Day 142: Mile 2243.3 - 2269.7

Adams Creek sounded just as loud in the morning, and even when I glanced it over the bluff as I was taking down my tent, it looked to be rushing just as strong. But when I reached it and properly surveyed, I did notice a difference. At this time, the Adams Creek crossing consists of two forks: you cross the first to get onto a little island in the middle, then cross the second to get to the other side. Both forks have log bridges, and that's what folks were using yesterday to cross. The log bridge of the first fork, though, felt dicey to me--it was just a couple of medium-to-thin logs above the water--and the water level was too high to allow a fording, so I didn't have a good way to cross the first fork. But this morning, the water level was lower, and lots of rocks that had been underwater suddenly were above the surface. And so I was able to rock-hop the first fork, avoiding the questionable logs. As for the second fork, there was nothing but the logs, with the water churning pretty quickly beneath. But luckily these logs were a bit thicker, and there was a third log higher than the others, at about knee level, and I used this as a (low) handrail to help me get across. And so it was that, after about 10 minutes, I was finally able to cross Adams Creek!

From what I've heard from the SOBOs, that should be the most dangerous river in Washington. So I should be set!

After that, it was a short jaunt to Killen Creek where I planned to get water. (Why not get water at Adams Creek, you ask, there seemed to be an awful lot of it there! Well, yes, but it was all silty: I had filtered some last night, and noted the fine sand accumulating at the bottom of my CNOC bag. I think the silt just comes with glacier melt: I remember seeing the whole silt valley on the North Sister side trail. So if I could get water from a non-silted source, that would be preferable.) Which was good: I had dumped all my water before crossing Adams Creek just to cut weight. Killen Creek was only a couple miles up the trail, though, and it was where everyone else on the bus--McQueen and Pain Perdu, Spot and Ziploc, Late Start, and a whole gaggle of other folks whose names I've yet to learn--camped last night. (They were all braver than me!) And I got there, and got water at the top of Killen Creek, before descending down to the campsites, and said hello to the folks there before continuing.

As for the hike today, it started with crossing Adams, then went through a stunning section high enough to see Mount Adams on one side, and Mount Rainier on the other. And Mount Rainier, though (obviously) farther away, was still impressive: a layer of either low cloud or smoke had settled over the lands to the west, leaving only the tops of the mountain ridges peeking out above (although the air above was clear enough that you could see details and colors--bits of orange and gray--from those bobbing peaks), except for Mount Rainier, which easily towered above the cloud sea, it's glaciered slopes white and shining in the early light. And it had a friend!: there was this small thunderhead cloud, all alone in the blue sky, just next to Mount Rainier. And it looked almost comical, almost like a bad photoshop effect, a bit too brushed and out of place, but it was real and, I hope, just visiting its friend the mountain, and not here to stay!

From there, the trail started descending slightly and the big views went away. The rest of the day, then, would be green tunnel, although to be fair green tunnel of two sorts. It started out with the open-vault green tunnel, where you're surrounded by trees by the blue sky is visible directly above. So you're in the green tunnel, but you're also often in the sun. And this tunnel is more colorful: I've noticed that the undergrowth bushes in this tunnel tend to change color with the fall, so their leaves are going red and orange. Against the green of the conifers and the blue of the sky, it makes for a striking palette.

The open-vault green tunnel continued for a while, eventually coming to an end around Lava Spring, which is, indeed, a lava spring. It's a sudden hill of lava rocks, and at the bottom there's a spring flowing out. And someone's built a little pool area, rimmed in lava rocks, so you can collect the water. This was a fun surprise in the middle of the woods: a little volcanic outcrop to break up the soft hills and trees, but short and quickly passed.

And passed into the other type of green tunnel: the closed-vault. Where the canopy is thicker and the sun now just spots on the ground. Here the undergrowth tends to be much more green, and much more water based: the leaves look less hardy, but also more lush. This section also walked past a whole host of ponds (which didn't have lily pads in them, but often had grass, especially around the edges, so I'm guessing in Washington grass substitutes for those Oregonian lily pads). This type of green tunnel is the kind that really makes me lose track of where I am, since I can't orient by the sun. It's the type where I'll be climbing and will forget the climb right after I've done it, because when I look back all I see is a trail, slightly canted downward, that goes a little bit then disappears around a corner. And the same for descents: look back and all I see if a trail, slightly canted upward, that disappears. I can't get the full scope of the thing, can't see where I've been and what I've done, have to be content with only just this little bit, this little section of maybe 30 yards each way: that's all I can know.

But this brings up something: I've said before that I've made my peace with the green tunnel. Because my usual methods don't work here: I often enjoy views and they're not here; I often enjoy looking back and seeing how far I've come and that doesn't work here; I often enjoy looking ahead to something that seems insurmountable, then getting there, and feeling good about it, and that doesn't work here. Rather my solution to the green tunnel is to just put my head down and hike and relish the joy of movement. And this is what I imagine some trail runners must feel, because they're not looking out at the views all the time either, but probably concentrating on the trail and their footing. But even then, there's a joy in just moving, at a goodly clip in my case, in feeling the legs going, in making the quick calculations of where to step, the fast adjustments to roots and rocks and branches, and just going and going. If I get in the zone, the joy of movement can last for almost an hour before I fall out of it, usually because I start getting tired! But that's my solution to the green tunnel: forget the views and sense of accomplishment and just enjoy moving the body. Is there another way to enjoy the green tunnel? Doubtless. But that's the way I've managed to figure out so far!

The green tunnels--of both varieties--dominated the day. But at least the terrain was fairly cruise-y, as we say, and I could keep going. I will say that towards the end of the day, I was reaching the 22 mile mark and came across a campsite by a lake, but then the next 4 miles or so were fallow of campsites. And I had a decision to make: whether to stop here and be content with the 22 miles, or to keep going and hope to find some unofficial campsites (i.e., established campsites not marked on Guthooks) up ahead--I had passed a bunch of them throughout the day so there was precedent. And so: I continued. And of course: there were no unofficial campsites. For this last little bit, the trail walked along a path cutout of a steep slope, so there wasn't much for camping on either side: the slope was just too steep! And so I found myself pushing to 26 miles, until finally the trail got off that ridge-slope and met a little, now-dry creek, and the ground flattened out enough for a few campsites. There's a couple of unofficial campsites about 0.2 miles back, and then there's these here at the creek: a couple right by the trail, and a bunch more up here, up a hill next to the creek. And that's where I'm at, finishing a long day. I will say that I'm not a fan of such large miles--I worry about my left ankle acting up--so I'm not sure if it was wiser to keep going or to have stopped back at 22. But here I am, and we'll see how I feel in the morning!

And that was the hike!

(Oh, and while I'm in a philosophical mood, I did also figure out why I write this blog. I usually tell folks on the trail that it's for family and friends but, on further reflection, that's really not it. I'm not as altruistic as Spielberg. I write the blog for me, really, at the end of the day, just for me. It's so I can remember things, because without it all these little stories and days would be lost--I have a terrible memory. And I know from going back and reading other travelogues that I've written, that even writing all this down some of these stories I'll reread and I *still* won't remember them. But that's ok: as long as I remember a few, it'll have been worth it. So if it sounds like I'm complaining about the blog being too much work, it is--but it's work like the trail itself is work. If I wanted to get off the trail right now I could (well, to within a day or two to get to town), and if I wanted to stop writing these up right now I could, but I'm not planning to do either. Will probably still gripe about both, though!)

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Some notes:

-- Adams Creek > Killen Creek > Muddy Fork > Lava Spring > Walupt Lake Trail Junction > Seasonal Spring > Walupt Creek

-- Incidentally, while doing the rock hop I realized that fording Adams Creek would have been tricky. I like to use my poles if possible while rock-hopping, probing the bottom of the water, and here when I got to a sandy, silty portion, my pole went straight down. It seems the sandy portions aren't that stable: I'd imagine my foot would have easily sunk into them like quicksand. Add to that the opaqueness of the water so you can't see it happening, and I'm pretty happy that 1) I didn't ford, and 2) I waited until the morning when I could rock hop.

-- Mandela, aka "Princess", who I met yesterday as I was camped before Adams Creek--she passed me by and crossed the creek no problem--had an interesting story. She had been at a creek about an hour and a half to two hours before, collecting water from a trickle of a stream, when suddenly the water surged and became this huge flow. And she speculated that it must have been something up above, on the mountain, shifting. And McQueen today noted that they had seen a rock slide of some sort up there around that time. But Mandela asked me if perhaps I had been at Adams Creek around then and noticed the surge here as well. I hadn't, but that would have been nice: would have meant that Adams Creek would have been even lower--and easier to cross--in the morning. As it was it *was* lower, but I think that was due to normal glacier flow: glacier-based creeks are lower in the morning when the glacier is still frozen from the cold night, but tend to get higher in the afternoon as the sun accelerates melting.

-- The water of Killen Creek was clear (not silty, must not be glacier-based) and *cold*, enough so that when I took a break between filtering to drink some, it promptly gave me an ice cream headache!

-- I leapfrogged with a group of folks today: Paris, and Spot and Ziploc, and McQueen and Pain Perdu, and Noelle and Joel. And at one point in the morning as Paris was passing me (he's quite fast), he asked, you get much use out of that umbrella?, noting the silver shade lashed to the side of my pack. I keep it to forestall the rain, I replied, I figure the more I carry it the less it'll rain. He got a chuckle out of that, then a beat as he thought about it, then said, you know what, keep it, for all our sakes!

-- Oh, and Paris does have a YouTube channel, evidently: search for Paris in America, and possibly at PCT or AT, and it should come up. I haven't checked it out--I haven't checked out any of the YouTube channels, probably won't until after the hike--but if you want to see things rather than read them, between him, Freewalker, Spielberg, Rntul: there should be plenty of visuals to choose from!

-- I leapfrogged with this group all day--even had lunch with them at the pond--but they're much faster than me. They ended up going all the way to Nannie Ridge, another 0.7 miles down the trail, today: they plan to do a big day tomorrow as well to get into White Pass--and the Kracker Barrel there--before 6pm tomorrow. That's 25 miles before 6pm, for those calculating. And I was able to keep up with them for a bit--they doing more AC/DC style of fast miles between long breaks, me doing more the Double Snacks style of slow but continuous movement--but in the end, they passed me by. And I had to be mindful of Cookie's advice: I'm through trying to keep up with people 20 years younger than me. Because there's definitely a part of me that says, yeah, you can do it, go go go, think of how great it'll feel to accomplish a 27 mile day! Then there's another part of me that says, yeah, but the point isn't to do 27 miles today, it's to do 27 miles *tomorrow*: you need to keep a pace that's big but first and foremost sustainable. And 27 miles a day, every day, isn't sustainable for me, especially not with my ankles. So it was fun seeing them throughout the day, especially McQueen, and I'll probably see them again in White Pass (they're planning on taking a zero day there), but if anything, with them, I'll ultimately be in chase mode rather than pace mode!

-- The other thing to do in the green tunnel is to fixate on details. Like how in one section, the flattened remains of pine cones littering the trail looked like fossilized troglodytes scattered about: they have roughly the same shape, and that same fascinating detail if you keep looking at them. And I spent some time trying to grab shots of the effect, squatting down low to do so (and anybody who's gone backpacking knows how hard it is to squat down low with your pack on!), and I'm pretty sure--well, none of them came out. But it's the thought that counts, I guess?

-- Camping cohort: Poppy, Biergarten. They ended up camping down below, near the trail, at the sites that look like lunch spots but are large enough to accommodate tents. I had mentioned the sites up here, and Poppy had come up and scouted some and gotten excited, but I think Biergarten was content with the ones below--and I'm guessing didn't want to bother with climbing up with all her gear--so they stayed down there.