We were at about 5,500 feet elevation in our camp last night, which is high for around here. It was a COLD night! Normally I would be very snug and warm anyway, with my down sleeping bag, but this time, the GROUND itself was very cold. My Ridgerest could not completely insulate me from it. When we go snow camping, we have at least two insulating pads under us so that we don’t feel the cold of the snow–and the ground up here is so cold that it felt like snow under me. Result: I had a hard time getting any sleep, which was a bummer, because we did a lot of tough miles yesterday, didn’t camp till late, and I was very tired. Oh well–we’re closing in on the finish line now!

We ate breakfast at 5:30, in the dark and cold and wind. Our camp was IN the clouds, but fortunately not superwet clouds. When it was barely light, we headed off downhill above Hope Lake, toward the “dangerous” crossing of Spade Creek, which the guidebook describes as “impassable to stock animals.” We’d heard from other hikers that they did have a tough time finding a way to get across this year. In 2005, the crossing was a big mess, but do-able. It was only 2 miles to the creek, but it seemed like forever because of some very rocky, rough trail across talus slopes. The clouds still hid the mountaintops, but we were low enough now that we could see the lake and scenery below us.

We reached Spade Creek, and it was just as I remembered–the “creek” comes steeply down a narrow canyon from Mt. Daniel, then spreads out and divides into 3 smaller creeks. Someone had made log bridges out of scraps for the first two crossings–the third one was a boulder hop. Bill gave me a hand at one of the log crossings. I think the “dangerous” crossing was relatively easy overall because it was so early in the morning, and it didn’t rain much yesterday.

Then we pushed on up and over Deception Pass–not a bad climb, and in forest. The next “project” was the highest pass of the day–Pieper Pass (almost 6,000 feet). The trail was a steady but not steep climb up the mountainside, with nice views, since the clouds were lifting and we even had some brief flashes of sun. Partway up, we heard a loud roaring sound coming from below and behind us, and TWO  jets went tearing by, down BELOW us, twisting and turning their way up the canyon.  Wahoo!  At the top there was a stunning view, with two big lakes down below on the other side of the pass.

Many, many switchbacks took us down, at first on nice dirt trail through the forest, then the last half was all in a huge talus field. I was reduced to hiking at a crawl because of the rocks and by the time we got to the meadows at the bottom of the descent, my feet were very painful. Bill and I were both limping. That’s one of the bummers of being older–we have very little “fat padding” left on the bottoms of our feet. We were very glad it was lunchtime so we could take a break!

Lunch was a freezedried lamb fettucine from Australia!–a gift from our daughter who was there last year. Very tasty! Not only that, but the sun came out for a little while and we were able to get our gear aired and dried. “Now for Trap Pass!” we said, and on rested feet we began the sometimes steep climb diagonally up the mountain. Eventually the diagonal turned into switchbacks to the top of the pass, then more switchbacks down. A long and very comfortable contour followed, heading north (the direction we wanted to go!). The wildflowers along the trail, even the fall asters, are really fading, but other plants are showing fall color, so we still had pretty plants to look at. Mushrooms are popping out of the ground, too, in all colors, including a bright golden yellow!

We climbed up and over another “pass”, and followed the PCT past some smaller pretty lakes (with backpackers at each one) before doing a VERY steep, stiff climb up to a ridge above Josephine Lake. Whew! It was some ascent, and to add to the “fun”, the trail is now extremely MUDDY (from previous rains) and we mostly walked/teetered on the SIDES of the trail rather than in the deep mud of the trail itself. Slooooow going!

However, even with the slow trail, we were still farther ahead than we thought we’d be, and wished we had some way to phone the Manns and let them know we’d be at Steven’s Pass sooner than we’d thought. Late in the afternoon, we started meeting a lot of people headed into the mountains, loaded down with big heavy packs. I stopped a group of girls and asked if I could use their cellphone. They were very happy to oblige, but neither of the two cellphones in the group had coverage. Oh well. I was very grateful for their generosity in letting us at least TRY to call. So we decided to “take it easy” for the rest of the day and camped a bit early at Lake Susan Jane. When I calculated our mileage, I was disappointed, though. We worked so hard and tried our best to go as quickly as possible, but still we only made 21.5 miles. I guess all the rocks and mud and long steep climbs really slowed us down. But at least our AVERAGE mileage is still OK, and we are in no danger of running out of food. This afternoon, I had the crazy idea that we could make it all the way to Steven’s Pass TODAY, and hitch a ride down to the Dinsmore’s. No way. I had to give up on that one at around 4 pm.

This whole section is so beautiful and majestic, Bill and I agreed that if it had as much easy road access as Yosemite, there would be tourists here in droves. It is too bad that only a few hardy backpackers ever get to see such beauty–high, dramatic granite cliffs and mountains, meadowed valleys, many lovely lakes…wow!

It was really getting cold as we made camp, and I put on almost all my layers before crawling into the sleeping bag. Actually, in spite of all the uphills, I was wearing a lot of layers during the DAY today, as well. Each night seems colder than the last, and the ground itself is very cold–and often wet or damp, too. But it’s only 9 more days to Canada!

It rained lightly all night, but stopped just before we sat up to eat breakfast. It is still so dark in the early morning that it is really helping give us more hiking time if we eat in the dark, rather than waiting for it to be light enough to hike, then stopping just after sunrise, as was our plan before. And it was certainly nice to be able to pack up with nothing more than tree drip coming down this morning!

Once we started hiking, we noticed that the clouds looked a bit “looser”–not so dense and dark. We even saw a glimpse of blue sky for a tiny short while. And best of all, the clouds were much higher up, so we could actually see the nearby mountains–wow! They were rugged, granitic, very Sierra-ish, with lots of glaciers. Ribbons of white were running down every mountainside, and sometimes we could hear their faint roar. I speculated mentally as to whether that would add up to “fun” river crossings up ahead.

The trail itself had obviously been recently worked on, and still had ribbon tags that said things like, “Begin retread” or “End brushing.” And soon we did have to ford Lemah Creek. It wasn’t deep–only midcalf–but quite wide and very cold. I didn’t mind–my socks got rinsed as I walked across, and they needed it!

We soon began a climb that took till 10 am to finish, to the top of Escondido Ridge, where we did catch a few mountain views through gaps in the clouds. The nice thing about the climb was that it didn’t rain! But it was cold–50 degrees. On an uphill, that’s no problem, but then came the long downhill to the Waptus River. It’s harder to stay warm on a downhill. We stopped for lunch partway down, and oh joy, there were rocks that were DRY, with a BREEZE blowing (cold, yes, but a breeze!) so while we ate lunch, we could spread out our damp tarp, sleeping bags, etc. so that they dried off nicely. The clouds overhead were very loose and often would break up, leaving holes of blue sky. We could even see sunpatches across the valley from us.

Then came the climb up Cathedral Pass on reasonable trail–not as rough as the downhill had been. And the plants by the trail were nice and dry from the breeze, so we could hike along, pushing through overgrowth, without getting wet. We paused for a moment at beautiful Deep Lake. What a place! It has flat, beautiful meadows there, but we needed more miles, so after a couple of pictures, we climbed on up past Cathedral Peak, a well-named rocky sentinel. We did reach the top of the pass and headed down, now looking for a campsite (it was late!) The map showed a possible flat place not too far down, but when we got there, yikes! It was cramjammed full of backpacker tents! Now way could we have shoehorned ourselves in.

So now, really a bit worried (it was after 7 pm, and the sun had gone down), we hurried on through a very wet (due to low clouds) alpine environment. Every flat place we could see was sodden and exposed, but we finally found a spot in a tree grove that we could JUST barely squeeze into. We were up very high, it was very cold, and we were actually IN the clouds. Brrr!

But on the “way cool” side, the alpine scene here is awesome and unique, and we were were SO glad of very little actual rain today. We even had a a “sun moment’ at around 4 pm, when for an hour we were able to wear just “plain old hiking clothes” instead of layers and layers, trying to stay warm.

I got up at 5:30, turned on the coffee maker, and started cutting up fruit for a breakfast fruit salad. (The fruit came from a little produce stand out front–a great setup, where all the different fruits ‘n veges were the same price per pound, so I just grabbed one each of a whole variety of things!) I sprinkled the salads with huckleberries that Wyoming picked along the trail yesterday and very kindly gave to me! At 6 am, I strolled down the hall to get the complimentary muffins and orange juice, so we had a very nice, very civilized breakfast. Looking out the window, the weather was very gray, rainy and cold.

We loaded up our packs and headed for the lobby, where Bill spent some time on the computer trying to organize our trip home. He has a somewhat complicated plan in mind. Most all the other hikers are planning to head straight from Manning Park to Vancouver, hop on a plane and go home. Bill’s plan involves walking back into the USA at Sumas, WA, then taking a lot of different local buses to Seattle, then Amtrak to Portland, then rent a car and drive home. While he was working on all that, I was hanging out with other hikers, who were trying to bring themselves to leave the nice warm hotel and and head back into the cold and rain.

Bill finally finished up at 8:30, and off we went. The rain had stopped momentarily, hooray, but it was a cold 44 degrees. The trail is very nice and well-maintained at first and it starts right away to climb up high. In 2005, I loved the views, but we could see nothing this time but the trees by the trail. And eventually the nice smooth trail morphed into rough and rocky, so we were basically hiking on miles of rocks, in the rain. The guidebook had warned of many miles with no reliable water sources–not today! There was water running everywhere, dripping off the mountainside and running down the trail.

But the wildflowers were very nice, especially the “Canterbury Bell” blue ones, plus a lot of very intersting alpine-type plants. Good thing there were plenty of them, because there wasn’t much else to see, with the clouds and rain. I used my umbrella a lot, even for the times when the rain stopped for a bit, because of the very strong, very cold wind. It felt like ice blowing on us, but the umbrella broke its force and made hiking much more comfortable. Put down ANOTHER use for the umbrella–wind shield! And during the few times when I wasn’t using it, I discovered that it tucked very nicely under my left shoulder strap in back, where I could get it easily. (Normally I stow it in a special little pocket on the back of my pack, but then I have to ask Bill to get it for me.)

It was so cold at noon that we ate lunch as fast as we could, and at our “Snickers breaks” we ate standing up, with our packs on, because if we stopped for very long, we were freeeeezing! But in the afternoon, the clouds began to lift a bit, and we started to see the lakes down below. Since this is the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, that was a great sight to see! And around 4 o’clock-ish, the clouds lifted some more and wow! Some views at last! We could see Spectacle Lake down below and the mountains all around us, some with snow patches on them. It was beautiful!

We tramped along the zillion switchbacks down toward the valley, stopped for supper along the trail, crossed the bridge at Delate Falls (wow! amazing and beautiful!) and finally reached the valley floor. The whole area is very alpine and very pretty, but unfortunately also damaged by a fire last fall. We were a bit concerned about finding a campsite outside the fire zone before it got dark, but we did succeed, and were even able to set up our tarp under trees. The biggest challenge was to find bare ground that is not covered with huckleberry bushes! It began to rain again as we set up the tarp, and it got dark fast. I’m writing this by headlamp–it’s very cold and drizzling and tree-drippy, but we are quite comfortable. But I am VERY glad to have hiked through here before, when we could see all the views, and before the fire–so that I KNOW what it looks like!

It absolutely poured deluges and buckets of rain last night. The tarp held up under it just fine, but the rain fell so hard that some of it actually splashed up around the edges, so a few of our things got splashed on. No matter— we were headed for Snoqualmie Pass. We reached Summit Lodge at 9:00am, and megabummer!!   The restaurant we’ve been looking forward to was closed for remodeling.  But it didn’t take us long to spot  a wonderful espresso place next door where we stuffed ourselves quite nicely.  It was wonderful to be out of the rain, clouds and cold for awhile, and we weren’t the only PCT hikers there–it was fun to “talk trail” with everybody.  The general consensus was cheerful and determined in spite of the weather.  We also heard the sad story of a PCT hiker couple who came in yesterday and QUIT.  After hiking all the way up from Mexico, they’d been very discouraged by all the rain, and then the night before they got to Snoqualmie Pass, they woke up in the middle of the night to discover that they were in the middle of a large puddle and all their stuff was soaking wet.  That was the last straw, and they decided to give up the hike.  When they arrived at Snoqualmie, the other hikers begged them not to quit, but they were absolutely determined and would listen to no hopeful ideas.  So they have headed home.  Bummer.  Bill and I (and the others) plan to head for Canada tomorrow.

A little stroll over to the Summit Inn and we  got a room to stay in.  But I was really concerned about how seriously wet and dirty we and our packs & gear are.  I hated the thought of messing up a nice motel room.  So I asked the front desk for some big black plastic garbage bags we could put down on the floor in the room so when we set down our stuff we would not mess up the carpet.  We also took off our muddy, wet shoes and socks before going to our room, and carried them carefully (no dripping!)  We also called Water Boy and Early Girl to let them know we have arrived (they have our resupply box)

We were enjoying our warm room, clean dry clothes, and dry gear when WB and EG arrived with our box.  They wanted to actually meet us and find out how we managed to hike at our age (they are about the same age we are).  So we showed them all our gear (they were amazed at how lightweight we travel–they carry more stuff and have heavier packs).  They had just finished hiking the last part of the PCT, and Early Girl warned me “That last bit from the border monument to Manning Park isn’t a trail–it’s an obstacle course!”  They also had a lot of rain to deal with and said as a result they had a couple of hairy river crossings, but that overall they had a great time!

Well,  tomorrow we head for Canada. We hope to cross the border on September 20, if all goes well. The weather— well, that’s another story. Unseasonable rain and cold are due to continue. I figure this is a chance to practice, “enjoying the moment no matter what” and also a chance to hear God’s answer to the question, “Lord, what do You want me to learn from this?”

Last, but not least, I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all our Jewish friends, both Messianic and “non”. May this be a blessed year to you all. The next post you’ll have from us will be after we make it to Canada!

Walk with Aragorn to Minas Tirith: Road begins swinging toward the River Anduin.

Wow! It rained and rained all night, but the sandy/rocky soil we were camped on soaked it all up just fine.  However, the air itself was so damp that even though we stayed warm and comfortable, our sleeping bags have picked up some moisture.  We really need a sunbreak so we can air and dry things! The rain stopped (hooray!) when it was time to pack up.  So nice to be able to do a normal packup instead of trying to hunker under the tarp.  We said goodbye to our fellow camper (he was not up yet, but was eating breakfast).  The rain resumed when we started hiking. It rained most of the day after that, and since much of the time we were pushing through wet huckleberry bushes, it was a very wet day!  I was very glad to have an umbrella–it makes rainy day hiking much more enjoyable.   Another young hiker couple caught up with us and when they saw my umbrella, the girl said, “Duh, why didn’t I think of that?  I’m going to get an umbrella, too!”

Many of the bushes had ripe huckleberries, but when it is 50 degrees and raining, we didn’t feel very inclined to stop and pick huckleberries! I did notice that the berry bushes on rockier, drier hillsides were starting to turn red, while those in wetter, forested areas are still green.  There were no views today except an occasional glimpse of a nearby mountainside.  As the rain continued, soon the trail itself was one long mud puddle which at times turned into a creek.  Bill and I both now have “dishpan feet” from being in soaking wet socks and shoes all day long.

At our morning Snickers break, along came 3 cheerful young thruhiker guys. “Hey, hikertrash!” they cheered.  “Isn’t the PCT the BEST trail in the world?”  We yelled back, “Yes, it is!”  The young guys waved and on they went, all raingeared up, packcovers on, and moving fast.  Soon we were headed on, too, planning for lunch at Stampede Pass weather station. Big disappointment! The cute little house was boarded up, the water shut off, and it was still raining.  We found a tiny covered entryway that had just enough room to squeeze in with our packs, and I sat outside in the rain under my umbrella (LOVE the umbrella!) to cook dinner, then retreated into the entryway to eat.  (See note below from Alexa!)

But now we were really seriously low on water (we’d counted on the faucet at the weather station) and the next creek was 5 miles away.  Oh well, we kept walking.  But surprise!  At Stampede Pass, there was a water cache!!  That really cheered us up.  The afternoon was a rerun of the morning–lots of long ups and downs, in the rain, pushing through wet huckleberries.  The trail became rockier and rockier, but I remembered this from our 2005 thruhike, so was expecting it.  The forest here is actually very pretty, with lots of mossy rocks, but in the cold and rain, we didn’t stop to enjoy the beauty–just took sideways glances at it.  Our goal was to get as close as we could to Snoqualmie Pass where we can get warm, dry and clean!  We stopped for supper at Mirror Lake, then kept going till 7:00 and camped.  We can just faintly hear the noise of traffic on I-90, so we must be almost there, but we could not see anything in all the clouds and rain and we were really tired, so we decided to call it a day.  All our gear is now a bit damp, so it may be a challenge to stay warm and get a good night’s sleep.  We’ll see!

Note from Alexa: Sounds like the time in Wales where the only dry area Monty could find to write in was in a castle dungeon!

Walk with Aragorn to Minas Tirith: Walking parallel with the River Anduin.