Day 154: Mile 2465.2 - 2490.1

You'd think that by now I might be use to early mornings: I should wake with the sun, after all. But today I had to get up at 5am, because my ride out of town to the trailhead was at 6am. I guess that folks will try to hitch out of town, but for me, there's a lady--Susan Hermann--who offers rides from town to the trailhead, albeit at a cost of $75. But as I would tell Echo and Cowboy later that day on the trail, that's what money gets you: it gets you *certainty*. Unlike a hitch, I *know* that I'll get a ride, and from where, and when, and that's worth $75 to me.

I wish it weren't so early in the morning, but beggars can't be choosers. (It turns out it's so early because Ms. Hermann is taking a bunch of classes, her first class today starts at 8:30am, and it's an hour drive from Leavenworth to the trailhead. The other option she gave me was 1pm, but I wanted to get a full day of hiking in.)

Ms. Hermann, by the way, is a pretty interesting character herself. Right now she's taking a bunch of classes to eventually become a federal mediator--she feels that job will give her enough flexibility that she'll be able to take trips and do fun stuff between work in her 50s and 60s. Because she rather likes hiking and visiting this and that national park and taking photos. She has a webpage for her photography in fact--strangehometowncity.com--where you can buy prints. We started the drive talking about her work and her classes, but I was busy trying to gobble down my breakfast at the time so didn't hear as much. But in the second half we talked photography, and I was all ears for that. Turns out she does things similar to me, especially in editing: she calls it "taking the whites out" (that blasted sun, she says, causing all those reflections; you know we can all survive off mushrooms, right?, and they don't need the sun?) whereas I call it "heavy color". She's more serious than me, though: had joined a photography club once, and went to a meeting and got tired of a bunch of old men telling her things she already knew long ago, and making it all technical and about numbers and specifications, rather than about pictures. But she and I differ on one detail: she likes to take a lot of shots then edit them months later, preferably on a winter day when everything's snowed in and she's all cozy at home. Whereas I (and Dylan too, we had discussed this before) believe in the feedback loop: after taking a day's worth of shots, I ideally look at them at most a week later. This helps me calibrate the eye, and make sure it's in. That virtuous feedback loop is very important to me in normal life; I'm unable to do that on the PCT, though, and that does worry me. I always say on here that I've taken a shot, and we'll see if it turns out!, and that's an honest sentiment: I don't know if the eye is in for that shot, because I don't have the feedback loop. But I had the choice between editing photos or writing blog entries on trail, and I chose the latter: it seemed the one that would fade faster.

Anyway, I will have to take a note to check out Ms. Hermann's webpage when I finish the trail.

As for the trail today, it wasn't too bad, fairly rolling along. Some climbs, but none technical, and many could be done by infinite incline. I did push the miles, wanting to get as far as possible before the weather turned. Ended up with 24 miles and change. (And that's the benefit of starting early--I was on trail around 7am. First, you get bigger miles because you can take advantage of more of the daylight. And second, I wasn't pushing as hard throughout the day: I had made a lot of miles pretty early on, so the rest of the day was more relaxed. Something to keep in mind.) I eventually got to Pass Creek and camped out here under the trees. Could I have kept going? Maybe. The ankle tendons were starting to complain at the end--I think that's just the lack of sleep from the 5am wakeup call--but the real issue is that the next campsite is at a lake and isn't really covered. If it starts raining there, evidently it floods pretty easily. Whereas these campsites are sheltered under trees and all slightly slanted so water can't pool. So, for once, I stopped at the wiser campsite rather than pushing on.

But what about the hike itself? In the morning, the trail passed by lots of little meadows. These are cute meadows, but not the grassy meadows that I stereotypically think of. Rather, these are mostly bushy meadows, with low, round-leaved, almost ground-cover like plants. But that means that the colors of the meadows change with the seasons: by now, the red and orange have start to come in. The meadows do still have those cut streams, though, those streams that slice a meander through the bushes, revealing dark loam soil in little cliffs as their banks.

In the morning the meadows were cute, these little treats between green tunnel trees, but in the later morning they came into their own. Because in the later morning the trail rose high enough to see Glacier Peak looming out in the distance. Granted Glacier Peak was a bit hazy, confirming by eye what the nose had already sensed: the smoke from a nearby fire is kicking in. And by mid-afternoon, the smoke would be stronger, and the views would disappear. But for now, the views of Glacier Peak, strong and stern and covered in, well, white glaciers, with a meadow turning autumnal in the foreground, and the thin line of a dirt trail heading off that way, well, it was quite scenic. Especially around Grizzly Peak, where the meadows covered the top of the hillside. Comparable to European Alps scenic, I would say--different, but comparable--but maybe that's just the American in me talking. 

In the afternoon, although the far views were obscured by smoke, the trail did do a brief section under these rock cliffs that were quite startling. Just tumbles of stone, that looked like some gothic steampunk fantasy, some Warhammer 40k hive city of spires and minarets building up and up, all stumbling over each other, just built in rock. That was impressive and I tried to take shots, but I've never quite figured out how to capture that feeling of things so tall and near they're right *on* you, almost falling *over* you, and that's the feeling I got there.

So that was the trail, mostly. I will say that there were plenty of people I passed today, mostly heading in the opposite direction. And lots of them commented on the storm that's going to hit tomorrow, and saying they were getting out ahead of that. I said I was going forward. Be ready to hunker down, they warned. In fact, in the morning just a couple of miles in I passed a bunch of PCT hikers camped near a stream, including Echo (who I had met in Leavenworth yesterday when he called out, hey Alan!, from the balcony of the Fairbright Inn where I was staying, only for me to look up and say, who?, and for him to say, wait, you're not Alan!) and Cowboy (an older hiker who I'd never met), who said they'd heard the forecast and were turning around and heading back into town to wait out the storm. And I said, well, I'm just too dumb to get in out the rain and I'm going ahead. It'll be a great adventure, Echo said, and it may be just that. But he also said to find the beauty in it anyway, and that's very true. Nonetheless, I am pretty fearful of what's ahead. In my mind, I've started to think of this leg as actually just a 5-6 day backpacking trip: just a simple trip from Stevens Pass to Stehekin. In that sense, if it's dramatically uncomfortable, well, it'll all be over in just a few days. You gotta have hope, and hope--namely Stehekin--is just a few days away, you just need to endure until then. And once you get to Stehekin, everything is gravy. (Not in fact true: once I get to Stehekin, there's a whole other trip to do, a whole other leg, with its own problems and issues, so the misery may just continue. But let's not think about that, eh?) We'll see if that mentality is enough to pull me through.

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Some notes:

-- Leavenworth > Stevens Pass > Lake Valhalla > Grizzly Peak > Pear Lake > Pass Creek

-- Some more about Ms. Hermann: she wants to get a *federal* job because that way she ultimately reports to the president, and she feels that's pretty cool. It's a dream of hers to meet said president some day and say something inappropriate and snarky to them--that's just her style. She prefers deserts to oceans, the former just photograph so much better and have so much more interesting stuff going on! And she grew up around here, around Stehekin in fact, and she loves it there: it's a place where she can leave her dog off the leash and it won't get run over, she said. Although she says it's changed a bit: too much of the tennis and golf crowd over there nowadays. I must say, on three out of three counts, I pretty much agree with her!

-- She's also interested in starting something in support of PCT hikers, maybe formalizing the shuttle service, or even opening up her home as an AirBNB type deal. And she said many hikers were enthused about this idea and I am too: I know that hikers are stereotypically hiker trash--we wreck things--but we're also pretty grateful when people open up their homes. Even if it costs a little something, still I think--well, it'll still be cheaper than Leavenworth which is a very tourist-y town these days--but someone's home, when they're still around the place, has a certain charm to it, a certain personality and personal touch, that's often pretty meaningful.  

-- Ms. Hermann--who's a local so I trust her instincts on this--also said that when it's an exceptionally hot summer as it was this year, it usually means an exceptionally hard winter. To be fair, this morning when I was starting out, there *was* frost on the ground. Anyway, a hard winter doesn't bode as well for us hikers, rushing to beat the winter and finish in time!

-- Incidentally, money buying certainty is a thing on the trail. For example, resupply. Here in Leavenworth you can resupply at Dan's Grocery, which has most of what you need but possibly not everything, or you can resupply at Safeway, which should definitely have everything, but is much more expensive, probably 2X the cost. In other towns I've done the cheaper option, and of course I've done Safeway (i.e., Vons, i.e, Ralphs), and now, towards the end, I'll skew towards the Safeway, because of the certainty. And because I know it'll be a single trip, and time in town is so valuable--it goes so quick!

-- I bumped into Sundae on the trail--Double Snacks and I had had the lunch buffet at Timberline with her--and asked about her job application. And she said she'd interviewed with them, and they'd liked her for the position, but then the position had gotten filled. And then said--and this is a very thru-hiker thing to say, if you ask me--but the next one will better. That's a thru-hiker mentality: the next thing, the thing coming up, will not only be good, but better. And 9-Ball--who she's hiking with--mentioned that the rest of their group is just ahead and rattled off a whole list of names, most which I didn't recognize, but I *did* recognize V-Dubs and Suave. Who I haven't seen since, what, the Sierras? So they're still out here! I would have thought they would have finished by now: they're really fast. But it's somehow comforting to know that I'm not *completely* behind.

-- Camping cohort: Sundae and 9-Ball, although they're up the hill at the best spot, so we're pretty far apart. I can see the light on in their tent from mine, though. I had met them when they came into camp and I was still deciding where to set up: Sundae, though, had seen the spot and just taken it. And it's nice and open and slightly slanted but an easy pitch. Whereas I had eventually chosen a spot just wide enough for my tent footprint, in the middle of a copse of trees! Ah well, I've gotten used to very tight, very non-ideal pitches on the PCT, and this was just par for the course!