Day 128: Mile 1993.7 - 2015.4

I've always said that one should be permitted to make mistakes--that allows for experimentation, for branching out--but one should never be allowed to repeat mistakes.

I repeated a mistake.

Today--again--I screwed up the tracking. This time I did turn it on, but did some messaging with it during the day to try and coordinate some stuff in Bend with Ian. Messaging is done via the Earthmate app on my phone, and while doing it I must have fat-fingered something and turned off the tracking. Didn't realize it until my parents messaged me at the end of the day: I had lost about 13 miles, untracked. So now I have 13 additional miles in Oregon that, basically, never happened. I never hiked them. It's a terrible feeling because, honestly, I don't want to come back to Oregon. I remember so many people saying in the desert, I'm done with the desert, I just want to get through it and finish it. I feel the same way about Oregon. This state has chewed me up and is still grinding away, and it's slowly draining my physical reserves, my emotional reserves, and my psychological reserves.

I will say this--and I was talking about this with Double Snacks as we were hiking today and before I knew the tracking was failing--you pay for every mistake on the PCT. Everything that has gone wrong on this hike has been my own damn fault, has been something that my own negligence or my own stupidity has caused, and I have--as is fair--suffered for as a consequence:

-- Losing 4 days to get the second Moderna vaccine: if I had acted faster to sign up for vaccination and gotten in just one day earlier, I could've gotten the Johnson-and-Johnson vaccine before they withdrew it from distribution. Then I wouldn't have needed a second shot. So having to come off trail to get a second shot and losing 4 days: that's my fault.

-- Getting sick in Tehachapi: I mentioned the symptoms to doctor on trail (who has extensive experience both in medicine and backpacking), and he said that most likely it was due to fecal-oral contamination. So I got sick because I was literally eating my own poop. That's a hygiene problem, and that's my own fault.

-- Getting hurt falling in a river in the Sierras: I've already written about that extensively, but clearly this is also my own fault. From not turning back when I should have, to trying to skip across rocks when--as McQueen pointed out--I should have just gotten in the water, I made a series of mistakes and, honestly, got off pretty easy with only bruised ribs and a wrenched shoulder (I think had the trail been truly just, I should not be writing this).

-- Catching a cold near Tahoe: after the rib injury, I had trouble sleeping at night due to the pain. So for about a week, I had poor sleep, and was still pushing 15-17 mile days in the Sierras. No wonder, then, that my immune system got compromised and I got sick. Eventually I figured out that not sleeping well is a problem--which is frankly something I advocated even back in Week 1, discussed it with Ian--and started taking painkillers in the evening to sleep better. But not realizing this sooner is my own fault. (In fact, if anything I was lucky on this one: the cold could have easily evolved into pneumonia--it's one of the risk factors associated with rib injuries--which would have been much more serious.)

-- Having to skip 300 miles of NorCal due to fires: there is a simple solution to this, be faster. There are plenty of people who started around my start date who did not have to skip a single mile of the fire zone: they just got through the region before it burned. I talked with many of them after the skip and realized that the only reason I had to skip was because I was taking it too easy. I simply wasn't pushing myself hard enough. Had I been, I would have been able to beat the fires.

-- Forgetting to turn on tracking in Oregon: this is obviously my own fault.

-- Accidentally turning off tracking in Oregon: this is, also, obviously my own fault.

The trail is, fundamentally, fair: if you make a mistake, you pay. It's that simple. And you *should* pay: actions should have consequences. For my part, I have made a slew of mistakes on this trail, through ignorance, through stupidly, through negligence, and it is only fitting and proper that I pay for each and every one. For if I got away with any of these, then there truly would be something wrong with the universe.

As for the trail today, today started off cold. During the night, I woke to hear patters on my rain fly--at first I thought they were just dropping pine needles, then realized I hadn't set up my tent under trees, and it was rain instead. So I woke to 40-degree temperatures, in the mist, with drizzles and light rains passing through. That was the morning: hiking in the cold and wet--nothing heavy, just drizzle and light rain--but that was pretty miserable. We got water at a pond a few miles in, and there I got introduced to cold and wet and windy as a stiff breeze came over the water. From there, we reached Santiam Pass and Highway 20, which we crossed, and then climbed up to the Three-Fingered Jack region. It turns out that the western side of Three-Fingered Jack--which is where the PCT runs--would stay overcast and misty until mid-afternoon. The eastern side would brighten up and turn sunny: we would often see blue skies just over there, but look up to gray clouds just over here. Luckily, eventually the PCT did turn over to the western side, and we were able to take a break at a pond in a burn zone and set out our tents to dry in the sun and breeze. After that, it was a climb up to our chosen campsite for the night near Rockpile Lake.

It was during this climb that I was informed my tracking had stopped, and I immediately turned around and resolved to re-hike the day to get it back. That would have been a long trip, so in desperation I gave Ian a call--I happened to be up on a ridge with cell signal. And over the course of an hour--he in his car in a supermarket parking lot, me on a ridge huddling behind a burned tree, shivering as I tried to stay out of the wind--he talked me out of it: to go back, I would lose days (and I'm already in a race to get to Canada--it seems winter is coming early this year; both Wetfoot and Double Snacks, who have both lived out here, keep saying this weather shouldn't be happening this early in the year), I would lose my rides with Double Snacks' fiance into and out of Bend (hitching from Pamelia Lake in the middle of nowhere is non-trivial), I'm already short on food, and I would be asking my body to hike--we calculated--45 miles in 36 hours, more or less, on no sleep (assuming I still want to catch the ride with Double Snacks' fiance). The rational response is to continue hiking and come back later to pick up those miles on the tracker--I'll need to get a permit to do so (this year Oregon instituted a much more rigorous and much more limited permit system in an attempt to preserve their wilderness from being destroyed from hiker overuse), but it should be possible in a day-hike. I'll have to add it to the growing list of incomplete sections. (At this point, even if I reach Canada, I won't be anywhere near done: I'll still have over 400 miles to make up.) So you can thank Ian for talking me off a proverbial ledge, and up a literal ridge.

Anyway, today ended up being a rough day. I'm camped here at Rockpile Lake and the fog right now is so thick I can't see more than a few yards in front of me. It's cold outside--dropping down to the 40s again I feel--and pretty windy too. So I'm not even bothering to tie up my food bags--just leaving them knotted in my vestibule where I also cooked (that's another big no-no, breaks every rule, and I'll pay for it eventually). Rough day, and it seems I gotten a lot of rough days in Oregon, and I fear I'm going to get about a week more before I'm through this state. (And I don't even want to think about Washington, where it only gets harder, both in terms of terrain and weather.) I once said Oregon is a pretty state if you can see it. Today I could see it--well, more of it--and it still ended up being a pretty poor day. (Don't worry about the photographs--if they come out they'll be pretty--but as I've quoted before, writers are liars, my dear, surely you've realized that by now?) But as I said to Ian on the phone, after walking the PCT through Oregon, I've realized that I'll never move to this state: I might visit for a week, but long term there's nothing for me here but misery and boredom.

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Small Pond > Santiam Pass (Highway 20) > Three Fingered Jack > Pond > Rockpile Lake

-- I'm just not Oregon material. First the smoke, then the interminable green tunnel of trees trees and more trees and absolutely nothing to see beyond that, and now the cold and, starting today, the rain. Granted nothing heavy, just drizzling and light rain all morning, but still pretty miserable for me. Partially it's because I'm not well prepared for it--I have a light-weight long-sleeved sunshirt, a short-sleeved T-shirt, and a paper thin rain jacket--and partially because I don't do well in cold rain. To be fair we've have indications of rain for the past few days: the cold snap day, then back near Elk Lake, Wetfoot had noted how ominous the clouds looked coming over the ridge in the evening, and that heavy, portentious bulkiness would continue the next couple days. So it's no wonder that it finally rained, and a cold rain, in the misty woods, to boot. I was all buttoned up: rain pants, rain jacket with hood up, shirts tucked into my pants, two pairs of gloves, everything zipped up and tightened up. Double Snacks--who grew up in Portland--was just in her normal getup. And in the early morning we passed some native Oregonians out on a day-hike, and they had just light jackets and daypacks--no rain gear, some even without hats. They're a different breed, Oregonians, and I'm certainly not of that tribe and don't belong out here.

-- Anyway, some trail stuff. At Santiam Pass, we got signal for a bit and checked (of course) for updates on fire closures. And on a whim I checked the northern California page, just to (indirectly) see how the Dixie Fire was doing. And I read out loud to Double Snacks, there's an entry "Northern California National Forests are Closed", and then "Basically NorCal is closed". And she thought I was summarizing the notice but, no, the official sub-headline was "Basically NorCal is closed". Turns out the PCT from Sonora Pass all the way to the Oregon border is effectively closed due to fires right now. That's 700 miles of trail! I mean, I felt disheartened skipping 300 miles in that stretch, I can't imagine how the SOBOs  skipping 700 feel. And to add to that, I can't imagine how all those little towns in there, and those people in those towns, must feel with the lands around them all on fire, breathing in smoke, and worrying that their livelihoods may go up in flames. There's a little trailer community at the Candy Store in the Santa Anas back home, and a few years back there was a big fire up there. And I spoke with a couple I knew over there (how I got to know them is a long story) and the husband remembered looking up at night and seeing the ridge just over there lit up in red and orange, bright against the black of night. It's a scary thing.

-- While we sat to eat lunch, we got passed by a forest service ranger--Ranger Talbot--and got permit checked. And Double Snacks was excited: this was her first permit check on trail. And in addition to the permit check, we got the leave-no-trace talk, where he went over how to dig catholes (6-8 inches deep, 200 feet--that's 75 big steps, he likes to say--away from water), how to pick campsites (bare mineral earth), how to make fires (don't--he was carrying a shovel and using it to destroy any fire rings he came across). We also talked a bit about less official things. He was a younger guy, and an Oregonian born, so getting to work out here was pretty much his dream job. We asked about the weather, is this typical? And he said, well, the clouds are supposed to clear up by mid-afternoon but, looking up, it doesn't look like that'll happen. They must not have gotten the memo, I said, and that elicited a chuckle. But it's good, he said, I'm a skier, so I'm hoping for snow by September 15th. Which elicited a quiet horror from us--snow in Oregon by September 15th means snow in, what, early September for Washington?--and he realized this and quickly added, but I'll let it be longer to let you guys finish your hike. And he asked about our plans, where were you planning to camp tonight? By Rockpile Lake, we said, and oh, he said, that's a beautiful campsite. How about long term?, he continued. Get to Canada before the snows hit, we said. Hmm, you're cutting it pretty close, he said, which didn't boost my confidence. Anyway, we talked about some other stuff, including Oregon's new, more rigorous permit system for limiting access to wilderness (it's working well, he said, lots less toilet paper strewn about, and 80% compliance rate, much higher than what they had expected), but in the end he had a job to do, hoisted his shovel, and off he went in the opposite direction as us. And we finished our lunch, me mulling possible early snows and cutting it close for finishing in time: not a good combination!

-- The highlight view of the day, though, was Three-Fingered Jack. Had I not been an idiot and turned off my tracking, today would have been a pretty good day just off that view. The trail starts off on the west side--which was cloudy--but eventually goes to the north side and switchbacks down the ridge so for a bit you're facing the mountaintop again. And now, with the east side involved, the clouds parted a bit and we could see hints of the top. And it was impressive. Even without the top, the base of red rock, with these long lines of gray granite in between: Three-Fingered Jack actually did remind me of a hand, the fleshy red rock laced with gray granite veins, and three fingers rising above. The analogy is more than metaphor, though: especially with the cloud-mists swirling around, the rock did seem like almost a living thing, a thing alive and breathing but on time scales so slow as to be imperceptible to us, flexing its fingers with the millenia as it reacted to sensations felt over countless years. It was truly an extraordinary sight, and one worth seeing if you ever find yourself at Santiam Pass and are looking for a good day hike.

-- Camping cohorts: Double Snacks. And there's no one else out here--I think all the nonrthbound PCTers have gone to Trail Days, and I didn't see many southbounders today either. Some day hikers out and about near Santiam highway--there's a parking lot and trailheads there so that makes sense--but that's about it.