Day 139: Mile 2189.6 - 2211.8

I woke this morning late--as usual--and cold--also as usual. And when I finally got out of my tent, I walked to the edge of the ledge and looked out to see Mount Hood, way back in the distance, but it's white glaciers still clear, and it's triangular bulk still towering over everything else. It was a pretty magnificent sight!

And then the hiking started. To be fair, trail-wise today was mostly very Washington--rolling up and down, up and down, through the green tunnel. Although it seems like I'm slowly getting used to the latter: the Washington tunnel seems to be more dense, and when the light streams in, for some reason prettier, than its Oregonian counterpart. But the trail continued its climbs and descents, and doubtless there were some memorable climbs that I forgot immediately after finishing them.

Rather, what I remember was a section in the morning, when the trail passed through what looked like volcanic rock mixed in with the woods. The rock would come in these clumps, forming little canyons no more than three, maybe four ogres tall, amongst the woods. And the woods were slowly growing over them, especially these thin maple trees, and seeing their autumn leaves a vibrant red, against the stones of gray so stolid even the dry green of its moss seemed hoary and old, was quite a pretty contrast. So that part dominates my morning memories.

As for the afternoon, there was a section when the trail walked almost along the top of a ridge, and for a bit the trail was a bit more exposed. Trees still, but mostly shorter, and none forming a canopy, and brush, lots of brush. And it reminded me of southern California, what with the heat and the exposure and the views: from here, I could look out and see ridge after ridge, all tree-d, all distinguished in that they were indistinguishable from each other, and just formed these lines of shapes, each one more blue and light than the last, fading off into the distance. And here, too, the brush wore its fall colors, and the light brown of the dusty trail, the bright red and orange of the autumnal bushes, the green of the occasional evergreen and the cloudless blue of the sky--it made for some memorable bits of hiking!

But the real memorable bits today wasn't the hiking, it was the people:

-- And in the morning who should I see but Cookie, on the trail! And we hiked together for a bit until the first water source of the day, and I got updated on her travels--she had headed off to the Bay Area to check on her parents after Truckee, just as delta-COVID was starting up. And with that, she felt, I had to get back on trail, and her friends and family agreed, except her mom, who kept watching the fire news, and made Cookie promise to stay out of the way of the fires. Which she did--ended up skipping a lot of northern California, and then bits and pieces of Oregon too to stay out of the smoke. But I hiked off and on with Cookie throughout the day--I would head off ahead, but then she would catch up again while I add lunch in that southern-California-ridge section, and ultimately we would end the day both hiking to the Wood Lake trail junction and camping together about a quarter mile down that trail. 

-- And as I passed Sheep Lake, I heard a voice say, cool as a cucumber, hey charlie. And I looked and I threw my arms open: Otter!, I said. And it was Otter, his blanket out, finishing up his lunch overlooking the lake. And we hiked together a bit, catching up on what he had been up to (he had taken a bunch of days off in Bend, then went to Eugene and taken some more). And after I expressed my trepidation of the cold and wet weather ahead, he gave me some advice on how to handle it. Your rain gear doesn't keep you dry, it keeps you warm, he said. (He likes that saying, says it a lot.) Everything will get wet, but if you keep your sleeping bag dry and a set of dry clothes to sleep in, you won't die, he said. Your hiking clothes are going to be wet, they won't dry overnight, but put them in a plastic bag, and stuff them in the toebox of your sleeping bag at night, and that way they'll at least be warm and wet rather than cold and wet in the morning, he said. Don't set up your tent in a bowl in the ground--the water will pool under your tent--but if you have to, you can use your poles to carve out water channels around your tent to redirect some of it away, he said. Dylan had called Otter "the legend" back in the Sierras, and while I'd never asked Dylan why he named Otter such, I can see why you would!

-- At one point, out on the bright sunny ridges, I bumped into a hiker I hadn't met before, who introduced herself as Golden. Yep, it's fall, she said. She's from Washington, and evidently this is fall in southern Washington: hot and sunny. Come mid-September it'll go to cold and sunny, she said, then by cold and rainy by the end of September, with snow by mid-October. So the warm weather isn't going to last (obviously), and I'm just going to ride it out as far as I can!

-- At around mid-afternoon, just after I had caught up with Cookie, she bumped into two old friends: the couple Unicorn and Rntul (pronounced "Rental", Rntul stands for "Really Not That UltraLight"). And she was so excited to see them! They had met on Day 1, at Mile 4.4, but after the Sierras, Unicorn and Rntul had decided to flip to avoid the fires. So they were now coming south from the northern Terminus. And they talked for a while--I think an hour or so--and I had originally meant to just keep going, but ended up talking as well. And Rntul is a hoot! He has a YouTube channel--search for Rntul and it should come up--and he puts together a video for every day. And he'll likely sound very energetic and all over the place on YouTube--he recorded some footage of him interviewing Cookie--but let me tell you, that's him toned down, he's even more energetic and all over the place in real life! And I'm guessing that Rntul is my doppleganger on trail: I've been confused with another guy at times, and it's likely him. We're both Asian, thin, in our mid forties (he's 47, I'm 43), we both have goatee style facial hair, and we both wear bright green shirts. Yeah, he's definitely the guy I get mistaken for! But our energies are so different: I stolid to the point of becoming furniture, he's energetic to the point of bouncing off the walls! He talked about the travails of flipping, of having to answer to all the comments calling them out on it on YouTube; he talked about how much he liked the camera he's using because it's a point-and-shoot and it's pearl white so it doesn't look intimidating and he can just flip the screen so people can see themselves being filmed and it's easy and not scary; he talked about, oh and the camera has this great macro mode and he can film these really close shots and those are really distinctive because everyone on YouTube has those big spanning shots of the great scenery but people really seem to like this macro shots so he gets a lot of them; he talked about how he tried to do both filming and still photography and how that didn't work and you need to pick one (an interesting observation that I suspect is true for more people than just him, and I wonder why); he talked about how much time it takes to edit and how he'll be so tired he'll fall asleep and then wake up at 1am in a panic and edit until 3am and then go back to sleep (sounds familiar, actually); he talked about how generous people were on trail and how he was getting new shoes in Cascade Locks because a friend of a trail angel had picked them up and was delivering them by hand and how they had a trail angel helping out through Oregon and how that was just amazing; he talked about how he found that people on the trail were so generous and kind and good (and I argued people are actually like that in real life too if you get them one-on-one, but his experience seemed to be different). And that was just in a few minutes!

-- But the big thing for Rntul was trying to convince Unicorn to go all the way to the Oregon border, to tag the border. Because she was ok with going to Crater Lake, but had her heart set on stopping there. And so he asked me about the section from Crater Lake to the border, and I pulled out my spreadsheet (which he found a bit intimidating but ok), and I told him how long it had taken me to get from the border to Crater Lake (about 5 days from Crater Lake to Ashland, then 1.5 days to the border from there), even gave him some ideas of possibly slack-packing the final bit to the border (make a base camp somewhere past Ashland, then leave the tent up and just do a day-hike to the border), and how there was a road near the border too, so maybe ask a trail angel to pick them up there (it's a dirt road, though, so they may need an appropriate vehicle). And he was impressed and said if I didn't have a trail name yet he would call me Data (and pronounce it the ST:TNG way) (which is the right way when it's a name, BTW) (j/k). And overall, I'm glad I stopped and got vortexed by Rntul and Unicorn, because they reminded me of how joyous and fun the trail can be. They're just doing 15 miles a day, nothing like pushing for these 20+ days, and they feel pressure, but it's more the pressure of social expectations on YouTube, or wanting to go home and not have to do the miles between Crater Lake and the border, and so on. It's good to see people under those sorts of pressures, rather than perpetually under the threat of go go go or cold and wet, a la me!

-- Yeah, check out Rntul's YouTube channel: I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing it's really good! (In fact, Firebreather was there when Rntul interviewed Cookie, and said, man, I felt like I was seeing the edited footage in real time that was so well done!)

-- And at Bear Lake, the last lake before the place where Cookie and I planned to camp, we went down to gather water and who should we bump into but Biergarten! She was looking for a campsite around Bear Lake, had gone around the south side and come up empty, was about to embark on the east and north sides. Kind of a random encounter--never expected to see her here since she's pretty fast. But it was nice to see her, and she recognized us to boot!

And that was the hike! After two days of being mostly alone, the trail gave me a whole gaggle of people to meet and talk with. And though this interrupted my goal--I had wanted to go even further today, to shorten the distance for tomorrow when I'll be chasing to reach the shuttle to Trout Lake in time--I always say that I'll gladly trade conversations for miles. And while I'm less gung-ho about that tradeoff these days, I'm still willing to make it, and to declare the day a Good Day regardless!

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Some notes:

-- Makeshift Campsite > Piped Spring > Sheep Lake > Green Lake > Blue Lake > Bear Lake > Wood Lake Trail Junction > Wood Lake Campsites

-- One of the fun comments on Guthooks is the rodent story. Usually a comment at a campsite, this story describes a valiant struggle fending off a rodent all night, and usually ends with tragic loss: the rodent ultimately wins, chewing into the tent after the hiker finally falls asleep, and eating into their food bag. Well, last night since the ledge was so small, I elected to eat out of the vestibule of my tent: I sat in my tent, and cooked right outside. And after coming back from my final trip to the head before retiring for the night, what should my headlamp see but a mouse, sitting in the brush right next to my tent, and right by where I'd eaten my dinner. And the mouse was unafraid, didn't scurry away in the light, but just dashed a bit back and forth, as if trying to decide whether the food smells were worth further investigation. By the time I turned to grab a trekking pole to poke it, it had already gone. But it had clearly been interested. And then, while I was trying to fall asleep, I kept hearing scurrying sounds in the plants that were inside my other vestibule (it was a very small space, so my other vestibule ended up encompassing some flora), and even when I knocked on the tent wall or shone a light over there, it wouldn't stop. And I double-checked that there was no food inside my tent--none in my hip belt pockets, for example--and eventually the sound went away. But that's my rodent story. No entry into my tent, no absconding with corn nuts or cashews or peanuts, but still it scared me, and is the reason I ate a bit away from my tent tonight, even though it's even colder here than it was there!

-- When I woke, I was surprised to smell smoke in the air. But the sky was blue and the sun was yellow? Turns out the smoke didn't materialize all day--although I would smell it off and on, here and there. Or maybe, after so many smokey days in Oregon, I've just become more finely attuned to even minute bits of smoke in the atmosphere.

-- While I haven't checked the data, it feels like I'm faster at the end of the day. Maybe because it's cooler?--but then why aren't I similarly as fast in the morning? And I remembered long ago, back on San Jacinto, that I had leapfrogged with a Blue-Eyed Couple (I never got their names, but I remembered their eyes were so blue, not the blue-leaning-to-gray of some blue-eyed folks, but like Fremen blue), and they had loved hiking in at the end of the day, because then they got to hike during Golden Hour, where even the mundane is rendered absolutely beautiful. And they're not wrong! The only problem is setting up your tent in the dark and what, these days, is the cold. And then eating in the cold. So were this full-summer rather than start-autumn I would agree with them, but given the weather now, I think I would be wise to nonetheless make camp, and finish dinner, closer to sundown!  

-- Towards the end of the day, I noticed that the trail appeared to be widening out, going from a narrow single-track to a broader thing, maybe twice the width. And indeed, this was foretold by Nico, who said the trails in Washington were like wide avenues rather than the narrow alleys of Oregon, and indeed, it seems to be coming to pass!

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

-- Camping cohort: Cookie Pie.