Day 105: Mile 1573.8 - 1594.0

So last night I tried an experiment: I put my backpack under the foot of my sleeping pad to elevate my feet. I notice that my feet are slightly swollen in the morning: maybe putting them up at night would redue that. And maybe it did? My socks maybe didn't feel as tight, and my shoes maybe felt a bit roomier, but if so, the effect was slight. And putting my feet up complicates other things: I stuff my electronics bag and Sawyer filter at the bottom end of my sleeping bag at night, but when that end is elevated, well, it tends to fall over and my bag becomes even shorter than usual. And that's not so good. So I'm thinking this elevating the feet idea isn't going to work out.

I got started even later today, but that was ok because we were only aiming for 20 miles. Double Snacks got at least half an hour head start, and I would hike alone in the morning, descending down the mountain, until the first water source when I caught up. Before then, though, I would pass through this brilliant meadow that slid down the side of the mountain like a ski run. Double Snacks had commented before how much she liked the little meadows, the small ones that pop up unexpectedly when the woods break. Usually I'm ok with those--nothing special I find--but this meadow, this one *was* special, not only because it was large, but because if you followed it uphill, you could see where it met the mountains, and the rock formations there were strange and weird and wonderful. That's what made the meadow for me: the rock peaks above it!

As I came up to the water, I heard some rustling in the bushes above me and looked up to see a young male deer, antlers just budding. It looked straight at me and didn't stop, even as I turned the corner, coming up on a small stream, and there was another rustling, now even closer, and I barely glimpsed the hindquarters of another deer, bounding off the trail into the brush. As I passed, I looked where it had gone and saw nothing, and in fact marveled a bit at how it could have found a way through there: the brush was pretty dense! There would be a *lot* of deer today: later on, as we passed Forest Highway 93, we came across what looked like a little family--there was a fawn with them, its spots still white--3 or 4 deer, that first ignored us, then bounded off up the hillside.

I joined Double Snacks at the water source and for a while we hiked together, until our climbing paces separated us: we're comparable on flats and downhills, but I climb slightly faster than she does. And there was a lot of climbing today--this stretch was mostly going up, then down, then up, then down, repeat and repeat. The trail was constantly going to the next vale over, and this involved climbing up an incline and either turning a corner or crossing a saddle, then dropping into the next valley. The crossing along the rim of that, then starting to climb again in anticipation of the next crossing over. I did find myself doing something different, though: on some of the downhills, if the trail was "clean" (not too many rocks) and the slope was just steep enough, I found myself running down the trail to try and save my heel calluses (when walking downhill, they get rubbed a lot by the stopping footfall, and start to complain). These runs started as a sort of quick-step descent, then eventually became little almost-jogs where the knee joint was flexing a lot more, then became actual runs. At one point, I found myself doing a dash for about 30 yards or so and, honestly, it was exhilarating! (And terrifying--it was terrifying too--but I think the recipe for exhilaration calls for a touch of terror!) These 30 yards, though in the woods, nonetheless had some tricky spots, some places where the trail dropped low to get around some tree roots for example, and they come up on you pretty fast and the brain is going full-bore: calculating and deciding fast--where to step, how to place the poles, will that dirt divot turn an ankle, can I plant a pole there or will it snap on that rock--all on the fly, all blazingly quickly. And I could see how this could actually be fun, if I didn't have my pack, and wasn't worried about hurting myself! (Oh, and the fact that traditionally I use the downhills for photography--I have time to look up and around--but if I'm running down the slopes, well, no time for that!)

Around midday, I was hiking by then by myself, when I came to a dirt road and who was sitting there but Skippy, taking a brief break before a section known to be a cow pasture. I got to talking to her a little bit and it turns out she was carrying a rock: a serpentinite--a rock dappled in a green mineral that made it look like a chunk of kryptonite. (It's actually a volcanic rock that ends up under the ocean for a while, where the water replaces its minerals with the distinctive green-hued mineral.) She had found it on the trail and decided to carry it, all 4 pounds (!) of it, until the next post office (which for her would be Seiad Valley, or Ashland at the latest). Nor was this the first rock she had carried: she had found a chunk of asbestos for 600, no, make that 800 miles (it was a small one, only the size of a fist, she said in justification). I must say, though, that for all that extra weight, she looked pretty happy with her find, pretty excited to have come across this stone, and more than happy to schlep it for a bit before mailing it home.

While Skippy would stop in the cow pasture to get water, I would continue on (I was going to get water at another, further source), and wouldn't see her again until she passed me a few miles down the trail, then again at yet another water source, where she would be getting more water and I would stop to eat lunch. And as I was settling in, the gray clouds above finally broke, and it started to rain. And Skippy immediately finished up her water filtering and set out, determined to stay ahead of the storm, but I was tired and wanted to eat so I stayed and did. And by the time I finished there was thunder overhead, although the rain was a more spotty. At one point it poured for a good couple minutes, then hailed for a minute, then went back to pouring for a few minutes, then it eased up into a light rain. And that's when I took my chance and went. The rain would dominate the rest of the day: it would come and go, and when it came and was hard, I would try to duck under a tree or a large boulder and wait out the heavier bits for a few minutes. This part of the hike was pretty exposed so there wasn't much cover to duck under, but I tried my best, and tried not to think about it when the thunder rumbled first behind me, then directly above me a few times. I never saw a flash (although Double Snacks, when she would go through this section later, would) so I comforted myself by saying that it was fine, just cloud-to-cloud lightning, nothing coming down so nothing to be worried about! (Ah, the glories of self delusion!)

I will say that these sections, in the second half of the day, when I was going through the rain, had some of the most beautiful scenery since Dunsmuir. Not as profound as the red rocks of yesterday, but still, pretty amazing. The first was during a ridgewalk, where across the vale, just over there, were these incredible granite slopes, just cut from the stone, so steep and so near. They continued for a while, forming the southern border of Carter Meadows, and it was just incredible to be walking through the woods and then the view opens up to *that*. The second was towards the end of the day, when I came across a hillside all of white, which I then realized was just the dead trunks of burned trees. A tree trunk turns black in fire, but give it some time, then peel it away and you get dessicated white trunks. And here were whole slopes of them, nothing but thin white trunks sticking straight up, hillside after hillside covered in the dead. And below, the lower green bushes were growing back, giving the slopes themselves a wet, leafy green, rendering the white stalks in even sharper relief. It was almost spooky, walking through that forest: although visibility was good, I was basically walking through a sea of corpses. (And many of them had fallen across the trail, making for a lot of fallen-tree crossings--remember those from San Jacinto?) Those were the two most striking sights of the day: the sudden granite slopes across Carter Meadows, and the Sea of White Trees before Paynes Lake.

Other than that, the rest of the day was an up and down walk through the woods mostly, though some exposed parts sometimes, and racing the rain in the second half. At the end, I came to Paynes Lake where we said we would camp, and wandered along the northern shore about 5 minutes before I found a good spot (all the earlier spots had already been taken). So here I am now, in the tent, with all manner of clothes hanging from the ceiling or laid out over my backpack to dry (it won't all dry, but I have to try). There is a continuing chance of thunderstorms tonight until about midnight, but I'm doubting we'll get rained on: there was some rain when I first came here, some thunder and a flash behind me somewhere, but after a few fat drops it stopped and it seems to have moved on. Tomorrow we'll be going into Etna in the morning--it's only 6 miles or so from here--and it sounds like Etna's pretty full (of hikers if nothing else) so we'll likely be camping in the park there. Here's to hoping it's sunny in Etna: will give me a chance to dry everything out, and I really don't want to sleep with wet things two nights in a row!

And that was the hike!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > South Fork Scott River > Forest Highway 93 > Bingham Lake Outlet > Paynes Lake Outlet > Paynes Lake

-- At about mid-morning, the trail took a turn to the right into the next valley over, and I said goodbye to the "other" Trinity Alps. I'm not sure which of the granite ranges is the actual Trinity Alps: there are the ones we circumscribed yesterday, then today there was another set, back behind some more normal mountains, off in the distance. Were *those* the *actual* Trinity Alps? Or were they some other range entirely? Ah, geography: I got none!

-- When Skippy and I crossed into the cow pasture, we could hear cowbells up ahead and, at the water source, lo and behold but there were cows! Five, was my count: one larger one up front, three calves, then a pretty fat one bringing up the rear. All jet black, all with tags hanging from their ears. At this point, the trail is on a slope with tall bushes on either side, and the trail itself is pretty much the only way to go. So I found myself doing a (very poor) Professor Thompson impersonation and shooing the cows forward. (I think my problem was that I didn't have Professor Thompson's bolo tie--that makes all the difference I'm guessing.) The cows for their part did progress up the trail in front of us, a bit rushed, and the fat one in the back started basically panic pooping as it went. So these liquid cow pies are being dropped as we're hiking behind the cows, and I look back and see Skippy just wide-eyed in abject horror saying, that's gotta be full of giardia. For me that's an interesting observation, but for her, well, she would go uphill a bit pull water from the water source the cows used, so it was a more immediate concern! That water source would come from a PVC pipe stuck up the slope amongst some rocks, but she would tell me later that it nonetheless tasted of cow (and by that I don't think she meant it tasted of tenderloin!). 

-- When she said she was carrying a literal rock in her pack, I told Skippy about a running joke between Dylan and Uno where he would claim she's sticking rocks in his bag. Which she isn't, she would just spirit various things--usually food--into his backpack pockets, which he'd then discover halfway through the day. Then Skippy mentioned that her group had played this game too, only they used actual rocks (although they never stuck a rock in her bag, because they knew if they did she would just like it), and that they had progressed to another game, called "icing". This is where you spirit a (glass) bottle of Smirnoff Ice into someone's bag, and whoever finds it has to drink the bottle. Again, she was always exempt--Skippy doesn't eat gluten, which evidently Smirnoff Ice contains--but still: these are the sorts of games that I never get invited to and, honestly, I'm perfectly ok with that.

-- Incidentally, Skippy mentioned that, after she tags the Northern Terminus, she's intending to come back to this section and hike as much of the Dixie Fire closure as she can. So it looks like multiple people are indeed not only thinking about it, but counting on doing it: if I opt to, at least I won't be alone!

-- On a random section today, before it started raining, I bumped into a large group hiking in the opposite direction. This would turn out to be Rachel (who I spoke to), her husband Scott, his brother and his brother's wife (whose names I forget), and Rachel and Scott's kids, a girl and a boy (whose names I also forget), and their dog. So a big group! And it turns out Rachel, when she was 15, had hiked the Marble Mountains (which I think are north of here), and the guide had said, and this is the PCT!, to which she replied, the PCT, what's that?, and that began the romance. Rachel wants to hike the PCT--has wanted for quite some time--but right now is just doing little sections. She had lots of questions about hiking it--how do you do resupply, how do you get permits, how much mileage do you do a day, toughest part, best day--lots of questions, and I did my best to answer them all and answer them well. For us actively hiking the PCT, these sorts of things are old hat--hopefully figured out literally hundreds of miles ago--but for folks not on the trail, they're genuine questions and so, to my mind, deserve genuine answers. Anyway, I talked with Rachel for a while--even gave her the the name of this blog (so, if you're reading this Rachel: hello!) (and let me know those names and I'll fill them in!) since at one point Scott asked if I kept a journal (this is the closest I get to a journal)--and in the end she said, well, I should let you get in your 20 miles for today (and also Skippy had just passed me by), so she let me go. But for her, Trinity Alps is her backyard, so she hikes and camps up and down this place all the time. And from what I've seen, this is a pretty good section of the PCT to hike and camp (and evidently the permits are really easy to get--same day--whereas they had looked into maybe going into the Sierras this year but the permits were tough to get). So even if she section hikes around here, I think that'd be worthwhile. But I also saw the look in her eyes when, for a moment, she entertained the thought of going from Mexico to Canada and, well, I wouldn't bet against her trying it some day!

-- I had gotten some signal yesterday and checked blog comments, and Randy had posted an interesting one, where he wished me the right balance of rest, mileage, and awe. And I thought: that's incredibly observant. Because that *is* the tradeoff (for the engineers; for the economists, it's the "opportunity cost"). And I think of late I have been concentrating more on the rest and mileage, and forgetting the awe. Because in this section, most of the awe isn't the Big Awe of the Sierras, but the Little Awe that's more subtle, and comes from stopping and taking a moment to look and maybe hear a little of what the world is saying. Of indulging the Second Old Friend. But these days I just don't seem to have time for that. I've been asked, with the 300 mile skip, does that mean you have more time to maybe take a zero day, recover a bit more completely? And the answer is, actually, no, not really. As it stands right now, if I do 21 miles a day every day--not taking a zero day ever--I'll finish around September 18. As for reference, although I always say October 1 is the day the snows start in Washington, those in the know (like Hangn' Out back in the day) will tell you it's actually September 20. So I don't have a lot of margin even now. Granted I don't have to do as huge days--before the 300 skip the mileage per day was much higher--but I still need to do consistently large days just to make it in time. So in this new, almost racing part of the PCT, am I managing the rest and mileage tradeoff? I hope so. Am I managing the awe to balance them both? No, not really. And I need to find a better way to incorporate that--some way to break these dichotomies (or trichotomies?) that keep springing up, some way of looking at them that dispels the tradeoffs, and instead synthesizes the benefits into a single whole.

-- In the dead tree section, I took a break during a climb, when a hiker came up behind me. And who should it be but Colin! The guy who loved water, and who I hadn't seen since, gosh, the hostel in Big Bear. He has a trail name now--Gatsby (as per the book)--and evidently he made it through the fire section just before the fire closures, so he didn't have to skip at all. And he's still fast: after a brief chat, he sped right past me, and is planning on making it into Etna today (whereas we're still 6 miles out). He was happy to see me, it seems: as he said, after Big Bear, he had no idea what happened to folks like me who were behind--maybe we got off trail for all he knew--but with the skip now he's seeing a lot of old faces, and happy that many of them are still on trail. He himself does look different--he's sporting a very full, pretty well-trimmed beard these days, but he still has that open-eyed innocence in his glance which--and I should verify this before I allege it--but I'm thinking is partially the reason for the trail name... 

-- So let's see, for the past few days it's been sweltering heat, then rain, then sun and heat yesterday, then rain again today. The rain seems to be of the afternoon thunderstorm variety now, which makes sense, given the heat. There's nothing for it but to hike through it--often in my usual mode of "hiking my way out of my problems"--but so far the rain has been pretty shallow, and by camp-time it's let up so I can at least set up a dry tent for the night!