Day 148: Mile 2366.0 - 2394.1

And sometimes the tent illusion is not an illusion. I woke to a gray tent suggesting a gloomy and cloudy outside, and when I exited my tent I found myself, indeed, in a cloud. The fog had rolled in over the evening, so the sounds of heavy hoofs that I had heard in the early morning--well, I probably wouldn't have seen those elk anyway!

Up to now, the weather in Washington has been wonderful. Very Indian summer--or is that offensive now?--or very dog days of summer--or is that offensive now too?--but basically, sunny and occasionally hot. Except for an afternoon of smoke coming into Dewey Lake, and a brief sprinkling of rain that night, it's been prime summer weather. But today, that changed. Today, I got my first taste of the rain and wet of Washington.

In the morning, I got hiking in the fog, and at one of the ridges got a view between the curtains of cloud. And what had yesterday been a view almost cloudless was now full of them: a white and gray layer up above, covering the sky, and then the fogs, curling and swirling up from the valleys below. Off to the side, the fog rolled over a local ridge, its fingers fast moving as it sped over the hills. 

But more interesting was just past that spot, over a little bluff, where I crested and looked down on a couple trucks, some big tents, a ring of chairs. And it turns out there was trail magic here, at a "random" road in the mountains! Put on by Ice Axe, an older guy, who had done the trail a while back (and, it sounded like, section hiked various portions since in addition), and now he does trail magic here, around this time, pretty much every year. And a bunch of hikers were there: J-Pro (who had planned to go another few miles yesterday, but stopped here), and Craftsman and Ribbit (who I had met, gosh, back in San Bernardino National Forest), and Mad Max (who I had met at White Pass), and a couple others besides. Evidently this had been a popular spot: Poppy had camped here, too, left about half an hour after I got in. But this was in incredible trail magic. Ice Axe and a couple of his buddies had a stove going--like a car-camping stove setup going--and I got a quiche-like thing with eggs and hash browns and sausage, and orange juice, and cookies, and chips. In the cold and damp of the morning, it was an unexpected surprise--it took more than a few minutes for the shock to disappear off my face!--and very very welcome!

After that, it was just hiking. Around noon, I stopped to tape my left pinky toe--my pinky toes curl in so they're actually on their sides, and whenever they get too dirty they grind against the next toe over and blister--and as I was finishing, the rain started. Just a light thing, but rain nonetheless. I would pass Steer and Stretch later in the day, as they sat in a dry spot under some trees, and he (Steer) would say, welcome to Washington!, and note that--from what he understood--this was how the weather usually was: not a hard rain, but overcast and a light rain, with continuous drizzle, throughout the day. So you're not necessarily soaked, but you are definitely wet all the time. And she (Stretch) would say, stay dry!, and note that, even though lots of the ground was wet, there were spots under the trees that stayed dry, and those would be the campsites they would be hoping for tonight.

But aside from seeing them, for most of the day it was just me, the trail, and the rain. I had on my full rain regalia: rain jacket, rain pants, pack cover, umbrella. And I just hiked. And this revealed a sort of purity of form: it reduced hiking to not a sightseeing tour--there wasn't much to see in the green tunnel, for even when it broke all you'd look out on was fog--but to just walking. To just to placement of the feet (to avoid rocks and roots in the trail), to just modulation of effort (to try and reduce overheating and sweating--my rain gear is fully waterproof and doesn't breathe), to just avoiding puddles and slippery mud.

And that would have been the day, just moving through the woods, along a trail, seeing only the 10 feet in front of me. I finally stopped at a stream to get some more snacks out of my pack, when I got passed by Mad Max, another hiker who I'd first met at White Pass. (Mad Max is the quiet, smoldering type who sits in the corner--granted I haven't seen the films, but from what I understand, I think the name is apt.) And I asked him, how far you going today? And he replied, I'm seriously considering going all the way to the Pass. I'm not going to get into my tent wet tonight just to get out of it wet in the morning. And off he went. And that got the gears in my head turning. I had planned on finding a spot to camp tonight and going into town tomorrow--Snoqualamie Pass was just too far away--but Max did have a point.

And so it was that, after a bit more hiking and a bit more mulling, I contacted Ian via the inReach, and asked him if he could check 1) are is availability at the Summit Inn in Snoqualamie, and 2) will they accept late check-in, at around 10pm? If yes on both, could he book me a room? And I continued hiking. There was some nervousness because it was later in the day, and I would have to choose whether to push into town or settle for a campsite sometime soon: there aren't many campsites out here, and it's hard to start one in the woods, so it's far between them. And I got to Mirror Lake and lo, but I had signal!, and I called Summit Inn and asked them myself and they said yes on both conditions, and I started to book when they said, wait, what was the name? Oh, your friend just booked a room for you just now. And my inReach beeped--new message!

And now, everything changed. From debating whether to camp or to push, and looking everywhere for campsites, I now knew I had to push. I had a goal, and that goal was a dry place to lay my head! I had 4 hours before 10pm, an 8.4 miles. Doable!

This last bit of hiking was a bit of work:

-- At 1800 I started out.

-- At 1830 the trail became technical. Lots of roots and lots more rocks, rather than the smoother padded dirt of before.

-- At 1900 I turned a corner and got a view out east and, where those blue skies? With clouds hinting of sunset tangerine? But then the fog came back in where I was, and it was gone.

-- At 1937 I heard my first peal of thunder, somewhere in the mountains ahead.

-- At 1945 it got dark, and I turned my headlamp on.

The rest of the hike was in the dark, and honestly, it was a bit scary. To be fair, I've done hiking in the dark before--did it in Angeles National Forest when I did a loop and took the *other* way down Echo Mountain that ended being a bit overgrown and pretty steep in parts--but still, the trail was very rooted and very rocky in parts. Every now and then it would open up into the rockbed of a creek, and I'd look around in the dark guessing at where the trail continued on the other side. There were also these bridges laid out in various parts, and I'd slow for those too, just because I didn't trust my footing on the smooth, wet planks. I tried my best not to look up and look around, because then I'd see the silhouette of the trees and the hills, crowding in on me, and I'd start to realize I'm out here, all alone, in the dark, on a tough trail, in a land that's not my own, a stranger hoping in the promise of an Inn that I'd never visited, and the fear would start to creep in. So better to just concentrate on the hiking. Because the trail was technical, and because while I wanted to make it, I didn't want to push my pace: whenever I'd done so in the past and made big miles, my legs and joints had complained mightily the day after, and I didn't want that. So just keep a good pace, don't fast walk, and keep going, in the dark and rain, towards the promise of a dry bed.

And I did make it, walked up to the counter in the Inn at 9:55pm, 5 minutes before I said I would. Got the room, went in, plugged in a bunch of charging, then went downstairs. I had seen that the neon "open" sign was on at the restaurant next door, and I asked about it. Not the restaurant, said the guy at the front desk, just the bar. So I went anyway, got a microwaved chili (the cook had left 15 minutes ago, I was told, so that was all they had left), then went back to my room, showered, and laid out everything to dry. 

And that was the end of my day! A big day--over 28 miles--and a day when the rain first hit. And perhaps I should have camped it, perhaps it would have been good "training" for how to camp in the rain (which will be coming again, I know), but if I have learned something on the PCT, it's that you don't need to rush into discomfort. Discomfort will come, don't you worry. So if you can avoid it--chicken out of the rain and get into town--they take it! Because there will be plenty of times up ahead when that won't be an option, and you'll have plenty of opportunity to experience discomfort!

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Some notes:

-- Overgrown Road > Old Road > Twilight Lake > Mirror Lake > Lodge Lake > Ski Lifts > State Highway 906 > Summit Inn

-- Ice Axe also had a bunch of gear available: gloves and even wool socks (he had gotten them for cheap on a closeout website), and some zipper lubricant. Well, I'd been having trouble with the zippers of my tent--the left side inner tent zippers just split all the time now, so I've stopped using that side, and recently the right side lower zipper started exhibiting the same behavior. So I tried it out, on the less important left-side zippers. And it didn't really seem to work, unfortunately. I suspect my zippers are just too far gone for the lubricant to help. Back in Bend, there had been a gear shop that specialized in fixing gear, and I had been eager to send my tent in and get them to fix the zippers, but they were closed on Mondays and Monday was the day we took the zero in Bend. So no dice. Ah well, it just has to last for another 250 miles or so, and I'll just have to live with the nonideality until then!

-- I will say that J-Pro and Craftsman and Ribbit looked like they cowboy camped at the trail magic spot last night. Now that's toughness: cowboy camping in Washington? And on a night when, it turns out, the fog rolled in: evidently they could see the stars last night, but by morning, when the fog was thick, they could barely see the trees on the other side of the dirt road! And the fog was a living thing: it would swirl and gather and obscure everything, then thin out and blow over and we would look out and see the valleys below. Then gather again. So it must have been pretty tough last night: foggy, then clear, then foggy, then clear. Says something about the winds up there! 

-- At one point, I passed a power line corridor: a cut break in the woods where suddenly it was just short brush. And just the *sound* of the power lines. It was just a tremendous white sound, loud and loud, with a strong buzz beneath, driving it. And I don't know if the moisture made it louder, but I remember coming up to it, unbeknowest in the woods, I had thought, wait, is there a waterfall up ahead? Is there a huge river just over there that I don't know about? Because it was just that loud.

-- Past a random dirt road, there was an earthern mound as tall as my knee. And I took a closer look and realized it was an anthill!: the ants pretty well camouflaged at the top among the dirt and tree needles they had gathered there, but still working away. They looked slower than usual in the cold and wet, but they were sheltered a bit by the leaves of a nearby sapling, so duty called. It's the only anthill I've seen on trail (that I remember), and it was pretty large!

-- Oh, Steer and Stretch looked familiar, and I mentioned that to them. They had started in early April and Steer said, yeah, I think we bumped into each other back in Tehachapi or something. And that sounds about right. I have met them before--I remember the Stretch trailname--I just don't remember exactly where.