Day 145: Mile 2301.9 - 2321.6

Today was a small day.

I woke, wrote, got started late, around 8am. The morning conversation around the campground was the usual: J-Pro had heard some small animals in the night, had I heard them (I had not); and how far are you going today (he's going to the ridge *after* Chinook Pass, I'll be lucky to make it to the ridge *before*). Then I started and, on a cold morning--J-Pro's thermometer read high 30s--was slow to warm up: it took maybe 30 minutes of hiking rather than the usual 5. Was it just the cold? Or maybe the fatigue?--the left ankle tendon does feel more loaded than usual. Either way, hopefully it lasts for just a little longer...

In the morning the trail continued the Washington trend of wandering through the woods, then breaking out into little meadows or ponds, then diving back in. There are a lot of little side trails here; on a whim I wandered one of them through some trees and over a little rise not 50 yards before I came to a little pond. A wanderer's dream, this section, but to a thru-hiker, well, we're just passing through.

To be fair, given so many ponds and even a lake or two, some of them will turn out to be interesting. And there was one: a pond that looked to be cut down into a meadow, its banks little cliff edges of dirt shaded by the grasses on top. Almost like someone had taken a random-walk cookie cutter, pressed down into a grassy plain, excised, and filled the space with water.

I took breakfast--which I haven't done in a while, usually I combine breakfast and lunch together--at Snow Lake. It was sunny and I wanted to charge things, it had water and I needed to fill up, and it was pretty: a large calm lake where I could watch the big blue dragonflies, and there was a sitting rock between two trees right next to the shore. It was warm by now, going on hot, and served as a nice little respite. I was the first out of camp today, so it also served to let J-Pro and Apocalypse pass me, and start the day's leapfrogging.

I would leapfrog Apocalypse at a creek a little ways down the trail, where he stopped to do trail laundry, dangling his feet over the edge of a wide wooden bridge, next to socks and clothes laid out to dry in the sun between the trees, as the stream flowed shallow but strong beneath him.

From there, the trail took a sudden steep downhill, and here I encountered the first smoke of the day. It came on suddenly, almost as if someone had ensorcelled the woods and I had stepped over the threshold. This downhill was marked by the sound of water: although I could ne'er but glimpse it through the trees, off to the side a stream fell down a rocky canyon in a cascade of falls and tumbles, the sound loud and impressive. At the bottom of the descent, the trail smoothed out for a bit, crossed a river--which I did by going downstream and gingerly walking across a log, snapped in two to form a large V across the water--and evidently passed right by Fish Lake, which I never saw on account of the smoke. The trail then started its big climb of the day, switchbacking up out of that valley, and as I climbed the smoke cleared some, until, from a high vantage point, I got a view to the south over an unnamed lake, and I saw a huge plume of smoke, gathering into a mushroom cloud. It was the Schneider Springs fire, and it looked to be only a handful of ridges away. It had been burning a while now, but how it was still getting new material to put up more smoke: this I didn't know.

About halfway up the climb, I leapfrogged with J-Pro, who had stopped to eat lunch at a creek dropping down the steep slope. I joined him as he was finishing up, and we talked a bit, mostly about elk sounds. Did you hear the elk?, he asked. What do they sound like? Like rusty door hinges, he said, which I thought a pretty specific description. But, no, I hadn't. He also commented that the smoke seemed to be always shifting, and even as we talked the wind shifted and our spot--which had been clearing--was now becoming smoky, the far trees started to fade. He hadn't seen the Schneider Spring mushroom cloud, in fact, it had been too smoky when he was at that vantage point. So the smoke wasn't as much about elevation--as I had thought, get higher to get out of the smoke--it was more just about the wind. Anyway, he finished up well before me--having gotten there well before me--and headed out. And likely that's the last I'll see of him until possibly Snoqualamie Pass, if he opts to take a zero there. 

The smoke would continue, off and on, throughout the rest of the day. For the next bit, I did get a reprieve and thankfully so: the next part continued to the climb up to the border of Mount Rainier National Park. And here the colors of the trail really sprung out at me. Here the trail was more brush than woods, the soil being more rocky, with these tumbling cubes of stone cut out from the slopes hovering above. But the colors of the bushes!: green leaves still hanging on to summer, yellow leaves already gone fallow, orange and red leaves so bright they dominated the landscape, and even deep purple leaves of a color almost like wine. All festooning the sides of a dusty trail that went up up up, towards gray stone and a now blue sky. I took some shots to try and capture just the vibrancy of it all; we'll see if they come out!

At the top, I met up with Apocalypse (who had leapfrogged me at lunch after J-Pro left), and took a break to talk with him some. We would end up hiking together the rest of the day through Mount Rainier National Park, all the way pretty much to the campsite at Dewey Lake. It turns out there wasn't much to see for the rest of the day: the smoke came in, obscuring the indomitable bulk of even Mount Rainier. And it would get thicker as we went, probably a combination of the day getting longer (I suspect the smoke gathers more in the evenings) and dropping in elevation (and I suspect it pools more in the valleys). But there was good conversation. I had met Apocalypse first back on Knife's Edge, where he commented that it was nice to meet people--then it would have been Poppy and me--who also stopped every 10 minutes to shoot the scenery. Only Apocalypse takes video, and carries a 2+ pound full tripod to do it! And does video editing on trail on a laptop, which he also carries in his bag: his backpack is over 50 pounds! And I thought *my* bag was heavy!

Apocalypse is a UC Berkeley grad--got degrees in Computer Science, and mathematics and finance--and was primed to go into quantitative finance, but instead just took the first job he saw and ended up at Amazon. He was more concerned with banking up money for trips than with a career per se. By living frugally (he lives in Cupertino, and his costs add up to about a thousand a month--in Cupertino, where Apple is headquartered!) and by saving money, he got enough to do the PCT. And so he quit his job and here he is! He wants to do a lot more trips, wants to do the TA in New Zealand, I think is considering the Arizona Trail, and perhaps even the CDT. He's thought about converting into van-life to better support his ambitions (although he wants to do a lot of overseas trips, and the van doesn't help for those). But he shoots a lot of video, even carries a drone to get better shots (although you can't fly drones in wilderness, so it's use is much curtailed out here) and I asked him how he puts the videos together. Like does he know the final video even as he shoots? And it turns out, he does: he shoots to capture what the day was like, and as he shoots he builds a rough cut in his mind. So he has an idea of where each shot goes, or more specifically where each shot *can* go, in the final edit. And I asked if he remembers that construction since he's editing the videos weeks later and he said, yeah, it sticks. He shoots a lot, and like multiple angle shots so sometimes will shoot the same thing multiple times. Like he climbed a portion of Forester Pass, shot himself doing it, then had to go back, grab the camera, and re-climb that portion of Forester Pass! That's a devotion to craft! For my part, I have started--albeit very belatedly--to do a version of constructing the day's entry as the day is going on: I take rough notes throughout the day and try to be open to discovering a through-line for the day. So today's was "small things", for example, which I had worked out by lunch. It helps make writing these a bit easier: at least when I sit down in the evening, I'm not staring at a blank screen!

And that was the hike! Didn't do big miles today, but that was fine: if the left ankle is starting to bark again, then giving it a smaller day usually helps (as it did around Elk Lake back in Oregon). We're camped here at Dewey Lake and the smoke just seems to be getting thicker, but I'm hopeful it will lift some in the morning (as it would back in Oregon) and the day will at least start with fresh air.

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Some notes:

-- Beusch Lake > Snow Lake > Creek > Bumping River > Crag Lake Outlet > Mount Rainier National Park > Dewey Lake

-- For those curious, I found that J-Pro eventually got away with doing half the trail without ever plugging into a wall socket: everything was powered by his solar panel (which is still mounted to the top of his pack while he hikes). He found the panel started faltering in the smoke of the fires (as I did), so he started plugging in in town after that. But still: to do half the PCT solely powered by a solar panel? That's impressive!

-- In contrast to me, when Apocalypse told his employeer he wanted to do the PCT, they offered him a leave of absence. He declined it, quit instead. For me, when I told Salvo that I wanted to do the PCT back in 2020, he also looked into a leave of absence and got one for me. And 2020 came and I took my leave come March to prepare for the trail, and then COVID hit and California got locked down about a week before my start date. And I wanted out March, and April, and even into May hoping the trail would open up again, but no luck. So I took June to lick my wounds and got back to work come July. And when I told Salvo that I would try again this year, he also tried again to get me a leave of absence. And while the engineering side of the organization said yes, the human resources side of the organization said no, and so the leave was declined. And so I resigned. To be fair, I can see why HR would deny the request: on their books, I'd already taken a leave for the PCT, and here I saw, a little over a year later, taking another one. (Never mind the whole COVID thing of 2020.) So request denied.

-- It's funny: when Apocalypse opted to leave, he had a meeting with his boss, and his boss said, I have great news, you've just been promoted! Then: hmm, that's not the face people usually make when they get promoted. Yeah, because he's about to tell you he's leaving the company! But his boss, and then his boss's boss, called him to tell him, do you know how much money you're leaving on the table? It's a lot of money! And I remember that, after I had told Salvo, on a phone call for our weekly meeting (I was in San Jose at the time), he said, ok, I've been told I have to tell you this, but if you leave all your unvested stock options will disappear, and that's a lot of money. I say this because I have to, but I know it won't change your decision. And it didn't. But it's funny to hear different companies bringing up the same arguments!--that's culture for you!

-- Apocalypse is, like many people on the trail, a pretty tough dude. Two things: first, he wore the same pair of Altra Lone Peaks for about 1500 miles. For reference, I can wear a pair for about 500 miles before they're done. And by done, I mean before my plantar fasciitis starts to kick in. And it turns out Apocalypse also has plantar fasciitis problems, and they *did* kick in around 500 miles, and he just sucked up the pain. Nowadays, even with new shoes, he can hike about 3 miles before the pain starts to appear, then he hikes the rest of the day with a mixture of pain and breaks to roll out his feet! Second, he started late, in late May, so he rushed through the desert and the Sierras: he was doing mid-20-mile days in the latter. It was only after the fires in northern California that he finally got to take a breath; other people do bigger miles in Oregon, he started doing smaller and enjoying the scenery more. That's quite a way to go under the relentless pressure of the timeline bearing down on you! So while everyone's hike is different, and everyone reacts to the pain and pressure in different ways, nonetheless everyone feels both and often both sharply, and that's where the toughness resides.

-- Ah, one other toughness example: Apocalypse had asked for a resupply box to be sent to White Pass, but when he got there they didn't have it. So he called up his people back home who were supposed to send it. Did you send the resupply box to White Pass, he asked. Oh, we're mailing that out tomorrow, they replied. Yeah, not so good. So he was going to hitch a ride into Packwood and try to hit a supermarket there to resupply, but it turns out between the hiker box and what they have in the convenience store at White Pass, he rustled up enough that he could continue hiking. But shipping mess-ups are just going to happen--happened to me at Crater Lake (and I still don't know what happened to that box, but I'll sort it out when I finish)--and making the adjustment and dealing with it is just par for the course.

-- If you want to check out Apocalypse's YouTube channel, search for 

"Kinda Nomadic". Originally he wasn't going to do videos, but then his mom said wouldn't it be great if he shot video on the trail so then she could see it, so at the last minute he brought the fancy camera (a Sony 6400) and tripod and laptop along. He edits mostly in town--the battery drain of the laptop is too fast to edit on trail--so the videos come out slow. And I haven't seen any of them--I'll watch all these YouTube channels *after* the trail. But I'm guessing they're pretty good, just from talking to him about them.

-- Had considered pushing on further to get out of the smoke: the next bit of trail is an ascent. But looking down into the valleys from above earlier today, I don't think the smoke will clear until at least past Chinook Pass, and probably a ridge or two after that, and by then the miles are adding up!

-- Camping cohort: Apocalypse.