Month: September 2016

There were blue skies when I got out of the tent this morning. It had rained overnight, but not all that much, so breaking camp and getting started was not too tough.

As the day progressed, the blue sky persisted. Granted, it was still quite cold and I wore my gloves all day. But, I wasn’t soaking wet, at least.

We had lunch near a small lake, where there was some shelter and water. But, it managed to have large, chilling gusts of wind despite the tall slopes all around.

The blue skies hung on, however, throughout the day, and even allowed for some modest panoramas.

By the end of the day, the skies were still blue. It seemed eerie and out of place in Washington.

Regardless of the clear day, I still don’t like Washington. I don’t trust it.

227 miles left. About 1 JMT.

Snoqualmie Pass was a nice place to stay. After doing laundry in the morning, I went to the Aardvark Express food truck, and had a late breakfast of macaroni and cheese, with apples, spinach, and spicy Corduroy sauce. It was absolutely terrific.

As I ate, somebody suddenly slapped Elizabeth and I on the back. I turned around, and who should it be but Pathfinder. He had finished the trail on September 1st, and was driving back to meet people at the last few trail towns. He’d guessed we’d be here ahead of schedule.

He drove us into the larger town of North Bend, where Elizabeth was able to see a doctor about her back, and I was able to get a new rain jacket and sleeping socks. Hopefully the remaining cold and wet will be less of a problem.

He warned us about the upcoming trail. It was steep and full of scree (trails made of loose rocks). He’d had a hard time making his mileage, which probably meant we’d have a much harder time.

After lunch at a diner that turned out to be the one from Twin Peaks, we went back to Snoqualmie Pass, and tried the local brewery.

After long chats with other hikers there, we headed back to the Aardvark Express for dinner, for more long chatting with other hikers. Perch was there, the hiker who’d written me an energy bar recipe back on the top of Mt. Baden-Powell, around 2000 miles ago.

After a quick resupply, we headed back to the motel, watched Back to the Future, and went to bed.

The next morning, we ate more Aardvark Express, packed up, and got going in a light drizzle. It was a bit late, about 10:30.

Soon enough, the highway noise was gone, my phone was out of service, and we were headed uphill. It became steep and rocky, like Pathfinder had warned.

The weather was strange this morning. Sometimes, we’d have warm direct sun. But, a gust of cold, humid air could come by. Or warm humid air. Washington couldn’t decide how to treat us.

In any case it got windier as the morning progressed. I tried out my new rain coat as a windbreaker, and the experiment was a success. I was much warmer without being sweaty.

After lunch, however, the weather got cloudier and foggier.

And, soon enough, it began to rain. Lightly at first, then quite heavily. The forecast had called for 0.01 inches of rain today, but that was clearly way too low.

When it was getting late, and I was getting worried about having to set up my tent in the rain, the weather finally more or less dried up. We saw a few more moments of rain, but it remained dry enough for us to find a campsite and set up our tents.

250 miles left.

Note: This post is out of order. It is from earlier in my hike when I didn’t have time to keep my blog up-to-date, so I’m posting it now.

It was very cold last night. I woke up at 2:30
and checked the thermometer on my backpack. It showed about 28 degrees in my tent’s vestibule. This is no good because my thermometer is next to my water filter, and my water filter becomes damaged if it freezes. It is now useless for treating water.

Since we had camped at the lowest area we could, it was all uphill from here, so we started slow in case Elizabeth’s altitude sickness came back. But, it didn’t seem to, and soon enough we were passing everybody.

At one point, we saw a plume of smoke rising from the side of an adjacent ridge. It didn’t look like a spot that someone could make a campfire.

As it happened, there was AT&T phone coverage right there, so we found someone with AT&T and called the fire in. It turned out to be under control already.

We were going into Lone Pine today for a resupply, so we took Mulkey Pass off the PCT, to the Horseshoe Meadows trailhead.

We reached the trailhead, and started trying to hitch out. This was not a popular area, so prospects looked poor, but we were fortunate enough to get a ride with a father and son who were starting the John Muir Trail tomorrow, and were parking their second car here.

Soon enough, we were down in civilization, in Lone Pine.

We checked into the hostel, and called the local clinic. They agreed with Professor Kind’s diagnosis — Elizabeth had altitude sickness yesterday.

As we resupplied, I found that every store in town was out of replacements for my water filter. So, for now I’ll be using MSR tablets to treat my water. It won’t taste as good as filtered water, and I’ll have to wait before I can drink, but I won’t need to spend time squeezing water through a filter into my water bottle any more.

We had dinner at a restaurant called The Grill, which surprised us by bringing out our food almost immediately after we ordered. I kept emptying my glass of water, and they kept refilling it. I guess I must’ve been dehydrated.

In the hotel room, we had a dessert of Ben and Jerry’s Milk and Cookies ice cream, with beer from Mammoth Brewing. Elizabeth liked the Double Nut Brown Porter so much, she wants to be sure we resupply in Mammoth now.

We set up orders with a service called Sonora Pass Resupply to bring us a resupply at a difficult point down the trail. They drive a truck into Sonora Pass, where they deliver resupplies to hikers, and mail back their bear canisters (bear canister requirements end around Sonora Pass). Using their web site took a long time, but it’s a difficult place to hitch into town.

Then, we fell asleep.