Day 138: Mile 2165.1 - 2189.6

Woke late this morning. That's the problem with camping in the middle of dense woods: I wake based on light, but in the dense woods the light has a tough time getting to the tent--it has to first rise over the bluff, then push through all the trees--so it doesn't arrive til late. In fact, even when I finally opened the rain fly around 7:30am, it still looked cold and dark from inside the tent, but outside I could see the sun shining between the trunks.

Late starts aren't good when you're trying to make miles, though, and that was the goal: I was aiming for another makeshift campsite (one that appeared only in some Guthooks comments) about 24 miles away. Overall the day was nice: in the morning it was more overcast, but by the early afternoon the sun came out in force and warmed everything up. Come late afternoon and some clouds rolled in again--whenever they occluded the sun, it got cool--and by evening it was chilly again, but those afternoon hours in the sun were nice, so I'm counting that as a good day!

As for the hiking: in the morning the trail headed downhill, then essentially leveled out for a bit. It then did the first big climb of the day. Putting this climb in the morning had been intentional: the idea was to put climbs in the morning when the weather was cooler and my energy better. But I found this climb still went pretty slow and I felt pretty lethargic. It wasn't until later, when the trail started heading down again, that I hit my stride and started picking up the pace. That would continue through Wind River and Panther Creek--the former at which I stopped for lunch, the latter at which I diverted to the campgrounds to make use of their restrooms. Ideally I would have stopped there, at Panther Creek Campgrounds, because the next section was another big climb, for about 8 miles, that would have been best left for the morning. But here making miles trumped the morning-climb-afternoon-descent motif, and I went up anyway. Carried 3.5 L too, gathered at Panther Creek, since the next good water was 13 miles up and I would be dry-camping in the middle. This climb, though it was at the end of the day, actually went better than the morning climb--I was able to infinite incline it--and I got maybe 5 miles into it before making camp here.

(This camp, by the way? So there's this scenic viewpoint on the edge of a bowl, and this little walk that approaches it. The viewpoint is too narrow for my tent, but the approach is slightly wider, so that's where I set up. But not only is it doubly slanted, but after factoring in exposed tree roots, the area is a bit smaller than my tent footprint, so technically a little bit of my tent is kinda in the air. It's not a lot, and I'm comfortable putting my sleeping pad over that bit and sleeping on it, but, yeah: if yesterday had been a bit of a squeeze, today is more of a squeeze!)

As for the scenery, it was more Washington: green tunnel through and through. As I've said, I've made my peace with the green tunnel: I just put my head down and go, which is at least good for making miles. This green tunnel would be broken up by the various little streams, and then even some bigger rivers--with rounded wooden bridges over them and everything! And at one point, the tunnel broke into a wide meadow, its grass dry and golden, with little Christmas-tree firs dotting the edges, against the backdrop of a large hill, densely forested, and a blue sky, dotted in puffy white cloud. And for a moment, I got the feel of southern California--it was positively chaparral!--and that felt pretty good actually.

But given that today wasn't much about views, but more about heads-down-hiking, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect a bit on Oregon. And I realize that--especially in this blog--I've given Oregon a pretty bad wrap. My experience of it was smoke smoke smoke in the first half, a wonderful break for Three Sisters and the lava fields, then fickle weather in the second half where it would be sunny and warm one day, then freezing and misty or raining the next: flip a coin. But more importantly, the mental side of the trail came to a head. This usually happens in northern California, but we skipped so much of northern California, that it got shuffled onto Oregon this year. So lots of my consternations with Oregon weren't actually about Oregon, they were about me. Post-Sierras, lots of folks go through a round of mini-depression--the views are gone, the banality of green tunnel days starts to set in--and the transition can be tough. Tough enough that a lot of folks will quit the trail. And I think you can see that in my reaction--all the complaining, all the little annoyances flaring up to become major issues. When I had joined Qualcomm, Ross once asked me whether I was liking the new job, and I had replied, well, every job has its good points and its bad points. And when the job is bad, the bad points are all you see, are all you think about every day, and it grinds on you. And when the job is good, you say, well, every job has its good poins an its bad points. Which is to say, when the job is good, you can see the good and the bad in the proper perspective, and the good wins out. For me, in Oregon, I started to lose that wider perspective, and at its best the blog documents my struggle to refind it. But during that struggle I did say some pretty disparaging, and ultimately unfair, things about Oregon.

I will say that my comment that Oregon is a nicer place if you can see it is certainly true, and equally true is that hot smoke and cold fog both prevent that. But whereas I said it with lashing-out vitriol in the blog, with wider perspective it should have been said with a more resigned regret. I do need to come back to Oregon to hike the PCT proper rather than the Crater Lake Rim Trail; and to re-hike the section between Windigo Pass and Summit Lake, but this time with my tracker turned on; and to do the same with north of Santiam Pass--and rather than dreading these trips, these days I'm hopeful that all these redos will be in better weather, and help show the unique loveliness of even the "common" parts of Oregon. Either that or I'm just going to end up being eaten alive by mosquitos--the one plague I managed to miss!

Anyway, just some thoughts on a day where I pushed for big miles and came up pretty good, even with the late start.

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Some notes:

-- Makeshift Campsite > Rock Creek > Snag Creek > Wind River > Panther Creek Campground > Panther Creek > Makeshift Campsite

-- Fell again today, this time on a tree root: missed the slight step down and, bam, there I was, plopped right onto my knees. I had been checking something on Guthooks at the time and just plumb missed the step. Hmm, for my followup trick I'm going to try to walk and chew gum, and promptly trip at the next sidewalk crack!

-- So the new backpack--the Catalyst--has been good. It's wider than the Circuit and shorter: makes for a squatter pack. (This does mean that the back pocket is shorter, though, the only drawback of a squatter pack.) It also seems to use stretchier straps--I'm guessing to better accommodate greater weight. So far it packs up much easier than the Circuit--not as much pushing and shoving to get things into place. I'm still getting used to it, though: it sits slightly different on my waist, and on my right side my old iliac crest bruise zones apply, but on the left side it looks like I need new ones. There was a bit too much rubbing, though, so at the Panther Creek Campground I did go ahead and leukotape that hip, but hopefully the calluses will build up over time!

-- Oh, and with the tent roll over the top, my shadow gives the impression, ever so slightly, of a space marine. Which is good: those guys can take anything! My pack is bright blue, which would put me with Robute's smurfs, but my shirt is bright green with a gray undershirt, which would put me with the Salamanders, classically speaking. Choices, choices! I think I'd go with the Salamanders: given the choice between being good at everything and being compassionate, I think the latter wins every time!

-- At a water source in the morning, Little Ralphy came up behind me, paused to also gather water. Where do I know you from?, he asked. Probably Shelter Cove, I replied, where you were getting a ride from Mossy. Oh yeah, he said. And he mentioned that Mossy is a pretty interesting guy: he's an ultrarunner, and has even run the Badwater 135 (where he placed in the top 10, evidently). Mossy always says he's impressed with thru-hikers, to which Little Ralphy points out, hey, you *ran* through the desert in the peak heat of summer whereas we, when it gets hot in the desert?, we stop *walking* and *take a nap*. Anyway, Mossy is a friend of the family, and actually helped Little Ralphy on his final shakedown before he did the AT a while back.

-- Little Ralphy is having some stiffness in his back, and mentioned that he needed to see a massage therapist who can do deep tissue massage. Or to put it in the vernacular: can pile-drive my back with their elbow. He had gotten a good deep tissue massage--the kind that hurts--in Mammoth, but finding a good practitioner out here is difficult. And he can tell: his mom does that sort of thing, so when the massage therapist is bringing the weak sauce, Little Ralphy knows!

-- At a random junction, I passed a section hiker talking to day hiker. And Section mentioned that this was just his second day on trail. (Whereas Day mentioned that he'd hiked the whole thing before, back in '99.) And when I heard that, it resonanted with me. Because that's one of the things I thought yesterday, as I crossed into Washington. That maybe the best mentality is to think that this was not the end, but just the beginning of another, say, month of hiking. To think of Washington with the same wide-eyed openness and anticipation as at the start of the hike. So when on my second day in Washington, to hear another hiker say it's my second day with that sort of innocent enthusiasm--maybe that's the way to go. Instead of worrying about what you'll do when it's (inevitably) cold and wet for days on end, look at this as what will happen next, and enjoy the days of good weather (such as today) as they come, and prep for the days of bad weather, and trust that you'll be able to cope with them--with the proper gear, and more importantly with the proper mindset--when they come too.

-- Today's peanut M&M color is brown.

-- Camping cohort: none, just by my lonesome again. And I don't think you could even fit another tent on this little approach and outcrop!