SUMMARY:  The days are getting noticeably shorter—it was a little hard to see the trail this morning. We are still in a gorgeous alpine area, but that also means very rocky trail. After lunch, we began to notice the faint drone of an airplane coming and going.  Not good. Airplanes “hanging around” in wilderness always mean something bad. But what? A couple of hours later, we realized it was a fire, probably a couple of creek drainages over from us. Hmm, not good.  The air was getting smokier and smokier as we hiked along.

At around 4:00pm, we heard a shout behind us “Busted!!!! You guys are baad!” It was another CDT hiker racing down the trail. Turned out the CDT is officially closed, due to the fire, and we didn’t notice the notice. The other hiker (Popeye) DID see the notice and decided to see if he could just run through the “closed zone” before anybody spotted him.  So now we were all racing to get away from the fire, and hoping we don’t get in trouble. Hiked till 8:30pm.

DETAILS:  Even though we camped in a meadow, all our stuff and our tent was DRY this morning–no frost, no dew!  Yay!  But at 5:20, which used to be our “get up” time, it was still so dark that the stars were out.  So we stayed in our sleeping bags till 5:45, when it was still pretty dark, before we started packing up by headlamp.  We figured it would be a tough day on the trail today–the map shows lots of ups and downs, and we already know the terrain is really rocky.   But we really wanted to get in enough miles today to set us up for getting into Sula tomorrow.

Our expectations of tough, rocky trail were all fulfilled.  Sigh.  I feel so bad, because when it is very rocky, I have to slow way down.  I wanted so badly to make lots of miles.  It was frustrating.  Scenery-wise, WOW–continued awesome, alpine, amazing!  We stopped for a Snickers break on the beach at Lower Slag-O-Melt Lake.  It’s called that because there is so much volcanic glass here–many of the rocks have shiny black obsidian-type rock mixed with the regular rock.

There were also several steep climbs to do, and again, I found myself gasping for breath and having to go way slow compared to what I can usually do on uphills.  But on the good side, one of those uphills involved walking along the edge of an “almost-cliff” mountainside, and I was very happy with myself that I could walk right along it OK, and keep a steady pace.  In years past, I literally would have been too scared of the big dropoff to even try to walk it.  And kudos to whoever did the work on that part of the trail!  What an awesome piece of trail engineering!

But in the afternoon, we began to be a bit concerned.  On the other side of the ridge from us, we began to hear the constant drone of a circling airplane.  That is never good in a wilderness area–circling airplanes always mean something bad is happening–it could be a fire, or a lost hiker, or some other trouble.  As we walked farther along, we gradually began to smell smoke and see a bit of haze, so we said to each other–“Oh great!  A fire.”  Looking at our maps, it looked like we would be OK–the CDT trail was going away from where the fire was.

Awhile back on the trail we had come to a sign, dated APRIL 13 (today is August 21) saying that the CDT was closed due to fire.  But at that point, there was no sign of a fire, and the date on the notice was so old, that we walked on by.  But what we didn’t notice, as it turned out, was that at some point there was ANOTHER notice (which we never saw) dated August 17, saying that the trail was closed.

So we just kept innocently hiking into the afternoon.  At 4:00 pm, we had just finished a very long climb and were heading down into the next valley doing some mild grumbling about “PUDs, grrrrrr” and eyeing the ever-growing smoke on the other side of the ridge, when we heard shouting behind us–“Hey!  Fixit!  Hey!”  We turned around to see who it was, and it was a CDT thruhiker (who is from Italy), and he was RUNNING down the trail toward us, yelling “BUUUUUSTED!!!!  Busted!!!!  You guys are so busted!!!!”  He came panting up to us and said, “The trail is closed because of the fire!  You’re not supposed to be here!”  “Huh?” we said.  “We never saw a sign saying trail closed.”  Well, there was one, and Popeye (the Italian) said he DID see the sign and decided to run as much as possible and hike straight through the “closed” zone, hoping that he didn’t get caught.

Well, that was scary news.  The smoke was getting worse, the noise of the plane was constant, and now we had the fun of worrying about being caught in a “closed” zone.  That would mean a big fine and maybe worse.  Popeye took off running again, and we decided, “Let’s push as hard as we can for as long as we can, and see if we can make it out.”  So from that point on, we did not stop, not for a snack, not for dinner, not for anything.  We just pushed it, and yes, even ran a bit where it was safe to do so, running as far away from the fire as we could get.  This included some more steep PUDs, and despite the breathing difficulties for me, I went as fast as possible, praying, “Please, Lord, help me!”

So from 4:00-8:30 pm, we did not stop.  No snack, no dinner, no rest, no anything.  At 8:30 we were still 2 miles from the edge of the “closed zone” but it was starting to get dark and we dared not go any farther.  So we found a flat spot, set up the tent and ate some dinner before bedtime at 9:30, which is way past when we normally call it a day.  But the smoke situation is  better, and we figure that we are safe for the night.  And I am sure that Popeye made it out of the “zone.”  We will, too, tomorrow morning!   And I doubt that any rangers will come along the CDT tonight.   I am very grateful for Popeye’s warning, though, and I did thank God for sending him along to let us know about the situation we were in.