesome the area was! I hummed a little of My Favorite Things, not really being able to remember the words. =)

Glacier Peak, I'm coming for you!

The hike was largely uneventful. I didn't see a single person until late in the afternoon when I caught a guy wearing a bright orange hat ducking into some trees along a ridge just before I arrived. It seemed a little strange, almost like he was trying to hide from me, and I didn't bother to stop and ask why. A hunter, perhaps? I didn't know, and it didn't seem like a good idea to stop and ask. I was sure he had to have seen me, and if he didn't want to talk to me, I certainly didn't intend to seek him out and force him to do so.

At one point, I had a decision to make. The PCT through most of the Glacier Peak Wilderness was officially closed. Flooding in 2003 wiped out several bridges and large sections of trail, and a detour has been in place for the past seven years! Criminal that a section of National Scenic Trail could be closed for that long, but rumor had it that it wasn't actually that hard to get through the closed section. I had asked hikers going southbound what they did, and those that took the reroute complained bitterly about how horrible the reroute was and that they regretted they ever took it, and those that didn't follow the reroute gushed about how wonderful the trail was. There was one bridge that had yet to be replaced, but crossing that river was no harder than anything we faced in the High Sierras. So I didn't think twice--I did not follow the official detour and stuck with the original PCT tread instead. A sign at Stevens Pass warned that there was "blasting" going on near Milk Creek, part of the process of fixing the trail, but even that sign seemed to suggest that the official closure might be recommended, but wasn't actually required. So no, I gladly skipped the detour. In many sections, it looked like the trail hadn't been maintained since the washout, heavily overgrown and in need of brushing, but if that was the worst of my trouble, I wasn't going to complain. =)

Closer to sunset, I caught up with Colter, who turned out to be the only person I actually talked to the entire day. I didn't recognize him at first, but when he introduced himself as Colter, the gears in my head started clicking. Didn't I meet a Colter hiking southbound near Lake Tahoe? He had skipped up from Kennedy Meadows to Ashland and started hiking southbound hoping to avoid the worst of the High Sierra snowpack? Yes, that was him! That little two minute chat passing each other on the trail near Lake Tahoe was the only time I'd met this fellow before, and he didn't seem to remember the chance encounter.

We hiked together for a couple of miles before reaching White Pass. A sign at the pass said that camping was prohibited there, which disappointed Colter since that's where he had planned to camp. There were pulaskis and shovels lined up at the pass, though, tools left by trail workers who were probably camped by the lake just down from the pass. Colter didn't like the idea of hiking off of the trail to camp, but I encouraged him saying that those trail crews were friendly folks, and by golly, if they had extra food or snacks, they might share some good eatin'. I told him about the huge hunk of apple pie I scored when I camped with the WTA work party. I hoped that lifted his spirits. =)

I didn't much want to hike off trail to camp either, and decided to push on. I wanted to use as much of the good weather while I could because I knew more rain was in the forecast in the near future.

And that was when I saw it. A black dot, on a side of a steep meadow slope, moving. A BEAR! It had to be a bear! Damn! I finally saw a bear!!!! Had to hike 2,500 miles, but by golly, I finally got to see a bear with all of about a week left in my hike! YES! I scanned the slopes some more, and saw another tiny black dot moving around above the first one. Two bears! And a third dot, below the trail. Three bears!

WOW! Three bears! The last two bears I spotted were pretty far off from the trail, one upslope and the other downslope. That first bear I spotted was a bit upslope from me and well off the trail, but close enough that I might be able to see some details. The sun was already setting and the light was terrible. I might not be able to get a decent photo at all.

Not only did I dry out in the sun,
but so did the trees and rocks!

I stayed on the trail, slowing my pace, and the closest bear finally noticed me, watching for a bit before moseying higher up the slope and away from the trail. I took pictures, but they turned out awful. Just tiny black dots, and I have to point them out to people since they're completely unrecognizable as a living creature. I was thrilled, though. Finally, at long last, I could tell people I saw a bear--three of them!--while thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I had pretty much given up hope that that would happen.

The sun set during my traverse from White Pass to Red Pass, and a spectacular sunset it was. The clouds had drifted down the canyon below me, filling up the canyon with a ghostly calm. From high on the ridge where I was located, it seemed like I could see for a hundred miles in every direction. A half-moon rose above Mount Rainier, and Mount Rainier seemed to glow in the available moonlight.

When I reached Red Pass, it was started to darken rapidly, and I decided I finally needed to stop hiking. When I arrived, though, another sign posted at Red Pass asked for people to camp "elsewhere." Crap. It was late in the day, getting dark, and I had already hiked 29.2 miles today. Sorry, sign. No, I was going to camp here, and I felt horribly guilty doing it. I don't like to break the rules, and if it was still earlier in the day, I would have pushed on, but it wasn't, and I didn't.

Although the chance of rain overnight was next to zero, I set up my tarp anyhow because condensation had already been forming on my hat while I was still hiking. It might not rain overnight, but it was clearly going to be a very wet night.

On an unrelated note, I made myself giggle when I read in my journal: Colter stopped to camp @ White Pass. I pushed on for Red Pass. (And what about Blue, Purple, and Yellow Passes?!)

I crack myself up sometimes. =)

Technically, there was a PCT detour here. (Or a "detoure", as the sign suggests.)
But I decided not to follow it!

The shirt I'm wearing, you can see a hole at the bottom of it.
For those of you familiar with my AT adventures,
this was the shirt I was wearing when I accidentally lit my
crotch on fire, and that's what the hole is from!

This is the slope where I found the three bears foraging.

I cropped this photo so the "black dot" would show up better,
but this is the best photo I could get of the closest bear.
Yeah, I know, it sucks! If only I had a zoom lens....
Actually, that probably wouldn't have helped because the light
was so bad to begin with. It would have just been blurrier!

Red Pass.... actually seems well named, at the moment!