Day 143: Mile 2269.7 - 2290.6

I remember way back in Oregon, at Shelter Cove, talking to a SOBO with Double Snacks, and she asked him where he thought the beauty of Washington would start to shine through. (For her this was academic--she's hiked Washington back in 2017--but for me this was quite interesting.) And he thought about it, and said White Pass. Then he thought about it again and amended, well, Goat Rocks, which is right before White Pass. From there on north, he said, Washington is pretty amazing.

Well I had entered Goat Rocks Wilderness yesterday; according to my pad, I passed the sign at 3:01pm. But it wasn't until today that I got to *see* Goat Rocks.

I woke a bit late, took some time in the morning catching up on some blog entries. I was thinking about how far to go today: it was 26 miles to White Pass which I didn't want to do in a day--my left ankle was feeling ever so slightly loaded in the morning--so I figured I'd do 20 miles today, then do 6 tomorrow morning to get into town early, resupply, then head out in the afternoon. 20 miles isn't a tremendous amount, so I felt ok starting a bit late.

Turns out these sorts of mileage calculations? They would mean nothing today.

I got hiking, and the trail continued, a shelf cut into a slope. Took a detour at Sheep Lake to go and find the Big Group--McQueen and Pain Perdu, and Spot and Ziploc, and Paris, and Noelle and Joel, and Late Start was there, and some more folks--said hi and good morning as they were moving towards breaking camp. Left before they did, got back on the PCT, and it promptly started climbing up an incline. Looked back on this incline, because back there was Mount Adams, it's top still covered in cloud, but definitely there.

And then the trail crossed over a saddle, and it was absolutely amazing.

For there, on display, were the peaks of Goat Rocks. And they were incredible. Suddenly I wasn't just in the woods anymore, catching glimpses of peaks at breaks in the woods. Suddenly I was in a broad, open space, with a wide view of these amazing mountains. The top ridge, juts of pure stone, their tops still obscured but by the thinnest gauze of cloud. Below that, skirts of gravel, with channel after channel carved by streams of melted snow. And below that, the hills, golden by nature, dappled by evergreens higher up, covered in conifer as you went further down. And all against a blue sky on a day growing increasingly clear. Oh, just the colors alone! The trail here walks a ridge opposite the Goat Rocks, and here the trail is covered in the squat undergrowth whose leaves have started to change color, so in addition to the blacks and grays and golds and greens and blues, there was red and ochre.

The view was simply stunning, and I understood why people would compare it to the Sierras: it had been some time since I saw mountains that simply took my breath away. And so close, too! But Goat Rocks is different: the feeling here is open and expansive, big and wide and huge, whereas the Sierras often felt more narrow, going from valley to valley. And on the other hand, Goat Rocks feels more singular, more like this is the amazing thing, as the trail walks around it for a spell, whereas in the Sierras the incredible thing would continue valley after valley, pass after pass, seemingly unending. At the end of the day, they're each their own thing and, honestly, if you want to see beautiful things, go to both!

The trail continued around the base of Goat Rocks, going over Cispus Pass, then crossing various streams called the Cispus River. Add in flowing water, dropping down multicolored rocks of white speckled in orange, and gray speckled in black, and the water white when flowing and dropping, and the slightest hint of blue when pooling, as it came through a meadow of green grass and flowers that looked like little tufts of wool atop green talks, and behind it all, those peaks, right there, above, and mystical as the clouds played amongst its fingers, oh it was incredible!

And lest you think that was the end of it, the trail went around the corner and we left the most stunning of the Goat Rocks, but then ahead we were treated to a view of Rainier, large and strong to the north, its glaciers still glistening white. And though the clouds played across it in streams and puffs and smears, still you could gaze at it and the more you did, the more little details started to appear, canyons and faces and ridges that seem so abstract from afar, but that must be massive and intimidating up close.

From here, the trail continued on to a section called Knife's Edge. This part I had heard of before--Ranger Danger and Sock Monkey had mentioned it, in fact, in the car ride to Dunsmuir--and here the trail walks a series of sharp ridges. And in parts it walks along the sharp ridge, so that there are steep drops on either side. And it's often pretty windy to boot!, as it was today. Well, for a person like me, who has a fear of heights, it loomed quite large. But when I got there, and got hiking, it wasn't as bad. The thing about a fear of heights is that the fear doesn't go away, you just learn to manage it. And my way of managing it is managing my focus: I try to focus on just the next few steps and ignore the rest. This keeps the fear at bay because it doesn't let the mind wander and indulge in increasingly scary theoretical scenarios: it grounds the mind in what to do right now, instead of letting it dream up what happens if you were to fall, or to jump, or to drop something valuable and it went all the way down and you instinctively lunged to grab it only that was a bad idea and now you were slipping and falling and sliding down this slope all the way down and down to a place where you could never be recovered--yeah, concentrate on just the next couple steps. Overall the footing on the Knife's Edge is good--that helps. And the trail is steep here: on climbs, it helps focus since the exertion is so high, and on descents, it helps focus since the drop is so technical. But I got through it and, whenever I was on stable enough footing that I could look up and not freak myself out, again the views were amazing. Both of the Knife's Edge itself, this thin track of trail riding this thin ridge of rock; and behind the view of the back of Goat Rocks, which was covered in at least snow fields, possibly glaciers; and ahead ridges upon ridges of mountains, green in their coverings and blue in the distance, until the massive bulk of Mount Rainier, still toying with clouds. It was a combination of the thinnest of margins with the widest of spectacles, and made for a very memorable day!

After the Knife's Edge, the trail finally calmed down, and I stopped in a meadow at a little stream and took lunch. And eventually the rest of the Big Group would show up, one by one coming down the mountain, and they would eat too. And as usual I finished and left before them and continued on. Because by then it was 2pm or then 3pm, and I had only done 10 miles on the day! And granted it was worth it--it was a magnificent day!--but still, only 10 miles was a pretty poor showing. So for the rest I ramped up not the speed, but the head-down-and-hike, aiming for a tentsite another 10 miles away: there was a final hill before White Pass and town, and doing 10 miles would put me just past the top of the hill, so it would be all downhill in the morning. And luckily, over the next 10 miles, the trail was largely in the woods, so bearing down and ignoring the views didn't seem bad: there wasn't much to see! Only there was, first just a ridge of ordinary mountains to the south, but the colors! The mountains, all without foliage, but still the soil yellow in parts, and gray in parts but streaked with flows of darker gray, and the stone almost ochre in parts, and of course the standard jet black--there was so much going on that I could have sat and stared for a long time, except that now it was getting dark and cold and I needed to get moving! Oh, but the second!: right before the reaching the top of the hill, there's a spot where the trees give way to a slope of big loose rocks, and suddenly the view to the west is wide open. And I could see the sun beginning its final bright descent to the horizon, and I could see Mount Rainier, the streams of clouds passing by only enhancing its bulk by comparison, and I could watch those clouds turn dark, then pink and orange with the last rays of the sun. Again, amazing, and I could have sat and watched the sun go down, but then it would be really dark and really cold and I really needed to get moving! And so it was that I finally crested over the hill after the sunset, and descend down the other side for about a mile, the last half mile or so with headlamp on, and came to camp in the dark. And here I am, at the end of an incredible day.

And here's the thing. To put things in perspective: talk to every other person about Goat Rocks, and they'll tell you stories of how the day they went it was cloudy, or foggy, or outright rainy, and they couldn't see a thing. But for us, today, it was clear, with blue skies and at most a wandering cloud or two. We were inordinately lucky! Today Washington decided to show off, to show that it too has magnificent views and sights, and I'm happy I was able to be there to see it!

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Some notes:

-- Walupt Creek > Sheep Lake > Cispus Pass > Cispus River > Knife's Edge > Hidden Springs Junction > Shoe Lake Trail Junction > Campsite

-- Today's entry has been dominated by scenery, but today I also ended up hiking with Poppy for Goat Rocks and the Knife's Edge. (Poppy doesn't eat lunch, so when I stopped to eat she just continued on. By happenstance, we would both end up at the same campsite, though.) Normally I think she's much faster than me, but today we were both photo-happy--shooting constantly--so our paces matched up pretty well. Poppy has a Sony A6600--a beautiful piece of kit--and she shoots video in addition to stills. And especially on the Knife's Edge, she was constantly trying to figure out, how do I document this magnificent thing? She's grabbing footage and hopes to put it all together into a video--or two, or three, or possibly five?, maybe one for each broad section?--after the hike.

-- But Poppy is a hoot to hike with. She's always talking, asking questions, getting to know folks. And I found out she's from Ukraine originally, and her name is Polina, but that folks never pronounce it right--they pronounce the "o" like an "o" although it's actually more like an "a"--and then some Brit once said, oh, it's just Poppy and she liked it so much she adopted it as her nickname. And she's went to UCLA and now lives in the Bay Area, in the City, and she's been to a bunch of places. And she told me about her trip to Machu Pichu, and how she was a bit shocked at how tourist-y it was, and at how poor Peru was yet right next door to Machu Pichu was this lavish, five-star hotel. And how the bandage over her eyebrow is because in the Sierras she tripped and fell and cut herself, and there was blood streaming everywhere and she didn't know whether from her face or her nose or what, and eventually she found it was from her eyebrow, and when she got to the hospital in Mammoth they said it was too late to stitch it, but that she could try to keep it out of the sun to keep the scar from being too large, and hence the bandage. Oh, and Poppy will often made exertion sounds when climbing, but you should think nothing of it: she practiced martial arts when she was younger, and so vocalizing on exhales feels very natural to her. Just a fascinating person--as most people on this crazy PCT thing are--and very friendly (every time we would stop to talk to a day-hiker or section-hiker and they wanted to actually engage, she would be down for it), always down to talk, and very inquisitive (we went over a bunch of camera stuff, for example). A great hiking companion, especially for the Knife's Edge where she found out about my fear of heights and said, anything to make it easier for you, you let me know. You want me to go first so you have someone to follow, you let me know. We need to stop, you let me know. Very nice, very friendly, and even very accommodating!

-- At one point Poppy commented on how much she likes the woods, so I asked her why. And she said, she feels safe in the woods. That when she's sitting in the woods, she feels like she's sitting in her tent, only she happens to be outside. And I remember Double Snacks had mentioned something similar in her list of reasons: feeling safe when there are trees around. And I said, yeah, but you can't see anything in the woods, so if there's something out there it's be hidden behind a tree. And she said, I don't think about that, I can't think about that. I also asked her what she likes about ponds: I've seen many go by, and they're nice at times, but nothing special in my mind. And she said she likes the calm and the quiet of them. So there are some things to mull on for when I get back into those green tunnel days!

-- Oh, and Poppy carried a sun-shade umbrella for much of the day, had it attached to her shoulder strap so it was hands-free and she could still maneuver to shoot. I'm pretty sure she was the only one out there with one--didn't see another one all day. (I carry one, but didn't feel it was sunny enough to warrant deploying it.) And she got so many compliments on it--that's a great idea!, so many folks said. Certainly it made her easy to spot on the trail! (Oh, she did take it down for Knife's Edge: it's pretty windy out there, so a deployed umbrella would just have resulted in lots of inadvertant Mary Poppins.)

-- There were plenty of people out at Goat Rocks, and plenty of camping spots taken up by little colorful tents. And for me, this just enhanced the experience. To know that others were also seeing this, were sharing this, made it better. And it drove home the point that, similar to southern California, these things are not way out there and unattainable: these things can be seen by folks just taking a couple night backpacking trip, or even, possibly, just going on a long day hike. These things are accessible, you just have to go out--maybe work the legs and body a bit--and see them!

-- Also, looking out towards Rainier and those northern mountains, I noted that there were lots of clouds over them: it looked pretty overcast. And from here that's pretty, but eventually I'll be hiking over there and, in particular, under that, and that's not as pretty. But I tried not to think about it!

-- Oh, there was snow! Right before the Knife's Edge, there were two snow fields. The first was longer but also in the more popular area so there were clear footfalls to follow. A careful step and the poles were sufficient. The second, though, was more dicey. Definitely shorter, but also in a place where nobody but PCTers went--and even lots of PCTers skipped it because there's an alternate that goes to the summit and ultimately avoids it. But the now here is dirtier, more strewned with rocks, and there aren't really any footfalls to follow. A careful step might not have been sufficient here, and the poles would tend to slip on the hard-surfaced snow, so I think a bit of luck was involved. And I remember as we came to one side, another hiker came to the other. Should we go first or would you like to, we asked. You can go first, he said, and so we did. And as we came to end, he said, hey, do you think it would be better to go around? And I looked and noticed for the first time that, yeah, we could have descended and gone around the snow field, and it wasn't even that far. That probably would have been safer, I told him, then continued on without looking to see if he took the advice. (Later on in the day, at lunch, McQueen would note the same thing, only he realized it about halfway through the dicey snow traverse. And shouted an expletive.)

-- Camping cohort: Poppy. And there was supposed to be the Big Group--they started the day aiming for this spot--but I don't see them. Maybe they stopped at Hidden Spring earlier on? They need a larger space since there are so many of them, but campsites that large are harder to come by out here: unlike the desert, you can't just declare a spot to be a campsite and then makeshift your way through it. But likely I'll see them all in White Pass tomorrow: that's where we're all going, and they hike faster than me so they'll get there!