I awoke along the shoreline of Ginette Lake to the shrill bugling of a medium sized bull elk and the low grumbling of my stomach. Yep. I definitely shouldn’t have eaten those old biscuits and gravy. But, I had eaten them, and now I just needed to persevere through the side-effects. As I packed up to begin the day, I had a newfound appreciation for dry gear. My fingers didn’t hurt from the cold and wet, and even my shoes felt downright comfortable. Leaving the lake, I continued up the mountain, and soon, I was passing near the top of the White Pass ski runs. In the densely forested valley, far below, I could see the highway but could no longer make out the cars that travelled along it. To the northwest, I kept catching glimpses of the massive silhouette of Mount Rainier, glistening in the clear morning sunlight. For the first time in several days, it felt like I was back in the mountains, with jagged, snow-covered peaks nearby. For the first time in several days, I felt like everything was right with the world.
Soon, I was making my way up through the scree fields of Hogback Mountain, and before long, I found myself on a ridgeline with wide-open views of Mount Rainer to the northwest and the chain of peaks known as the Old Snowy Massif to the south and southwest. As my eyes scanned the horizon, I surveyed the glacial slopes of Johnson Peak, Hawkeye Point, Ives Peak, Gilbert Peak, Tieton Peak and Devils Horn, stretched out along the jagged arc. Below the peaks, the McCall, Conrad and Packwood glaciers glowed radiantly under the bright sun. Despite the glaciers being smaller than ever before in recorded history, the snowpack was more substantial than expected for a mountain that doesn’t even reach eight thousand feet. Apparently, as I later learned, the weather system from earlier in the week that had dumped several inches of rain on me, had dumped a couple feet of snow up on Old Snowy. This was going to be fun.
Descending gradually from Hogback Mountain, I stopped at least every tenth of a mile to take more pictures: It had been days since I had seen views like this, and I wasn’t sure when I would ever be this close to Mount Rainier again. Out across the rolling, forested hills, the massive cone of the volcano rose from the earth like an ancient pyramid. Its surface was blinding with the white coverings of late fall, as all the fragmented glaciers began to coalesce back into one, if only for the winter. Turning back down the trail, with the giant behind me, I began to fix my eyes on the slopes before me. Old Snowy is barely half the height of Rainier, but its ruggedness seems to rival the bigger mountain in almost every way. Plus, unlike the wide berth that the trail gives to Mount Rainier, I knew that I would have to actually traverse the glaciated slopes and ridges of the mountain before me along what is known as the Knife’s Edge. Famous for its unhindered three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views, the Knife’s Edge of the Goat Rocks Wilderness sees the trail follow the narrow crest of Old Snowy’s spine as it wraps toward the south. Additionally, the handful of miles that lead up and over the mountain consist of some of the most rugged and steep of the entire trail. Basically, this short section is regarded as one of the most spectacular, but also one of the toughest segments of trail in Washington.
Crossing through a broad valley, and then climbing steadily up to the first ridge, the trail suddenly plunged down into a deep valley, crossed a rocky creek, and then headed straight back up the other side. I don’t normally struggle on climbs, but soon I was stopping to rest every few hundred yards, just to catch my breath. At times, it felt like the trail was climbing at nearly a fifty percent grade. As the trail continued to wind up the ridge, the vibrant meadows gradually turned to rocky tundra, then to fields of stone. Eventually, even the rock began to fade as I climbed up into the snowfields. Initially, the trail itself was clear of snow, as it made its way up the ridge, toward the gap between the Packwood and McCall Glaciers, but the trickles of water tumbling down the rocky path told me that it hadn’t been that way for long. Soon, the trail rounded the turn, and I could finally see out along the west-facing ridge for the entire length of the Knife’s Edge, as it traversed every craggy point along the crest. As I huffed and puffed, the trail led straight up, then straight down, then straight up again, from one point to the next, sometimes climbing or descending a couple hundred feet along less than a tenth of a mile worth of switchbacks to connect to the next portion of the ridge. At other times, the three-foot-wide gravel footpath was the crest of the ridge itself as it wound its way up, toward the snow peaks.
For a while as I climbed, I hoped that the trail I could see in the distance was not my trail. Maybe it was the path up to the summit of Old Snowy. Maybe it was an alternate trail, leading to some hidden lake across the ridge. Yet, within the hour, I found my path fading into deep snow, and discovered that the path I had been seeing was indeed the path that I would need to follow. My progress slowed. Originally, my cardio fitness and lung capacity had been the limiting factor to my speed, but now my forward momentum was restricted out of a sense of self-preservation. To my right, the mountainside plunged downwards, across the Packwood glacier and the scree fields below, several thousand feet nearly straight down to the green valley floor far below. To my left was either a continuation of the slope for several hundred feet up to the ridge, or, at the lower points along the crest, a similar slope straight down, across the McCall Glacier, down to the rocks below. Either way, a fall would surely prove fatal, and I took great care to remain firmly planted on the trail. The only problem, however, was that in several feet of snow, the trail itself was rather difficult to identify.
Skirting along the slope, I spotted what seemed to be two sets of footprints ahead of me, headed south. I followed those footprints, utilizing the pre-made post-holes when possible, but even then, the trail completely disappeared at times. Taking a step, into a knee-deep post-hole, my foot finally reached a hidden rock. I shifted my weight. The rock began to tilt, and I braced with my trekking pole against the opposite slope. The snow began to crumble and slide. Uh-oh. A miniature avalanche began to flow down the slope, taking the rock and (for a second) the right half of my body with it. I pivoted and hoisted all my weight toward the left slope. The slide continued for about a hundred yards down the slope until its momentum was stopped in a patch of rocks. I took a moment to catch my breath and allow my heartrate to slow, then cautiously lifted my right foot again to take another step. Into the next post-hole I stepped, and this time the ground held strong, with only slight shifting. Cautiously, I took another step, and then another. Sometimes the slope held fast. Other times, the entire mountain would begin to shift, sending me scrambling onto the nearest patch of stable ground. For the next four hours, my newfound game of “take a step and pray that nothing moves” continued as I slowly crossed the slope, toward the distant ridge. In those four hours, I covered less than three miles, never stopping, but never taking more than one step without a calculated pause to examine the stability of the next. At times, I was afraid to even reach for my phone to get a picture, as even the slightest lateral movement could destabilize the entire mountainside.
Through that afternoon, I would have given anything to have my micro-spikes and ice-axe, which were both sitting in a box at home. I had never expected this kind of snow in September. Still, as I contemplated the intricacies of human mortality, clinging to the snow-covered, icy slope, and being buffeted by the frigid wind, I concluded that those two pieces of gear might well have been the difference in successfully crossing the sketchy slope, and falling a thousand feet into the beautifully rugged valley below. Taking one more step, and then another, and then several hundred more, I continued inching my way across the slope, closer and closer to the relatively flat alpine plain that I had spotted in the distance. Finally, the grade began to moderate, and I tried to relax a little. Finally reaching the edge of the plain, the ground under my feet flattened out and I broke out into a run toward the nearest sunny rock. I had made it across the Knife’s Edge, but even more impressively, I had made it across the snow-covered Knife’s Edge. I couldn’t believe it. I had successfully followed, one cautious step at a time, that steep, snowy line between bravery and stupidity. Sure, I may have crossed over to the wrong side a few times, but I had ended back on the right side, and that was all that mattered.
Suddenly, my intense focus finally broke, and I realized fully what I had just done. My head was pounding. My heart was racing. My stomach was churning. My legs were trembling. In the moment, I hadn’t had time to really consider the possible scenarios that could arise from the last few miles. Now, however, on solid ground, every possible emotion, of fear and grit and relief finally broke loose. Later that evening, I passed a hiker headed north who asked me about the current conditions of the Knife’s Edge. We spoke briefly, and during our short conversation, he asked me what I would have done if I had fallen. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Falling had never been an option. The only way had been through. Sure, I had assessed and recognized the magnitude of danger, but there had never been any kind of conscious choice or decision, just a relentless determination. Looking back, my analytical and yet consciously oblivious attitude toward the dangers of that crossing may have been stupid, but without it, I’m not sure if I would have made it across. Surely if I had fully recognized the risk in the moment, I would have been paralyzed in fear. The strength of human willpower never ceases to amaze me. The protective hand of God, however, is where the credit truly lies. Soon, I had descended, past distant views of Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams, into the Cispus Basin near the headwaters of the Cispus River and made my camp. I slept very well that night.
The next day brought a complete change of character from the trail. Instead of climbing up among the high alpine ridges, the trail climbed briefly over Cispus Pass, and then spent the remainder of the day among the gently rolling lowlands. Today would have the least amount of elevation gain per mile of any portion of the trail so far, and I expected to be able to cover some serious ground. The sky was dark and overcast in the morning, and as I crested the pass, I was barely able to spot Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens in the distance, sealed in below a thick layer of gray. Around midmorning, I passed a NOBO that I remembered from early on along the trail, way back in the desert. We stopped to talk for a moment, and he described his rush to get to the border. He had been taking his time for most of the trail, but he was beginning to feel the weather catching up to him. I could feel it too. I was glad that I was headed south, and I was a little worried that he still had over three hundred northbound miles to go. Soon, we wished each other well and headed on our way. As it would turn out, Odysseus would be the last NOBO that I would pass, and the last NOBO that I know of to make it to the border, in the frigid cold, on October 12th. For the next few weeks, whenever I was cold, I would just remember Odysseus, headed north on his own, and it gave me a little more motivation to keep pushing.
Throughout the day, the trail crossed in and out of the Yakima reservation, before finally entering it for good. Gradually, the forest levelled out into second-growth lowland, and I began to pass a number of dirt and gravel roads. The most notable sights and occurrences throughout the gray afternoon was an old saddle resting in a tree (I tried not to think too hard about the probable demise of that horse), and the fact that I accidently kicked a frog. That’s right. Walking along the flat trail, I never thought to look where I was stepping, and suddenly, I kicked something soft. I mean, I kicked it hard, full force and mid-stride. Confused, I looked down and spotted a large frog, a little bigger than my fist, scrambling back upright and making his way up, out of the trail and into the bushes. I was both startled and confused. Why hadn’t he jumped out of the way when he heard me coming? At least it didn’t appear that I had hurt him too bad. I passed several hunters throughout the day, along with several hunting basecamps set up in the middle of the woods. At one point, I stopped to talk briefly with a hunter and explained my interaction with the bull elk from several days ago. I’m pretty sure he thought I was lying. That’s ok. If I was on the receiving end of that story, I’d think it was a lie too. Late in the evening, I reached a campsite near a lava spring (basically just a spring at the edge of a lava field) right as it began to rain and decided to call it a day. A little while later, two section hikers that I had met earlier in the day showed up and camped nearby. This was the first time in weeks that I had camped with others.
That next morning, as I fulfilled my morning obligations, squatting over a particularly nice cathole, I suddenly heard a voice call out, “Good Morning!” I spun around and spotted the two section hikers: the Garmires. For a second, I asked myself why the heck they were walking towards me while I was taking a dump, but then I realized my mistake. Apparently, the trail doubled back after leaving camp, and I had dug my cathole barely three feet from the footpath of the trail. Great. There’s nothing like starting your morning out by pooping in front of strangers, and not just any strangers. As I had learned the night before, they were the parents of Jeff Garmire, one of the most prolific long-distance hikers in the world. Jeff has, at some point, held over sixteen fastest known times on many well-known trails across the country. He has also completed the Calendar Year Triple Crown (roughly 8,000 miles) in 252 days, and the Great Western Loop (nearly 7,000 miles) in 208 days. Across his hiking career, he has covered a total of over 30,000 miles, and has recently begun to dabble in ultrarunning, including the famous Barkley Marathons earlier this year. Basically, I say all this to say that Jeff is the real deal, and so are his parents. And, that morning, I began my day by dropping a deuce directly in front of them. Things could only go up from there.
Approaching Mount Adams and then beginning to circle around the base, the morning brought incredible beauty along with clear skies. The underbrush was covered in a cold wetness, but soon, the sun was rising over the mountain, casting radiant golden beams on the glistening valleys of soft green grasses and gurgling creeks. Overhead, the towering heights of Mount Adams, only a little over two thousand feet lower than Mount Rainier, glowed in brilliant, blinding whiteness under the large, but vastly diminished perennial glaciers that cover its upper slopes. Crossing through a number of vibrant, peaceful valleys with cascading streams, I was reminded of the valley of Rivendell in The Lord of The Rings. The sense of hidden sanctuary in those beautiful meadows below the high peaks was a welcome relief from the exposed ridges and dreary forests of the last few days. Eventually, however, I left the grassy valleys behind, and the trail began to lead through deep cuts, carved by the many glacial rivers, into the side of the mountain. Across pulverized rock and sand and milky creeks I travelled, down through deep crevasses, and then across wide swaths of glacial moraine, until I finally entered a burn area that I would follow almost all the way to Forest Road 23 and access to the small town of Trout Lake. With Mount Adams now behind me, I sped down the mountain toward the road, eager to get to town. Near the bottom, however, I stopped to pay my respects at the memorial monument for Finn Bastian, a German hiker known as “Colors” along the trail, who was killed by a falling tree in 2019. That solitary monument, alone in the forest, served as a reminder of the unpredictability of the wilderness. He had hiked well over two thousand miles to get to this point, and his death was in no way related to any sort of negligence. It had simply been a tragic accident, in a place where no one would have expected anything to go bad. Color’s story rekindled within me a desire to appreciate every single moment of this adventure as the privilege and gift that it is.
Soon, I was standing by the road, waiting for a car to pass. A hawk soared overhead. Time passed, but there were no cars to be seen. Finally, a motorcycle cruised by. Nope. A few minutes later, a jeep passed, but was headed the wrong direction. Eventually, several cars began to speed by in the direction I needed to go, but no one pulled over. About twenty minutes had passed, when an old VW camper van finally flipped on his blinker and pulled off the road. The older couple in the front seat offered me a ride if I didn’t mind sharing the bed in the back with their dog, who was less than eager to share his bed with me. For the entire ride into town, he glared up at me out of the corner of his eyes, refusing to budge an inch. Reaching the bustling metropolis of Trout Lake, they dropped me off at the Post Office and I set out to explore the town. There was a small gas station and garage on the corner, with a café on the side, there was a taco truck that was only open a handful of days out of the week (not that day). And there was a well-stocked general store. Camping was either at the Presbyterian Church or at the park, about a mile down the road. I chose the church, but the prohibition on all forms of drugs and alcohol must have pushed any other hikers that were in town down to the park, as I had the entire premises to myself. I should brag on the Trout Lake Presbyterians, though, because they have established what just might be the most luxurious hiker camp of any other establishment along the trail. For a suggested donation of five dollars per night, there is a new, clean pavilion with lights, picnic tables, and power outlets, and there is a large, flat area under several pine trees that could hold several dozen tents. There are trash cans, recycle bins, a potable water spigot, a hand-washing station, and two of the cleanest port-o-potties in existence. And, I had it all to myself that night after a delicious, but grossly overpriced, dinner at the café.
The next morning, I attempted to walk back down to the café three times before they finally opened for breakfast. Apparently. business hours in Trout Lake are just a suggestion. The bill for my breakfast of sausage, eggs, pancakes, and a sausage and egg biscuit was nearly twenty-five bucks, but that was cheap compared to thirty-five bucks for a burger, fries, and milkshake the night before. It was, however, the tastiest breakfast of the trail up to that point. Being from Tennessee, it’s hard to find a good biscuit along the west coast, but the good folks in Trout Lake know what they’re doing. They’re proud of it too. After picking up my resupply box from the general store, I returned to the church to pack up, and discovering that I had way too much food, I swung by the post office on my way back out, to ship some of my food ahead to Stevenson. I was finally starting to realize that there’s no sense in carrying extra weight if there’s another way. Back out on the road with my thumb out, I waited. I knew that the town had a published list of trail angels that would probably be available to drive me back up to the trail, but whenever I specifically ask for a ride, I always feel obligated to pay, and they typically feel obligated to accept. When I hitch-hike, on the other hand, I typically offer five bucks for a standard ride, but they very rarely accept. Therefore, after spending way too much money on dinner and breakfast, I was eager to potentially save a few bucks. Soon, I was rumbling back up toward the trail with two locals and resuming my journey south. I spent the rest of the day crisscrossing dirt roads and gradually making my way closer and closer to the end of my first state. That night, I camped alone with various eyes glowing curiously from the edge of the large clearing.
I may have appreciated hiking alone and camping alone more than ever, but throughout the course of the following day, I was anything but alone. By the time I had covered five miles, I had already passed numerous day-hikers and weekend backpackers, a sure sign that I wasn’t too far from civilization. It was, after all, a Saturday, and this was, apparently, one of the more popular trails in southern Washington. By the time I’d reached Blue Lake, around midday, I had already passed dozens of people, and there were over forty more along the shoreline of the lake itself. I had planned to enjoy my lunch somewhere in the vicinity of the lake, but instead, I decided to push a little further and attempt to find some sense of solitude. Solitude, however, did not want to be found, so I eventually resorted to turning away from the trail and bush-whacking about a hundred yards to a small point on the ridge. I enjoyed my lunch in relative peace, but soon, I was headed back into the crowd as I continued down the trail. As I walked, I scattered what appeared to be dozens of tiny insects of some kind from my footpath, but taking a closer look, however, I discovered them to be tiny frogs. Immediately, I began to step more carefully and deliberately. There’s no telling how many of the tiny creatures were meeting their demise under the feet of every oblivious group that passed by. A little later in the afternoon, I finally lost count of the number of people around 120, and there were many more after that. At one point, I passed a group of three guys, geared up with shiny, new equipment, and with no dirt on their boots as they kept a particularly leisurely pace up the hill (definitely less than one mile per hour). The strange thing, however, was that the middle guy was packing a full-size Glock 19 in a chest holster. Now, every backpacker that I know has been asked at least once if they carry a gun on the trail, but ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is a resounding “no.” I guess I finally found the other one percent. It sure looked uncomfortable, but I guess if you’re only hiking a couple of miles, comfort may not be as critical.
Later in the afternoon, the crowds slowly began to fade, and I began to enjoy some solitude again. Throughout the day, I had passed numerous signs referring to the Indian Heaven Wilderness and the Indian Race Track. I had doubted that there was an actual track on which the Indians used to race, but later, from Stevenson, I learned that it was exactly that: a ten foot by two-thousand-foot track that was used for pony racing into the early 1900s as Native Americans from several different tribes converged on the area annually during the peak of huckleberry season. If I had known that at the time, I would have detoured a half mile off the PCT to see it. In the moment, however, I was focused on water, which for one of the first times up in Washington, was becoming quite scarce. I had two options, either Green Lake or Sheep Lake, both of which sounded quite stagnant from their descriptions. Still, I would need to haul a full load of water over five more miles to dry-camp, so I had to pick one or the other. Passing Green Lake, there was hardly any water visible. A thick layer of green algae covered the warm, shallow water, only a few inches deep. Unidentified, primitive life-forms swam here and there among the scum in the shallows. I’ve seen puddles that looked more appealing, so I kept pushing. Sheep Lake was a little better, but improvement was still a far cry from perfection. Now, however, I didn’t have a choice. Scooping water carefully from the deepest area that I could find (about six inches deep), I tried to avoid the “floaties” as much as I could. The water wasn’t exactly warm, but it was far from cool. Slowly and carefully, I eventually collected just over five liters, and was packing back up to press on when I spotted several piles of horse poop right in the shallow water, not three feet from where I had collected. Oh well.
I had initially intended to camp near the next trailhead, where there would be picknick tables and a pit toilet. Through the day, however, I had dealt with too many people, and I just wanted to be alone in the wilderness again. Reaching the trailhead, I realized that the campsites there were less than ideal anyway, so I kept walking. Gradually, over the next three miles, I began to follow along the edge of Big Lava Bed, an ancient flow of lava that has solidified into a patch of land so rugged that no trails lead through it, and compasses across the area are unreliable due to the magnetic fields of the rocks. Reaching my campsite, deep in the valley at the edge of the sea of black stone, I once again felt the beautiful isolation of the wilderness. The silence alongside that mysterious labyrinth of stone was palpable, and at times almost deafening. The few trees that had managed to take root to the east, among the rocks, seemed to whisper, indecipherably, of the ancient secrets of that land. As I made dinner and set up camp, I contemplated the likelihood that there are areas of that lava bed, just miles from thousands of people pass by in any given year, in which man has never set foot. Ultimately, I found a primitive sense of peace in the fact that some areas, by their very nature, will likely never yield to human development.
By the following morning, I was beginning to feel the effects of the solitude of the trail. Sure, there had been others, especially yesterday, but I was beginning to long for someone to talk to. Someone who instinctively understood me and what I was doing. Yesterday morning, I had left a note and my phone number in a trail-log for Stray-Cat and T-Rex to text me when they had service. Partly, I wanted to make sure they had made it through that storm ok. Partly, I just wanted to be in some kind of contact with people who were doing the same thing I was doing. Who knows if they would ever even see my message, but it was worth a shot. I was officially lonely. On this particular morning, however, it was just me, alone in the wilderness of southern Washington. I began below a thick, soupy layer of clouds, but soon I had climbed up to a high ridge, into the clouds and into the drip and the wind that gathers on mornings like these into an unpleasant mixture of cold dampness. Slowly, throughout the morning, the sky began to clear, and after a while, I was hiking along a wooded ridge with distant views of the lower portion of Mount Hood in the distance, the top half of its steep cone still obscured in the sky. A little while later, and I could nearly see down into the Columbia River Gorge, the dividing line between Washington and Oregon, my next town stop, and the lowest elevation of the entire trail at less than two hundred feet above sea level. For the first time in days, I had cell service, so I checked the weather. Today was supposed to be ok. Tonight and tomorrow, on the other hand, looked miserable: nonstop rain.
I considered my options. I was still over thirty-five miles from the road to Stevenson, but I could cover at least ten more today. I had planned to cover about twenty more miles tomorrow, and then have about five left to get into town the next day. With the kind of rain that was in the forecast, however, I knew that I needed to make it to town as soon as possible. Surely, I could make it twenty-five miles into town tomorrow, even if it was pouring rain the entire day. Another option was to bail out at a road crossing later today and either walk or hitch the eight miles to Stevenson along the highway. That would be the easy method. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to potentially skip nearly thirty miles of trail in favor of less than ten miles of highway. I pressed on. Later in the afternoon, the trail dipped down low into the valley, across several roads and through a residential area, the first of its kind for Washington and complete with a broad variety of “no trespassing” signs posted on almost every tree. I resisted the urge to bail out at the highway. The last few miles of the day consisted of climbing straight up the ridge, into the last high stretch of trail in this state. Collecting water from a drippy, moss-filled crevice, I continued up, slowly, onto more exposed ridgelines. That night, I made my camp in the middle of an abandoned dirt road, along the crest of a ridge, completely exposed to the first cool gusts of the incoming weather system as I ate dinner.
Around dark, it started to sprinkle, and by the time I was finally going to sleep, the sprinkle had transitioned to a light, but steady rain. Later in the overnight hours, I awoke to the sound of pouring rain, beating down on my tent. I flipped on my light. Water was beginning to trickle into the corners of my tent, but things were otherwise dry enough. I mopped it up, adjusted the tension of my floor, and went back to sleep. I awoke again, just before sunrise, and felt for my light. Instead, my hand dipped into what felt like a puddle. Straining my eyes to see until I finally located my light, I discovered that a shallow pool of water had formed in my tent. I checked the edge. There was no sign of water flowing in. Instead, the water seemed to be flowing up, through the floor of my tent. I guess the water had finally pooled enough on the ground that it had accumulated between my ground sheet and tent. Now, any amount of pressure on the floor resulted in a floating sensation, followed by substantial seepage. Considering my options, I tried my best to remain balanced on my sleeping pad, my personal island of refuge in an ocean of unpleasantness. Briefly, I considered turning back to the road, only about five miles back, and hitching a ride to town. Ultimately though, I just couldn’t make myself turn back. I only had twenty-five miles to go. That was manageable. Cramming every sopping-wet piece of gear back into my pack, I settled into a state of resolute determination and acceptance of physical misery that I call “Vol State Mode” (named after the miserably delightful footrace known as the Vol State 500k) and headed out.
The premise of “Vol State Mode” is this: never stop. Not to rest, not to take pictures, not to check my progress, and definitely not to eat or drink (that would just result in more stops further down the trail). Over the course of the entire day, I paused twice, just long enough to pee. The rest of the day, I maintained a steady, miserable pace toward town. Crossing foggy ridges among the clouds, I was buffeted by icy winds and blowing rain, and descending down into deep, lush, rainforest-like valleys, I trudged through thick mud and dripping undergrowth. Throughout the day, I paraphrased the musings of Forrest Gump over and over again, sometimes in my head and sometimes out loud. “I been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain that even seemed to come straight up from underneath. And that was after it rained all night.” Alone in the miserable wetness, it helped me to verbalize what I was dealing with, even if I was the only person around to listen. After all, Mr. Gump’s plain-spoken description fit perfectly as an honest assessment of my current situation. I was miserable, but like him, I didn’t figure there was much sense in getting upset about it. Instead, I just kept walking. I just wished that there was someone out there with me that I could lean up against so I could rest without getting my head in the mud. But there wasn’t, so I picked up the pace.
Finally, after almost eight hours of walking through the pouring rain, I emerged from the forest at Highway 14, just across the road from Bridge of the Gods. In a few days, I would walk across that narrow bridge, across the Columbia River and into Oregon, but today, I just needed to get to Stevenson, three miles down the road to the east. Sticking my thumb out for about fifteen minutes, I was fed up. I was wet, I was cold, and I had already walked twenty-five miles. I turned to begin the road-walk into town. Three more miles really didn’t seem like that big of a deal. As I walked, however, I discovered why most hikers recommend against going into Stevenson and instead just go to Cascade Locks, right at the base of the bridge on the Oregon side of the river. It may be more expensive, and it may have less services, but at least you don’t have to take your life into your own hands to get there. Trucks were now whizzing by me at over sixty-five miles per hour and what had begun as a small, but sufficient shoulder had shrunk down to about six inches of pavement between the white line and the guardrail. With no space to walk on the other side of the guardrail, I kept pushing, keeping a close eye on the traffic and occasionally stopping to turn myself sideways with my pack away from the road as several wide load trucks squeezed by. I reached Stevenson without incident, but my nerves were about shot. Making my way to the far side of town, I headed straight for the Rodeway Inn and extended my reservations from two nights to three (I wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow night). Still, it felt good to know that I would have a roof over my head during the next few days of rain, which showed no signs of stopping.
As I trudged up the steps and into my hotel room, I was soaked to the bone. Sure, I was wearing an extensive collection of high-tech clothing and fabrics that most gear stores would claim as fully waterproof, but I’m not sure if anything could have remained completely dry in the conditions that I had just walked through. GORE-TEX, Pertex, DRYTEC and Dyneema: you name it, I was wearing it, and every bit of it had leaked, soaked all the way through. The one part of me that was still dry? My hands – numb from the cold but dry from the rain, courtesy of my gas station rubber gloves from Snoqualmie Pass. Peeling them off, however, I discovered that they, like everything else, brought their own set of issues. On the inside of the gloves, and on my hands, a fuzzy gray layer of mold was thriving. Thoroughly grossed out, I climbed into the shower, clothes and all, to try and rid myself of the mud and mold. I just wanted to be clean.
Over the next few days, I had a few simple goals: dry my gear out, eat as much as possible, and keep myself as clean and as dry as possible. Still, the rain, which continued through the next few days, tried its hardest to dampen my spirits at every opportunity. For the first time in a long time, however, I wasn’t thinking about quitting in the back of my mind. Instead, I was settling a state of planned acceptance. If the weather allowed, I calculated that I would be able to make it to South Lake Tahoe by Thanksgiving. If the weather didn’t allow, I was beginning to make my peace with that as well. I had finally finished a state. I had added over five hundred miles to my total for the year. If I was, in fact, forced off the trail early, I would be able to make my peace with that. Still, I wanted to at the very least, make it through Oregon in the next three weeks. That would be a push, but a reasonable goal if conditions remained favorable. I’ve heard of people passing through Oregon in as little as two weeks. Of course, that’s after they’ve already hiked two thousand miles from Mexico. I was in good shape, but not in that good of shape. Gearing up for the days ahead, my days in town, like normal, consisted of pizza, burritos, and ice-cream. The two days of rest were punctuated by brief grocery, laundry and post office runs, but other than that, I focused on resting up for the trail. Oregon is known as the easiest section, but I knew that anything could happen late in the season, and I reminded myself that I shouldn’t take anything for granted. Regardless of the stories that other hikers told, or the long, flat lines of the elevation profile, it would be hard enough. I was sure of that.
