We hit the trail at 9 am, climbing by chair lifts on a beautiful day. I was scheduled for a committee conference call that afternoon with the United States of America Snowboard and Ski Association (USASA) and hoped for cell coverage. Nope, bummer.  We have a fantastic new ED, Mike Mallon, who I enjoyed committee work with when he was volunteer President of the Board.  Not so odd to be thinking about snowboarding when you’re walking through ski resorts.  It will snow before I know it.  Bummer that I ran out of cell service before the call.

The bugs have been ferocious in Washington.  We hiked 18 miles and camped by a lake. It was so frantic to get my tent up and out of the bugs, I tossed everything out of my pack while pulling on a head net and pants, then squished dozens inside my tent where I made dinner and waited for Sliderule to make it in.  The following day it rained off and on and there were a zillion human beings along with the bugs.  Beautiful country though.  So the third night we planned to camp at a small site, then hike a relatively less amount of uphill to Snoqualmie.  This is an absolutely glorious hike, traversing a cirque in the alpine with views for hours.  Very little dropping into the trees and the green tunnel.  Then you pop over a ridge with the I-90 six miles down switchbacks and can practically smell the Hurry Curry at Aardvark’s.  Definitely made me hurry, definitely the best curry I’ve ever had!

Lord Vader turned up the next day after getting a ride to Snoqualmie.  I saw him on the trail a few days ago as he was hiking the section he missed due to injury last year.  All done now, congrats to a super nice man.

We waited till check out time at 11 and took a short day to camp by a lake with a thousand recreational hikers.  I love the sound of kids having fun outdoors, but I love it even more when dark drives them in their tents to bed!

Quite the lead in, eh?

We said “See you down the trail!” to Puff Puff as we got off the bus at High Bridge after a wonderful zero in Stehekin together. But you know the band had to break up sometime. Puff Puff and the Nearly Dead had some hits but when your crew of geriatrics can’t remember if you’re NOBO or SOBO, it’s time to find a new posse.

Meanwhile, 2 tall slim women of wise years in skirts and blue button-down shirts hiking with an old guy sweeping behind is an unusual grouping.  We have had beautiful, clear weather out of Stehekin the whole 6 nights it has taken to get to Stevens Pass.  107 miles of up and down through the worst maintained stretch of the whole PCT.

You grow to love horseshit on the trail because it means stock access for trail crews.  I wish the regulatory or jurisdictional agency in charge (USFS) would consult with the BLM Alaska Fire Service or a Search and Rescue group.  I know helicopter camps and sling loads could get personnel, equipment and supplies into areas apparently only hikers can currently access.  The trail hasn’t been maintained in years.  Old, old blowdown, overgrowth as thick as the Amazon, trail eroded down hillsides.  Pitiful and embarrassing that this is a National Scenic Trail.

We camped near a stream; in a shaded, soft  forest; on a knob just past the most breathtaking cirque I’ve ever seen; next to Lake Sally Ann; in blow down near a glacial ford; and finally by a lake just 10 or 11 miles from Stevens Pass.

Day 3 I saw Double Dip (Dana) hiking north with friends!  She is making Washington her home and will be starting grad school in biochemistry.  And she has a “thing” with another of my favorite hikers from last year.  Made my day!

Day 6 I saw Lord Vader, carrying a message for me from Dan.  He is finishing the section he left unfinished last year due to injury.

Day 7 I was leaving for the short hike to Stevens Pass and saw a man in a mountain hat next to 2 tents pitched near the trail.  I walked up and stood stock still till he turned and saw me. His face as he recognized me was probably matched by my own. I dropped my sticks to give Papa Raven a big hug.  He silently gestured for me to peek in his tent.  Out popped Mama Raven for another huge hug!  Then the kids Little Crow, as adorable as ever, and Bling, a foot taller, strong and healthy, rolled out of the second tent.  We caught up on all the news as they packed up their camp to continue North.  All but Bling did the whole trail last year, and now they return as a family so Bling too can complete the monumental NOBO of the PCT.  This family, this love, this trail.  I knew they were out here, but going opposite directions, the chances that we would miss each other were great.  So, so grateful to see them, in our natural environment.

Rick Luebbers, the Lueber Driver, met us at Stevens Pass and we have enjoyed a zero in Leavenworth eating, replacing broken gear, strolling the river, resupplying and cleaning up.

As always I am torn between the comforts of town and the craving for the trail.  I am continuously surprised by what I have forgotten and what I remember from last year.  Sometimes I walk for hours watching my feet moving through the green tunnel and have very little sense of place.  And then suddenly I recognize my perfect campsite, a shelter from the snow, high on a ridge, and recollect the fall reds and rusts, the stinky feet smell of low bush cranberries and I look up expecting to see the weather boiling over the mountain and a regal and wild buck staring back at me.  When I look back down I see spring flowers and screaming green meadows ahead, south.

Glen dropped me at ANC airport (again) and off I went. A few flights later, I ….

Met Dan, and we stayed with his bro Dave and sis-in-law Teresa north of Spokane before they relayed us to Tonasket where Rick and Vicky hosted us and drove us to Mazama where we picked up Jackie from Nick, and then met Marvin and Sue who were transporting Puff Puff to Hart’s Pass for the launch north to the border. Whew. Started hiking 12:30 July 15.

First of all, it was so cool to reunite with Puff Puff.  Remember she hiked the NOBO last year too!  I have made a modest miles plan to help Dan  and Jackie ease into the long distance hiking thing which she graciously accommodated until Stehekin. The first day we went just 11 miles, the second 13, in a cloud most of the time which meant there was very little view payoff for the work.  We all dove into our tents in the middle of the day to escape the wet and the bugs, oh boy what fun.  Day 3 we slack packed to Monument 78 and back, a lovely day that felt as if we were finally “starting” the SOBO.  The Grateful Red camped with us but we’ll never see him again, he’s hiking big miles right out of the box. You will know him when you see him, long dark red hair with a nipple length red beard.

We endured torrential rain on Day 4, the trail filled up and was running a river, but things improved as we passed through Hart’s Pass and camped 6 miles beyond on a clear warm night.  Everybody’s mood was lifted as we continued through the alpine glory of the North Cascades.  We walked down to the Methow River bridge through blow down so bad the trail was nowhere to be found.  Gigantic trees were tossed and piled every which way, sometimes I had to crawl over a stack of 4 or 5 at a time, sometimes I crawled on my belly underneath, pushing my pack ahead of me.  Exhausting, slow, and annoying.  We met Scott here and he joined us for the next couple camp spots.  Cutthroat Pass was the reward for struggling uphill through even more blow down.  We camped under the Buck Moon, a night so bright and beautiful in a little saddle that no head lamps were necessary for the midnight creep to a pee spot. The temperature nearly reached freezing overnight while the next day’s hike down into North Cascades NP was like descending into a sauna.  Scott, Puff Puff and I camped after about 21 miles just as a thunder storm broke and cooled the air off enough to sleep.  Meanwhile Dan and Jackie camped with a troop of teenage boys after hiking their personal record of 18 miles!  Amazingly, and I assume because it’s a National Park and not USFS, the blow down had been cut off the trail for the 17 miles to High Bridge. Thank you NPS!

Our 2 little groups met at the bus stop for the ride into Stehekin.  First stop The Bakery.  Real food for the first time in the very long, slow 8 days it took to get here.  We had a reservation at the Stehekin Valley Ranch for the 4 of us for a zero: Puff Puff, Dan, Jackie and me.  Laundry, prime rib, beds, kitties and people who smelled clean.  Plus everybody who lives and works in this area makes you feel welcome!

Here’s  a weird note about this blog.  I keep a journal when I hike or travel solo, which is mostly.  But when I have companions, I tend to babble every little thought out loud, rather than quietly muse on paper.  Once it’s out of my mouth, it appears to be out of my brain too.  So these blog entries might be a little circumspect for awhile.  Which might be a good thing.  I’m enjoying the company of the Nearly Dead  although it’s weird worrying about other people’s blisters and mileage and being responsible for picking the day’s destination.  Definitely pushing  the limits of my comfort zone.  It’s easier if I imagine they’re just little skier punks I need to direct.

What I Did Next
Santiam Pass to Elk Lake

I took a couple of days in Sisters, OR.  I love this area and this town: recreational opportunities year round and super friendly locals.  The weather continued to be unsettled, clouds and rain in Sisters, snow up higher.  Catwater’s Kid drove 6 hours from Seattle to spend the weekend providing “emotional rescue” to Mom.  It worked!  Clean clothes, a comfy bed,  good food, great coffee and beer didn’t hurt either.   

I got back on the PCT at Santiam Pass, Hwy 20 and a short while later, walked into Big Lake Youth Camp (BLYC) to collect my resupply box.  While unloading the contents and stuffing my backpack, I had great conversation with the youth counsellors who had the day off and were heading out to hike or climb or do something else fun on this fine, sunny day.  Last year on the NOBO, I happened to arrive at BLYC the day after camp ended, and the counsellors and staff were all on a retreat.  I had no idea what I was missing.  My in-laws were Seventh Day Adventists in eastern Washington and they were the most wonderful people I’ve ever known.  Glen and Marie, and their church community, were excellent representatives of this branch of Christianity.  (I went to Unitarian Sunday school as a kid in the college towns where my atheist father was a professor and my lapsed Lutheran mother thought we needed to at least learn about the world’s religions so we could “choose.”  Do parents still raise kids like this?  To choose a religion?) They knew how to have good clean fun, laughing and joking and celebrating life without meat, beer or crass humor.  BLYC is expanding and improving the building they provide PCT hikers but they already offer showers, laundry, a hiker hangout with hiker boxes and plug ins, the ability to mail your resupply boxes there, and a very positive vibe.

Resupplied, I headed back to the trail and continued a few miles and camped on the edge of the lava fields, the a’a’ lava piled behind my tent was pocked with snow patches that I collected and melted for drinking water.  The following day I got back up into snow fields, but the terrain was easy to navigate.  The third day out was as slow as the previous one, hiking through blowdown and snowfields is just time consuming and I wasn’t making the miles I needed to stay on my new schedule.  But it was insanely beautiful the fourth day walking through the Obsidian Limited Area, sun on snow through valleys and canyons with the black glitter of piles and piles of obsidian everywhere.  Across one gulley I saw a robustly fluffy, red fox hunting varmints in piles of rocks.  Deer tracks, human tracks to follow, rabbits, and chipmunks, made the slow miles glorious, if no less arduous plodding through snow. 

Having made my point to myself, I walked into Elk Lake Resort and took a shower while waiting for Oregon friends, Nick and Jackie, who were camping in the area, to pick me up and get me to the Medford airport in a few days.  Somewhere on the trail south of Timberline I had had an exchange of voicemails with my dermatologist’s nurse who told me that I needed plastic surgery on my throat to remove the margins of a basal cell cancer that had been initially and conservatively removed a week before I headed out of town for the PCT.  A consult had been scheduled back home, appropriately, per the surgeon’s schedule, not mine (“you shouldn’t wait 5 months till you’re done hiking to take care of this”) and so I’m back in Alaska and have had to change my hiking schedule.  As Noreen says, “It will all work out!”

I left a voicemail with the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) over the weekend because I was angry and upset that they would “share” an article about me without either checking their membership database or my blog which is listed on the trail journals section of their website, a “share” that set me up for public humiliation, criticism and shaming.  I got a return call from Jack Haskel and we had a lengthy discussion.  He started by telling me that first of all he was glad I was safe and we went from there.  I really, really appreciate the return call, Jack’s sincerity, honesty and time. The PCTA is a non-profit that has a huge variety of tasks, responsibilities and types of members.  As usual with non-profits (I donate to and volunteer for many) the budget is limited.  So in answer to my question to Jack about what the stats were on Search and Rescue (SAR) missions on the PCT—how many, where, top causes for rescues—there is no database.  As thru-hikers and other PCT advocates know, the trail goes through a zillion different regulatory agency jurisdictions, volunteer SAR group boundaries, and law enforcement jurisdictions.  To collect data on rescues would require someone first researching who all these groups are, then reaching out to each of them, developing a standardized but quickly completed debrief of a rescue, then sorting and analyzing stats—it actually sounds like something I’d enjoy doing as a volunteer.  I mean does everybody who calls SAR get slammed for calling SAR?  Last year I knew people that SAR responded to for injury glissading or falling down the snow chutes on the Sierra passes, for being incapacitated by GI infections, for dehydration, and for snake bite.  As I said before, shit happens in the wilderness.  Who at home gets to decide and deride one type of shit as preventable and another type as not?  To set the record straight for the cretins who don’t think it is SAR’s job to respond to preventable incidents:  you’re wrong, rescuing idiots like me is what they love to do and it is in the job description.  I hit the button before my situation got so dire that I’d place other human beings at greater risk to get to me.   That was a conscientious decision.  Although lost, I got a lot of the rest of it right, I had proper cold weather gear, extra food and a sturdy shelter for example.

And shouldn’t there be greater emphasis on educating about high incidence causes of SAR responses? We can’t teach or learn if we don’t have the facts.  While I’ve been back in Alaska just a couple of days, there have been two true searches for lost people.  Two hikers overdue on their trek out to the “Into the Wild” bus on Stampede Road outside Denali Park were found and rescued, they carried no tracking satellite device.  And another SAR for a man way up on the North Slope who drove out to go on a hike and didn’t turn up for work on Monday.  No tracking device.  The list of aircraft and skilled personnel searching for this man is extensive, so far no luck.  I hope he is found, I hope he is safe.  Life is precious, he is worth the effort.  Nobody goes out there thinking they can take risks because there’s someone to come save them if things go bad.  Nobody goes out there with a 100% guarantee that their skills and gear are all that is needed to be successful—even the best prepared can run into trouble and need help.  We’re humans, crazy, wonderful human animals, a dominant and adaptive species of life, but life is messy.

I’ve learned some lessons, maybe not the ones all the Facebook critics think I should have learned, but who are they to me?  A bunch of internet addicts reacting to a poorly written article about a rescue, inexperienced fraidy-cats, PCT groupies, worst of the Wild crew, people who think that reading about the PCT gives them the right to peer over the tops of their computer screens and instruct me and the SAR community.  My contempt for the people who judge me so blithely is unhealthy.  I have to let it go.  But there are calmer, more rational commenters too, and my friends and family, people who know me, have reached out and helped.  The tiny hiking news cycle has spun on and my name and story have dropped to the bottom of the feeds.

Four of us intend to start at Hart’s Pass July 15, heading north to Monument 78, turning around and hiking SOBO.  As of now, the road to Hart’s is still blocked but other hikers are walking past the blockage and getting on to the PCT.  There are alternate routes to the PCT from Ross Lake or Rainy Pass.  Snow persists up there, as in Oregon.

So my revised, revised, revised master plan is:  WA SOBO to Cascade Locks, bump down to Ashland and go SOBO through Yosemite and the JMT, making it through the Sierra in October.  Bump back and pick up the missed OR sections SOBO.  Finish “the desert” of Central and Southern California a bit later in the Fall.  We’ll see how it plays out.  Never back down.

Sarah, trail angel name Catwater’s Kid, picked me up in Seattle for a wonderful weekend in Cascade Locks and he Columbia Gorge. We drove to Timberline on a blazing hot day and walked north on the PCT a little way to discover snow patches on the trail, consolidated and melting fast, not going to be an issue. We day hiked to falls from the 100 year old scenic highway running above Hwy 84 on he Oregon side. It was in the 100’s, good thing I’d been acclimatized to heat in Hawaii a few weeks ago. We had a great time and I had a hard time saying so long as I began the interminable trudge up out of the lowest point in the PCT in the heat. Over the next 3 nights I camped alone and saw very few hikers, such a different beginning from the Campo end last April. Second night I was at disgusting Salvation Spring where I camped last year heading north (1 night between Timberline and CL) and about 7:30 pm I heard music a long way off, thankful the couple with the speakers on their packs continued on past me.

After trying to explain to a few people what I’m doing, I think the simple explanation works the best: “I’m hiking the PCT SOBO with family and friends beginning July 15 from Canada. I’m warming up by hiking south through Oregon.”

Lots of bugs and blowdown on the Columbia Gorge side of the trail, but also hummingbirds zipping around buzzing like mini bombers, fuschia to pink rhododendrons, and a zillion other flowers in bloom.  The trail tread is in good shape, the stream crossings are shallow and safe, but I’m definitely looking forward to walking downhill off Mt Hood.

Funny how the trail routines come back without thought: scanning for flat places to camp, mixing Aqua Mira water purification drops, heating water in the morning for coffee and granola, listening and looking as I trudge along, happy to be able to hike in the wild.  Plus I did a good deed already!  Day 1, 2 brothers going north asked me to pick up their lost, fancy 11 oz water bottle and bring it to Timberline for them.  They were super nice and understood the weight penalty they were giving me.  I found it within 15″ and carried it the rest of the way.  This too is what I love about trail life.

Two months ago, I promised my hiking friend Poppy an explanation about post trail blues. She is considering thru hiking the PCT in a couple of years.  Hiking would mean taking 5 months off from her Occupational Therapist job working with children, a job she loves.  It would mean leaving her dog in someone else’s care, leaving family and friends.  She is happy in her life.   “I hesitate to do a thru if in the end I feel sad and discontented.”

Why do thru hikers finish the trail and get the blues, Poppy asks, is some of it missing your new trail family and trail home? Feeling like you accomplished something and other people just don’t get it?  The answer to the first question is yes but its a no to the second.

Hikers will tell you that the hike “changed” them. But what does that mean?  For me, the change was subtle yet profound.  On the trail, I felt more content, more accepting of myself, more comfortable and compassionate with other human beings than ever before.  This has carried over into my off-trail life to some degree.  I worry very little about how people see me, I smile and say “hi” to strangers on the street, just like I did on the trail.  If they don’t respond, no worries.  It’s their problem, not mine.

I fall back on a phrase a lot in my life: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  In every culture there are some restless souls who wonder or wander.  The PCT is a perfect fit for us.  At home, every night I fall asleep counting campsites one after another, retracing my route north, finding the calm and peace of the trail.  In my heart, the trail will always be there.  But I want to physically be there hiking a long trail too.

Like Poppy, I didn’t hike to “be fixed” or “find myself.” But Poppy found that in her time on the trail she realized that there was a part of her that needed to be fixed, her faith in humanity through the kindness of strangers was restored although she didn’t know she’d lost it.  For me, every single day out there, even the hard ones, I was happy and content in my own skin. I didn’t know that was possible.  It was the best therapy possible.

Of course, any traveler returning to the world after 5 months has stuff to catch up on. A lot of the younger hikers needed to find a new job and a place to live.  Others of us returned to home and family and jobs.  Some hikers intended the PCT to be a major break from the old life and didn’t know what they would do next, they hoped that the trail experience would help them see their way forward.  But I would say, that nearly all of us thru hikers found ourselves lost, for the first time in months, truly lost in the so-called real world.

I’ve been busy and traveling and spending time doing things outside that I love, running and snowboarding, but I only started feeling better when my husband decided he’d like to hike through Washington, the country he grew up in. I would like to see the Cascades in a different season, when I’m not so fatigued from hiking 2000 miles. I jumped at the plan, and could stop trying to keep secret that the accomplishment of thru-hiking the PCT wasn’t a check mark on a bucket list, but an addiction and the new plan for my “one wild and precious life” as Mary Oliver says.

So the plan is for us to hike slowly and carefully for awhile, until Dan flies home to Alaska to catch our yearly supply of red salmon and I continue south on the PCT to Mexico.  It will look different going the other direction, I will have way less company but I am good with solitude.  I would love to be hiking a different trail, the CDT, and see something new, but I truly love the PCT and I think I mostly just need to be walking, day after day, for months. The cure for post trail blues turns out to be planning the next long hike.

Catwater, 62, Alaskan….