We zero in Wenatchee, our 79th day on trail.
We get up around 8 and slowly pack up our bags. We check out of the motel and walk over to Target, 15 minutes away. It is obscenely hot in Wenatchee, around 100 degrees. I feel tired and mildly nauseous just from this little walk. I’m glad we’re going back up into the mountains today.
We catch the 22 bus back to Leavenworth, and once again Filip grabs a piece of cardboard from an obliging dumpster to make a hitching sign-and once again, it proves unnecessary. A man walks up to us immediately. “Are you guys thruhikers? Did you need a ride to Stevens Pass? I hiked the Trail in 1997.”
He delights us with stories and reminiscences from backpacking in the 1990s all the way up to the Pass. It is so fun to hear how things have changed-there was no ultralight gear, so he sewed his own tarp from sailcloth-and what is basically the same.
We get out at the Stevens pass ski resort at 5 pm. It is still boilingly hot. I give a pained look to the Trail switchbacks cutting straight up the mountain in the full sun.
“Let’s wait till it cools down a little,” I say. Filip agrees.
We finally start hiking just after 6 pm and cover the 4 miles fast to Lake Susan Jane. It’s a tiny lake, but we find a spot right on the shore and both take quick chilly dip to rinse off the sweat. Another couple comes by looking for tent spots, but hike on a little ways. We go to sleep with the last of the light around 9 pm. We hiked 4.3 miles today, our 80th day on trail.
We get going around 8:30 this morning, not too early, not too late. The trail goes up and over pass after pass. I remember that my friend Deling is planning to trail run this section - the trail is in great shape probably due to its proximity to Seattle, but this elevation change would be brutal as a run.
The heat returns. It is brilliantly sunny and around 90 degrees. There are a lot of people out section hiking, which is a big change from Glacier Peak Wilderness.
I sweat up the switchbacks to Traps Pass. Filip is talking to a couple in their 60s, who are talking very energetically and laughing loudly.
“Oh, and all the bright colors!! LOVE it!!” The woman half shouts at me. I am mildly dazed, sweat pouring down my temples in dirty rivulets as I catch my breath. I’m confused for a moment before I realize she is talking about my lime green shorts and Lindsey’s pink Brooks trail runners that I took from the hiker box in Kennedy Meadows.
“Oh….yah…..everything is kinda slowly turning grey…” I respond. They laugh at this as if it’s a very clever joke. I say goodbye and keep moving. Filip joins me down the hill at the next stream.
“Those people were like the Energy Vampires from “What We Do in the Shadows,” I say.
“Yah. It’s kind of exhausting,” he agrees.
I find myself in these days feeling starkly introverted, as if my mind has reached its saturation point with new hikers around me. There is something about being at this point in a thruhike where I find my focus turning inwards, maybe due to the weeks and months of physical exertion. I feel frustrated with myself, that I so frequently have a negative first impression of people and have to fight the impulse to hurry on past. Filip is as bright, cheery, and chatty as he was in week one, making conversation for a few minutes with almost every hiker we pass.
“It’s because you’re in your home culture. I would feel annoyed with Swedes if I was hiking this long in Sweden,” he comforts me.
I’m not so sure, though. I resolve to try and be friendlier and more energetically open with people we meet on the trail.
We hike on into the evening. Filip gets ahead of me and I reach where I thought we were going to camp around 7. I pass the couple that camped near us the night before and ask, “did the Swedish guy pass?”
The girl says something about him going “on into the woods,” which I take to mean that he has continued on, but he isn’t at the next camp, either. I set up my tent and message him on Inreach. I’m sure I’ll catch him tomorrow. I hiked 15.5 miles today, my 81st day on trail.
I start hiking the next morning around 7:30 and quickly find Filip at the next pond. We hike on to Deep Lake. It is glitteringly hot, and we take a couple hours in the shade. We walk on into the evening to the Waptus River, stopping around 6:30pm. In a rare impulse I decide to bathe with Filip in the River. I almost never swim, though there are lakes along the trail every day now. It’s a quick experience, though, because the water is shockingly cold. “You never regret it afterwards,” Filip reminds me. We hiked 16.3 miles today, our 82nd day on the PCT.
We get moving late this morning, around 10 am. The trail continues to wind up and down continual 2000 foot climbs and descents, now in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. We pass many craggy peaks with their shrinking glaciers.
I spent lots of time in these mountains in the 5 years that I lived in Seattle. Yet, when I look at the map, there are many names that I don't recognize in this region-dozens and dozens of 6000-7000 foot peaks that one could take decades to explore.
In the evening, we climb up to a tiny little tent site on a shelf on the side of the mountain, just big and flat enough for my tent. We hiked 16.7 miles today, our 83rd day on trail.
We wake up early at our little ledge campsite. We start hiking a little after 7 and climb up and down, up and down in between the peaks in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.
It’s hot. I am tired, and irritable, and frustrated that I feel tired and irritable. What is going on? I wonder. These are some of the most beautiful mountains in Washington. Why can’t I feel blissed out, and joyful, and thankful? I just keep running into these walls with my energy and inertia. My body feels tight, immobile, and weak, not strong, fast, and fluid. I am 1100 miles into this hike.
I soldier on. The trail is absolutely mobbed with weekend and section hikers-it’s Sunday.
We cross Kendall Catwalk in the afternoon. Filip is totally delighted by this little piece of the trail-I am amused that we skipped this piece 11 years ago to hike the alternate to Goldmeyer Hot Springs. The trail was an unmaintained mess in the forest, and I didn’t even end up swimming in the hot springs. This section is jaw-dropping with its views in every direction.
We finally descend rapidly on the well-worn trail in the evening to Snoqualmie Pass. We make our way to the Washington Alpine Club’s Guye Cabin, which hosts PCT hikers now for $45/night. We need showers and laundry and to charge our electronics before the next 100 mile section to White Pass.
The WAC cabin is jam-packed with people when we arrive, including 20 other PCT hikers, most of whom we have never met. It turns out that Snoqualmie Pass is kind of a “meeting point” for flippers like us, because lots of people flipped from the Sierras to the southern border of Washington rather than the Canadian border. Ashley, the cabin host, apologizes that we’ve missed dinner. We walk into the ski area and realize that the restaurant and Market also close at 8:00-it’s now 8:15.
We’re tired, and hungry, and annoyed. I buy some Tostitos, queso dip, and Oreos at the gas station and we wander over to the brewery. We see Hicks, a hiker we met in Kennedy Meadows-in his forties, he has big kind blue eyes, and long salt-and pepper hair, and an even longer beard that he secures with two rubber bands. He emanates kindness and positivity. I feel myself relaxing as we sit with him, sipping beer and eating our junk food.
I share my mental struggle with him, these days. “But that’s just the thing-you stay on the trail anyway-with yourself as you are. That’s where the magic happens,” I say. He agrees.
We head back to Guye Cabin and turn in for the night. The family bunkroom is dark, and someone has a white noise machine of ocean waves running. Filip cracks me up by pointedly walking over and turning it off before retiring to his bunk. “You know, that’s an act of Seattle violence,” I whisper to him. We hiked 18.2 miles today, our 84th day on trail.
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