Day 158: Mile 2541.5 - 2563.4

Today was supposed to be a good day. The storm had passed, the sun came out in the morning. I was supposed to get everything dry--finally!--and then make big miles to Cedar Camp, so tomorrow I could enjoy a short trip into Stehekin--just 10 miles or so--to make the noon shuttle.

I didn't get everything dry, I did make it to Cedar Camp but after 9pm, and I'm so totally exhausted physically and mentally I don't know if I can make the 10 miles in time tomorrow.

Bad day bad day bad day bad day bad day.

The day started with a climb out of Suiattle River. I've realized the difference between the climbs in Oregon and Washington isn't necessarily the gradient--they're comparable--it's the distance. In Oregon the climbs are a couple miles. Here in Washington, today's climb was 12 miles. 12 miles of going up. And I was slow, so slow. I couldn't get any speed going. And things were starting to hurt: it seems after the storm, all the panic chemicals went away, and I'm just left with pain. My lower back is finally starting to hurt--it's just been compressed too much all the time, even sitting cross-legged in my tent strains it--my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts, from carrying the backpack. Ad it all still hurts even after 4 Advil. Logically I need to take a break--I haven't taken a zero since Bend on 8/23, so almost a month now--but mentally I need to keep going. Because I don't think I can take another storm like the last one: if I get caught in another one, there's a good chance I'm done. Continuously in "just survive" mode, with the "don't die don't die don't die" warning light constantly flashing in my head, for three days, is just a lot to take. And I know other hikers are fine, they're striving in fact, but me, I'm nowhere near as strong or robust as them. For me, even on this sunny day, everything is starting to collapse. My only hope is that I get to Canada before it all does.

Where was I? Oh, drying. The sun was out, so I was supposed to dry everything, sleep in a dry tent for the first time in three days. Well, I thought to dry at the top of the climb, but when I got there around 3:30pm, the top was actually wooded, so no place to dry. So I continued on, only now the trail was on the *east* side of the mountains, so now the mountains blocked the sun. I eventually gave up and stopped at a windy spot, forgoing the heat and just trying to dry in the wind. Which works, but poorly. My tent footprint, which dries completely in 2 minutes in the sun, was still wet in patches after 30 minutes in the cold wind. My inner tent I did manage to get from wet to damp--no more puddles at least--and my rain fly was a lost cause so I abandoned it: it just remained soaked. To say nothing of my clothes the rest of my gear. So I had hoped to get things dry. I didn't.

Where was I? Oh, Stehekin. So I had wanted to get a room in Stehekin, after the storm, I wanted to get somewhere inside. So I asked Ian to book a room for me. And it turns out the Lodge, the Ranch, the Bakery, they're all booked solid. But there's first-come-first-serve camping available, Ian pointed out. Ack. To be fair, it's my own fault: I should have booked earlier, Stehekin (which is a small town that can't be reached by car, by the way) fills up pretty fast from all the tourists. But that was disheartening: after failing to dry my stuff, finding out that when I finally get to town, I'll have to camp anyway--I was so hopeful I'd get to sleep in a bed but, no, I'll just be sleeping outside, on the ground. But there are public showers ($8 for, I'm guessing, 10 minutes) and public laundry ($8 for washer/dryer), the restaurant is closed so I may need to eat hiker food, and I'm hoping there's a place to charge my devices, otherwise, I'll have to go into the last few days without any powered electronics. There's just a lot of uncertainty now regarding Stehekin, and what was supposed to be a pleasant reprieve has now become a stressful mad dash to get chores done and figure out where to go to get this, then where to go to get that, then where to go to get the other thing, then where to go--you get the idea.

Where was I? Oh, Cedar Creek. To even get to Stehekin in time to do chores, I need to catch the noon shuttle from the trailhead into town. This is mostly to catch the post office before it closes at 4pm--if I miss that, I don't have any food for the next 6 days. In order to make tomorrow's hike possible, I needed to get to Cedar Creek--roughly 22 miles--today. And by 6pm I think I was still 8 miles away? So I pushed it, and ended up hiking in the dark. This was bad: by now the trail was supposed to be in descent, but it was also overgrown and had lots of embedded rocks. So I tripped a lot in the dark. At one point, the trail crosses a creek, now made a river with the recent rains. There was a log across it, abou 18 inches in diameter, and long enough to maybe reach the other side? I couldn't see the other side clearly in the dark, even with my headlamp at full. But I got on the log, blindly trusting it was the right way, and slowly tightrope-walked my way across it. And it was scary, with the river rushing away beneath me, walking across this log for 10 yards, maybe 20 yards? Trying not to think of slipping, because if I did and went in the water, well, it was dark and there was no one around, so I'd pretty much be dead. But after that, in the dark, I kept pushing and pushing hard, kept trying to go faster and faster, and tripped a lot more. At one point, as I was stumbling from a recent trip, I thought, why am I even bothering to recover from this? Better to just let myself fall, break my neck, and be done with this. Because this is terrible. This is just asking for trouble, just asking to get hurt and end my hike. Fast hiking this trail in the dark, which is constantly climbing and descending, plagued by hidden rocks you can't see for the overgrowth, and oddly hearing the sound of some wild animal behind me part of the way (are there wild pigs in Washington--sounded like one) (but that was scary, so I decided it was just my backpacking squeaking and ignored it thereafter), this was just a bad idea. But by now I was so tired physically and mentally that I couldn't make good decisions anymore, and I was getting desperate and even considering just not sleeping toight at all and pushing all the way to Stehekin (which would have been a 30 mile day) because I just need to get out of here, I just need to get to town, all my batteries are dead, my physical and mental reserves are spent, I just need to get out of here. And being in that mental place leads to some pretty poor decisions, some pretty desperate measures which, at their heart, you're using exactly to try and hurt yourself so fatally that it all just goes away.

I may have made it through the storm, but I certainly didn't make it with my dignity intact, or with any sort of aplomb whatsoever. Other hikers have, some have even thrived in the storm, but the storm has just shown me exactly how weak I am, how I *can't* take it. I'm just lucky it ended as early as it did: had it continued, I would have tapped out. Curled up into a little ball and died, or more likely, become reckless and tripped or slipped, then fallen, broken something, and just laid there to die.

So today was supposed to be a good day. But today was a terrible day. And it's all my fault: I made terrible decisions, to not dry in the sun earlier on, to recklessly push to Cedar Creek into the night, to not book Stehekin in advance. All mistakes on my part and, as I've said before, you pay for your mistakes on trail, the trail is utterly fair that way.

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Some notes:

-- Suiattle River > Cloudy Pass Junction > Cedar Camp

-- Oh, and gear failures too. My tent--aside from the frame snapping today--the inner tent zippers are all pretty much failing now. One side--the side I had finally managed to zip up then resolved to never unzip again--I unzipped at the Suiattle River lest I end up sleeping in a puddle. That side doesn't zip up anymore, and is now roughly secured at the top by two safety pins. As for the other side, its zippers aren't working anymore either--they split open in the back as the pull passes--and that's just the way it is now. I will say that, by now, I'm less inclined to be paranoid about not having a fully zipped up tent. Partially it's because there aren't that many bugs here--too late in the season--and partially it's because even when the bugs do get in, I just don't care as much anymore. Things are going to be dirty and messy and filled with little creepy crawlies and that's just the way it is out here. Oh, and my shoes: in the storm, the velcro just peeled off, so the gaiters no longer attach in the back. I wear them anyway--they're there more to keep my shoelaces from untying than to keep out dirt per se, anyway. Oh, and my rain pants: developed a tear on the inside lower pant leg on one side today and, after more hiking, more overgrowth, and more downed trees, its expanded to a full tear on the inside seam from cuff to knee. And I somehow managed to do the same on the other leg too.

-- Today I met Sweetness and Poppy--not that Poppy, another Poppy. Let's call her Redhead-Poppy, to distinguish her from Video-Poppy (or maybe Ukranian-Poppy?). I had actually met them yesterday, in the last few miles approaching the Suiattle River, him with his long stride, her with her short quick steps. They had kept going at the River whereas I had stopped and camped. But I passed them breaking camp this morning, maybe a mile or two down the trail, and in a much better spot than what I ended up with! And I chatted with them some. Sweetness smokes Marlboros, and I remember yesterday when I would come across them taking a brief smoke break, I would say, man but that smells warm! And it did! But he's done the AT before, and he said the rain on the AT wasn't like this. On the AT yeah, it'd rain, but then you'd get to a shelter or into town or somewhere where you could duck out of it for the night. But here, you just have your tent, which is soaking wet by the end of the day. And getting into a wet tent, and spending the night waking up to sop up puddles and wring them out in the cold outside, that's something completely different. They also asked about Works Hard, who they had seen me hiking with a couple days ago. Evidently at Milk Creek, where I had camped in a very cramped spot and Works Hard had continued on because he couldn't find a spot, Works Hard had come up to their tent (they had camped in a single spot about 0.3 miles from Milk Creek, whereas I was about 0.1 miles from Milk Creek) in the middle of the night, still looking for a spot. And even asked if they had room in *their* tent, because it had started raining already. And they didn't--they're two in a duplex--and he had wandered off into the darkness, just muttering over and over, I'm f**ked, I'm f**ked, I'm f**ked. And they were worried about him. I hadn't seen him--didn't all today either--and I don't know him well enough to know if that's an indication of panic on his part, or just that New Yorker bluntness (and willingness to speak your mind, unfiltered, at all times) coming out. I hope it's just the latter; I worry it's the former. 

-- Sweetness really is very sweet, though. I remember yesterday there was one tricky creek crossing. Redhead-Poppy had some trouble with it--got to a tall rock she sat on mid-stream, then had to step down to a low rock and swing over to the bank but couldn't get necessary momentum with her pack on her back, so he helped pull her across--but when I went across I was tall enough to rock hop on shallow stones, albeit pretty far apart. But it was a bit of a stretch. And when I finished, I looked up and saw him turning away, the clear indication that he had watched me cross to make sure I made it ok. Yeah, like I said, a sweet guy.

-- One of the mental tricks I used to make it through the storm was to think of this stretch, from Stevens Pass to Stehekin, as literally a 6-day backpacking trip. Just a contained thing: once I get to Stehekin, it'll all be over. It'll all be gravy, as they said in Platoon. Canada?, who's talking abou Canada?--I'd exasperate to myself (think: "playoffs?, who's talking about playoffs?"--for you sports savvy folks out there). So to then find out that Stehekin is going to be a mad rush too, is not going to have a room to calm my nerves, where I can take my time and shower and arrange my gear and charge my devices, but is going to still be camping outside, roughing it, still uncomfortable, still a place where I can't rest but need to work hard and think hard and improvise and make things work, to hear that was just so disheartening and depressing. And it just took the legs out from a lot of the mental reserves I had left. To be fair, this is true of other hikers as well--I'm not special in this way: Stehekin is booked and booked solid and that's just the way it is. Deal with it. And the fact that you can't deal with it is your own damn fault: it's your own damn fault for making it into some sort of restful stop in the first place. Nobody ever said it was going to be, the universe doesn't owe you to make it so. It's going to suck--this whole last stretch has sucked, after all--and, frankly, it was irresponsible of you to ever have expected it to be otherwise.

-- By the way, thinking back on the storm, Dante (of La Comedia, and not of Capcom, fame) was right: hell is cold, not hot. And I know he meant it metaphorically--hell is set in its ways and fundamentally can't change and this is in contrast to Purgatorio etc etc--but he's still right: hell, I'm telling you, is cold and likely wet, not hot and dry. And Gaiman was right too: the Sunless Lands really are Death's realm. Take away the sun, then take away the possibility of the sun, and things--like me--will eventually just wither and die.

-- And the Guthooks comments! I remember reading through them for this section, and much of it is to take it slow, take it easy through here, it's so pretty and you're so close to the end, you'll wish you'd take more time to appreciate these last few days--I know I did. And take off your hat and look up, the views are amazing. And to those, all I could say was I just spent three days in the cold and wet and windy, crossing passes during a storm, crossing rivers during storm surges, having invoked full survival mode. Now I just want to get to Canada before the next storm hits! And sure there's forecasts for that and they were accurate for this last one. But the day before the storm was gorgeous, bright, sunny, hot even. Then the next day was (Dante) hellish. So it can turn on a dime and I only trust those bland words of forecast so much: they're not out here! So I hope you'll understand if I don't take the time. To be fair, the comments are also saying things like, be sure to get water here, it's hot out here and you don't want to get dehydrated on this upcoming climb!, whereas I'm pretty much being innudated with water and really wish there was a lot less of it!

-- I will say, though, that for all the badness of today, the scenery was just stunning. Especially coming up to Cloudy Pass Junction: there the trees part and for a bit you can see the mountain just opposite. And it's right there and, today, it's covered in snow and looking positively Matterhorn. And I saw Poppy there, just sitting, taking it all in, and she said, that view, that makes it all worth it. That makes the storm worth it. Because likely that snow is fresh from the storm. And on the other side of Cloudy Pass, coming over that saddle and looking out to the valley below, then walking under the bowls of some of these mountains, all freshly covered in snow: it's quite impressive. Beautiful and I would wax rhapsodic about it I'm sure, except that today was a bad day. Heck, even when I stopped to get a photo of some of peaks, now illuminated by ochre setting-sunlight, I hit the shutter and my camera promptly told me: out of memory. So I rushed to get a new memory card and by the time I had it loaded and formatted and looked up--the moment had passed and those selfsame peaks were back to dull gray. sigh--can't win for trying today!

-- Camping cohort: this is a popular campground, so there are lots of folks--there were pretty much just two spots left when I arrived and I took one. But the spots are pretty isolated and I didn't inquire with my far neighbors, so I'm pretty much alone tonight. Certainly that's how it feels. And I know that just a bit over that way there are people, so no need to worry about wild animals or anything, but effectively, alone tonight.