Day 155: Mile 2490.1 - 2509.7

Day one of the storm.

I woke late--makes sense, I didn't get much sleep the night before--but I woke to a dry tent. (Well, mostly dry: some drops on the rain fly but those were cleared up with the Shamwow.) Packed up and got going around 8am. Stopped a bunch in the beginning because I had camped in a copse of trees, but out on the trail, without canopy, the rain was starting. So I started putting on rain gear, eventually ending up in full regalia: rain pants, rain jacket, pack cover, umbrella, Ziploc bags on feet (waterproof socks), tightened laces (so Ziploc'd feet don't slip), the whole deal.

And that worked for most of the morning, when the rain remained a light rain. I still took time to stay out of puddles and keep my feet dry nonetheless, though. 

Yeah, that didn't last.

I will say that this section is probably really beautiful. Even in the rain, when the trail would open up into these large Washington meadow-slopes, I would look out over the valleys and vales below, half-seen in the fog and mist and possibly smoke (it still smelled of smoke in the morning) and it was indeed beautiful. And I continued looking out and appreciating the beauty of it all, following Echo's advice, until I came to a part where the trail descended some long switchbacks down a wide wide open section, and the footing turned to mud, and I slipped and fell to a knee.

And that was a wakeup call.

I've always said that I can hike in the rain, it's camping in the rain that bothers me. Well, today I was proven wrong on even the first count. With that slip and fall, hiking in the rain suddenly became dicey as well. No more sightseeing!--was my immediate thought--concentrate on just the hiking! And even that thought alone was distracting enough that I promptly slipped again and fell to the other knee.

And from then on, I only saw the 10 feet of trail in front of me.

Because now the hiking was hard. And it wasn't the terrain or the grade or anything like that: it was hard because the footing was bad. Dangerously bad. The storm was supposed to dump 2-3 inches of rain today and I believe it: it turned the trail into a creek (with better flow than most of the creeks I saw in the desert!). So when walking the trail, I'd be walking in anything from a trickle to a flow, and if it was a dirt trail--as it often was, especially in the exposed parts--it was now a muddy, slippery trail. Plus the water would pool, usually at overwhelmed drainage culverts, and then I'd have to step onto the shoulder and try to jump the opening of the drainage culvert that without sinking ankle deep in water. So just in general, rain made the hiking more dangerous: the mud was slippery, the footing treacherous as I tried to avoid the mud, water everywhere. I beared down and concentrated the whole time, almost never looking up except to glance up ahead to see just how long this trail-pool was, or how far ahead before this trail-creek turned shallow enough that I could get off-shoulder and back on-trail.

And it got worse. At one point, going around White Mountain, the trail becomes a shelf-trail on a long, open slope, completely exposed and wide open. When I glanced out, I could only see the slope dropping beneath me, and then nothing but the white of fog. But here the wind kicked in, and in force. It howled around me, threatened to snap the umbrella in two so that got put away, and now it was just me in my rain jacket, my left hand pulling at the rim of the hood to keep it from being plastered to my face, my right hand managing a trekking pole, while being buffeted around by the wind. And this was the hardest section, with the wind pushing me sideways as I tried to climb up this narrow shelf of trail (at least it was a *climb*: doing this on a descent would have been straight treacherous). And the rain, which would have been a light downwards thing, now became a horizontal pelting thing, and my rain gear saturated and my clothes underneath got soaked. And I remember stopping at one point and just thinking, what the heck am I doing out here? And then replying, it doesn't matter, if I want to survive, I need to keep going. And so I did, hoping for the saddle, hoping the wind would be less on the other side of the mountain. And when I got to the saddle, the wind howling about me as it rushed over, and I crossed over--it was still windy. And now that I was descending, I didn't have the body heat of a climb to keep me warm, and the shivering started. Only I didn't want to stop and put on more layers: this side was *still* exposed, no plant taller than my calf, so I pushed: going so slow, trying to be so careful, still slipping here and there. And there were tons of these little creeks on this side that crossed the trail, and they often used the trail itself as their channel so the trail became a stream, and this would have been beautiful, but they became little creek crossings to me, and each time I rock-hopped one I worried a little about slipping and falling.

And you couldn't imagine my joy when I finally turned a corner and saw the beginnings of trees and possibly woods! And the first bit of woods I came to had a campsite to the right, pretty flat and exposed (both bad things in the rain) and there was a tent pitched there anyway, right atop some puddles. There had been a hiker in front of me--he passed me at some point--and I figured this was probably him. And I understood: I was exhausted and pretty spent, and all I wanted to do was set up my tent, get in, dry off as best I could, and call it a day. Maybe even call *tomorrow* a day too: I'm not sure I could go back out into this again! I'd already hit the "just survive" button on the exposed ridge and the descent down to this point, and I was cold, wet, shivering, and thinking, forget Canada, am I going to be able to even make it off this mountain?

But I kept going, not because I was tough or brave or some other positive thing, but because I wanted a tentsite where I could hunker down for a couple days if need be, and an exposed site in puddles wasn't it. And at the beginning of the woods the sites were all puddles, so I continued on. And as the trail went, it lowered deeper and deeper into the woods, and some tentsites came and went, some pretty good--usually the ones ensconced among the trees so that they didn't pool water--but none ideal. (And as the day got longer, "perfect is the enemy of good" kept coming to mind.) And I ended up crossing two streams by rock-hop, and the first was off a just-above-water rock to a sawed off log suspended above the water, a bit tricky, and the water, while not deep, was rushing fast; and the second was along a log that the water was pouring over the middle of, but still I used it--my feet were already wet--then over a fallen tree, then rock-hopping the water conduit on the other side to get back to the trail, and this creek was deep in parts, and was rushing even faster. Both not happy crossings--the water was clearly storm surging--but I managed to make it. And luckily the other creek crossings had bridges. And finally I ended up here, on the far side of Baekos Creek (which had a bridge over it, just snapped clean in two so if formed a V: thankfully, the storm-surged water was still low enough it didn't overrun the bottom of the V). The Guthooks comments had said the camping on the south side was better--more open to the sky--the camping on the north side was "damp and dark". So I went for the north side, because "dark"' suggested "covered by, and amongst, trees" and that's what I wanted.

So here I am. I pitched the tent, dried the inside as best I could--it could wet during the pitch, of course--got into dry clothes and under my sleeping bag to warm up, and promptly fell asleep. Woke up a couple hours later, did nightly chores, chased down a frog that had jumped into my tent--I was so tired I hadn't bothered to close the inner tent flap--and then sat for a bit, confused. I'm not sure what to do tomorrow. Should I continue hiking, or are these conditions too treacherous for that and I should just take a zero and try to wait out more of the storm? It seems the strongest part of the storm was probably today, tomorrow should be slightly better, and the day after that even more slightly better. (And then it's supposed to end.) Maybe wait out day two, hope for better conditions on day three? But can I afford to wait--do I have enough food? And it's not like things are going to dry out anyway: all my clothes are soaked and that's not going to change tomorrow or the next day.

It's just been a crazy day, and now a topsy-turvy night. I keep losing motivation to do chores, falling asleep, waking, then doing a little, and repeating. I still don't know what to do about tomorrow: have been obsessively checking Guthooks and making plans that I then don't commit to. I think the next viable campsite is at Milk Creek, about 16 miles away: that might be doable, even in this weather. But I don't know. Right now, I'm just so tired and spent--I finally finished all my chores, so I'm just going to go to sleep and make it all go away for a little bit. Jump off the bridge tomorrow morning.

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Some notes:

-- Pass Creek > Lake Sally Ann > Dishpan Gap > Reflection Pond > Sauk River Trail Junction > White Chuck River > Baekos Creek

-- And, yes, I know you're not supposed to walk on the shoulder: it just increases erosion. Although, in that sense, you're not supposed to walk the *trail* either: there's a reason OC parks closes all the trails for 3 days after it rains, and it's exactly to prevent erosion. But in these conditions, with the trail itself so iffy with mud, I felt bad at the beginning, but after a while I got used to it just as a matter of survival. If I had stayed on the trail the whole time, I'm pretty sure I would have slipped and fell to more than a knee at some point!

-- Some bad habits tonight. Had to hit the head, didn't want to get out my tent, did it out the inner tent flap into my unused vestibule. Not proud of that. Also: to dry things, lit my stove in my tent and put stuff over it. The quick dry stuff will dry this way, things like synthetic clothing, or wool clothing, won't. Only kept the stove running for a minute or so before turning it off: I'm exceptionally paranoid about lighting a fire *inside* my tent, but I had to try it to see if I could dry at least *something*. Ate inside the tent too, although here I tried to keep to things that don't have crumbs.

-- It's an odd thing: in retrospect, I think I'll remember today as a harrowing day. But I couldn't let myself think that while I'm in it, so I can see that thought perhaps intellectually, but I make sure I don't feel it. I'm already blocking out a lot of the danger: bad footing is a real and very serious thing when hiking, a bad step and that's it! But like I said, I try not to think about it.

-- I will also say that it's good that I didn't camp where that other hiker had and continued on. Because while the creek crossings were yet more scares, they also were in territory that was more familiar, and that I could handle. And that fact, that I was back in things I could handle, made things a little bit better, so that when I finally made camp and crawled inside my sleeping bag, my nerves weren't completely frazzled: I had a little, tiny bit of recovery.

-- And oh yeah, I'm missing some beautiful scenery. The descent after the exposed ridge: off to the side, there was a valley with streams and patches of snow and a scene right out of the Swiss alpines, or at least so the corner of my eye told me. And even in the woods at the end, the trail walks right alongside the stream here, and in sunny conditions that would be amazing, and in these rainy conditions it just scared the hell out of me since I could see it surging and worried that I'd have to cross it at some point (and I did, but thankfully there was a bridge). And even the Guthooks comments say that there are parts here more beautiful than the Sierras. I believe them. I believe it all, just I won't see any of it. And I'm ok with that: you see what you see when you go through it, and sometimes the conditions are good, and sometimes they're bad, and you can't begrudge one or (more likely) the other. You get what you get. And if you want to see it in better conditions, well, you'll just have to come back someday! (Although maybe not for a while for me; it's going to take a while to get over how scary today was.)

-- Final detail: my phone got wet (of course), and a thin layer of water got between my phone and the screen protector, enough that the touchscreen didn't work right. Not until I got to camp, pried open the case, and dried everything off. So for the descent after the saddle on, really didn't have much Guthooks info either, so was hiking blind, info-less. That doesn't make it any more reassuring or easy!

-- Camping cohort: just me, alone. I don't think anyone else was stupid enough to try that ridge in the storm, so likely it'll just be me, alone, tonight! Except for this frog. So I got into my tent, changed into dry clothes, hunkered under my sleeping bag, and fell asleep, all with the inner tent flap still open. And when I woke and was continuing chores, I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. Turns out a little frog--no bigger than my thumb--had gotten into my tent! And I chased it down: you can't stay in here, I said, you'll get squished! I mean, it seems nice but trust me, you'll die! Finally managed to get it under a bowl after it hopped underneath my sleeping pad (!), then tossed it outside. But, yeah, should be the only visitor I get tonight!