Sobo PCT 2021 Series (part 6): Nero at Newcastle/Snoqualmie Pass to White Pass

Keep reading for my 6th installation of my PCT trail journal (about 2 weeks off the present timeline as a safety precaution). Follow my thruhike in section by section blog posts (for the most part without pics due to technical difficulties), or in daily photo and text posts on IG or FB (@JustAGirlAndABackpack.Blog). Please attribute all spelling/grammar errors to autocorrect and exhaustion at the end of the day.

Statistics for my journey so far are as follows. Trail stats: day 31; 401.7mi hiked; 0.6mi skipped; record day = 21.6mi; avg 13 mi/day (w/ zeros); avg 14.9 mi/day (w/o 4 zeros); 4 nights night hiking. Town stats: 4 zero days; 9 luxurious town nights; 5 resupplies; 10 showers (with soap!); 6 loads of laundry. Nature connection stats: 1 snake; 2 bears; 10 species of wild plants munched on; 7 species of wild plants used to wipe with; 1 good sunrise; 7 good sunsets; 5 great nights of stars; 11 instances when I felt exceptionally connected to nature; 1 accidental sploosh at a river crossing; 3 dangerous river crossings; 8 dives into lakes/rivers; 4 rain storms; 1 lightning/thunder storm; 2 foggy days; 3 days of smelling smoke; 8 days of smoke obscuring views. Human connection stats: 10 hiking buddies; 3 hitch hikes; 18 trail angels; 2 douchebags; 3 great talks with passing nobos; 1 “proposition”. Mental state stats: 3 books read; 2 days of existential dread; times I felt scared = 5; times I wanted a hiking partner = 7; 3 days of off trail depression; 3 nights of little sleep. Physical state stats: weight lost = 0lbs; 6 small cuts; 1 bruise; 3 blisters; 6 calluses; infinite insect love nips; many sore muscles; shin splints; my right knee is not happy; my right shoulder is a disaster. Gear stats: 1 pair of shoes mangled; 11 gear items bought; 16 gear repairs; 46 gear modifications; 1 gear item lost; approx 4.8lbs of gear sent home or cut.

Saturday July 31; Mile 345.3 to 357.7 + .4 to Kracker Barrel (12.8 miles, day 31). Late start as always. Basically ran for 10 miles straight because the mosquitos were so bad they’d swarm and bite even while I was moving and wearing my head net, gloves, long-sleeve shirt and pants (stopping to filter water and pee only). I saw some people with llamas, and passed some old dudes that didn’t think I was human because I was moving so quickly. I got to White pass and as I was walking west towards the Kracker Barrel and the pizza shop I met The Breeze, who seemed very shy. We arrived and got to talking with some other hikers before I broke off to grab a pizza with Scavenger the Elder. We had some deep political discussions, and tried some wild growing clover. Back at the gas station, I started a load of laundry and bumped into Razor while I was waiting for the showers and buying snacks and beers. With my tent set up and my laundry and body clean, I joined a small group of hikers and gas station visitors, chatting and eating and drinking (and some of them were smoking) for several hours. Eventually, it was just me and Rick, a guy who was traveling the west coast in his van with his son. He gave me some trail magic in the form of a sandwich and beers and whiskey (thrice distilled, irish). His son joined for a bit (taking a break from Grapes of Wrath and prepping to start at Stanford in the fall) and we spoke in Spanish because the two of them had spent a long time traveling. It started raining at some point. I got propositioned tonight by another man, and that’s as much as I’m going to say about it, but woah that’ll give me something to think about. When I got back to my tent, I found a massive puddle of water awaiting me at one end, which was a great obstacle to overcome while inebriated at 2am. As I curled up in my quilt, chilly and damp, listening to the loud patter of rain on my tent, I realized that I hadn’t done any of my stretches, and I know I’ll regret it in the morning (as well as the several beers and the whiskey).

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Friday July 30; Mile 330.5 to 345.3 + .6 for water at Two Lake (15.4 miles, day 30). The morning was uneventful. My first stop was at Dewey Lake where I spent half an hour wading into the lake and eventually diving under. There was a dead fish and the exoskeletons of 2 crayfish in the clear blue water, but I think that was just the circle of life and not something wrong with the water. The bugs were bad today: at times the mosquitoes would swarm and bite even while I was walking. There was also a lot of horse poop, which was cool because there hadn’t been much fresh horse sign on the trail before now, and this trail was literally built for horses. The wild flowers were lovely, as always, but the edible fruits were few and far between. I bumped into Razor unexpectedly; he had thought I was already far ahead, and I had thought he was far ahead. We hiked for a bit, but my pace was too fast on the uphill for him (he’s a Marine, and even so, he admits his pack is too heavy and he has to send some stuff home), so I pulled away. I did a proper siesta at Two Lake (0.6mi round trip detour), with a nap and my tent set up and lots of food and everything. Clouds rolled in while I was sleeping, but didn’t seem to threaten a storm, although they did trap the sun’s radiant heat and make the rest of the day horribly hot. My over-filled food bag was really dragging me down all day; I need to figure out how to do resupplies with less than 6 days of food carrying. There was another fabulous view of Mt. Rainier, although the clouds were again making it hard to see the distant peak. I saw a single elk in a meadow (my first on the trail!), as well as two herds of elk in a very big meadow, thankfully all far enough away for comfort. My feet were positively aching so I plopped down on the side of the trail to get my weight off of them, while deciding I was done for the night in the next several miles. There was a pretty big river crossing, possible with the help of a steeply slanted and broken in half log that some guys camped on the waters edge mentioned. At a bridged river I made the executive decision to stop for the night since my feet were screaming from the heavy pack and it was almost dark enough to have my headlamp on.

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Thursday July 29; Mile 318.4 to 330.5 (12.1 miles today, day 29). I read a book in my tent until almost noon, since I had only 10.3 miles to go to meet Rob at Chinook Pass at 6:30pm when he got off work. I used the last of my charging brick’s battery (it drains a lot faster when I call David every day!), knowing Rob would let me charge up in his car. There were many pretty wildflowers but far fewer plants to eat while I walked. The best view yet of Mt. Rainier was within the first mile, the gleaming white glaciers seemed so improbable a backdrop to the dry, dusty, burnt land that I was trudging across. A man and his two kids stopped to chat, asking about the PCT and about how to get back to their car; they didn’t have any water left, but wouldn’t accept mine when I offered (I’ve been worried about them all day). The day hikers (daysies as I lovingly call them in my head) and weekenders increased the closer I got to the Chinook Pass parking lot, with a large number of them hanging out in and around Sheep Lake. I got to talking to some ladies who were wading in the water when I dove under, and they were so excited and inspired by my PCT journey. I got to the pass over an hour before my meeting time, and sat to read some more. Michaela and Andrew joined me for a bit, connecting instantly because we were all wearing turquoise and had blue and black backpacks. I gave them the rest of my snacks because I knew I was going to have an absurd amount of food to carry very soon. Rob showed up in Hilda the Wonder Bus. He gave me my 6 heavy days of food, a tasty health shake to help with my shins (magnesium and at least 80 other vitamins and minerals), and access to his charging ports. While my brick charged for 3 hours, we caught up and he taught me some new juggling tricks (4-3-2 and reverse cascade). We watched a buck chase off a younger buck rather aggressively. After dark, I took off (extremely grateful to Rob for everything) with headlamp blazing and a pack that was way too heavy for the 2 days to White Pass. With several 10+ mile water carries in this section, us soboers were starting to worry about water availability further down trail, but then right after Chinook there were a number of streams that weren’t labeled on the maps. I camped about 1.7mi from the trailhead, enjoying the shooting stars, still warm air, and insect noises. I literally nodded off while writing this lol, hiker midnight hits hard.

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Wednesday July 28; Mile 300.8 to 318.4 + .2 miles to/from H2O (17.8 miles today, day 28). I woke up to the sound of B’Shert eating and packing up; we said goodbye and made plans to hopefully see each other in Packwood, since she planned to stop there for a night to wait on her friends. I splashed water on my face at the stream at the wildflower filled meadow and headed off, popping huckleberries in my mouth every couple of steps. Within the first mile, I came out onto Falls Creek Burn area (where there was a very helpful interpretive sign) and stopped with a wonderful view of Mt. Rainier to call David. At the Mike Urich Cabin, I used the pit toilet and sat down next to Munch Mix, a guy who was finishing up a section of WA he hadn’t done in 2019; both our motivations to keep moving had been left behind at that point. The cabin was cool, with a loft and a wood stove, but people had left trash everywhere (probably a combo of snowmobilers, pct hikers, jeep trail users, day hikers horse riders, etc since the cabin was super close to a trailhead). Everyday I see more and more noboers, which is pretty cool because they are me from the future if all goes well on trail. The further south I go, the more bugs there seem to be: I started seeing butterflies again (there was a week where I didn’t see any), so many yellow jackets, so many other kinds of wasps that have even bigger bodies and scarier stingers, mosquitoes (which everyone has warned me the Chinook to White Pass section will be horrible), ants are all over me constantly if I’m on the ground, the noise at night is constant, haven’t seen grasshoppers until recently, lots o’ bumble bees. Need I say more? The rest of the day I spent hiking through Norse Burn Area, a more recent burn with no trees trying to grow back yet, ash still covering the ground, and black charred wood everywhere. The amazing thing about burn areas: they’re bursting with life! Fireweed was literally everywhere (the flowers are tasty but the leaves tasted ashy), and in the next week or so it will be a field of purple as far as the eye can see. One hill had only blooming yarrow on it, and another had Scarlet Gilia and Coyote Mint, and yet another had ceanothus and manzanita (the last four species I haven’t seen much of, if at all, since getting to WA). In my not so humble opinion, the burn areas are for more magnificent than the monoculture timber forests of the last several days (although presumably the burn occurred on timber land). I stopped for a long, late lunch, which seems to have become my norm, at a lightly flowing stream and read some more of my 3rd trail book. I also had the pleasure of eating at least one million strawberries which were bigger today than yesterday. And I tried Grouse Whortleberries (an appetizing name, I know) for the first time: they’re AMAZING tiny little red circular fruits (related to the huckleberry) that taste like a mix between a cranberry (but sweet) and something tropical. When I checked for cell service to look up some plant info, I saw that my last boss had called and left a message, in effect offering me a job for the winter–I guess all I have to do to get a job is go disappear into the woods for half a year and not apply to anything to get a job! I’ve been doing it wrong my whole life haha. As I was munching my way through the burn, I bumped into Twig going nobo, and we had a lovely chat about Minnesota, his accent, and my recent travels on I-2, within 15 minutes of his house. The last 4 miles I hiked in the fading light, watching the pretty colors on the peaks to the East. I hiked .1mi past where I ended up camping, thinking there might be a spot available at the next water, but ended up hiking the .1 back to the empty site and getting a very small amount of water from the barely flowing stream. As I ate dinner I compared myself to Golem from Lord of the Rings, crouching on the ground with minimal light, slurping loudly away at some strange substance that most people would not consider food. I wrote today’s journal while cuddled up in my tent, trying to figure out if a rodent or an insect was making noises against my tent near my head (no luck, not a clue what it is).

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Tuesday July 27; Mile 282.2 to 300.8 + .4 miles to/from H2O (18.6 miles today, day 27). Different muscles were sore than normal when I woke up this morning: the back of my thighs specifically. I got ready after something woke me at 7am, saying hi to passerby from within the coziness of my tent. Several people passed me going sobo that I proceeded to yoyo with all day (Razor, and a family of four with Salt, Pepper, Jam Boy and Gearbox). This section of trail has a lot of dead animal sign on it: a poof of feathers, a bone (part of a spinal cord?), Fluffy animal fur (rabbit?), an entire dead bird, thick fur. I firmly believe that this section of trail has the steepest uphills of everything we’ve done so far. My calves are literally burning, which hasn’t really been the case anywhere else. I met Razor (so named because he shaves nightly even on trail) while he was shopping for shoes online using decent cell service (which I used to call David, of course), and again around lunch, and had a nice chat about weirdness with hiking partners, and again after lunch where he had set up camp early. The family of four told me as I came around the corner that I had just missed the cougar that ran across the trail (what!?!? Wow!); later at lunch by the spring which was about .2mi off trail, i chatted with them about gear and lighter weight backpacking. As I was wrapping up my long lunch break, B’Shert came along to grab water from the stream, which was the last water for 12 miles. We hiked it together (partially to get away from a kind of creepy guy), and hiked for several miles before agreeing to meet back up at camp at the next water. I had my first ripe wild strawberries of the trail! They’re sweeter than any of the other berries out here, and smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. The timber industry forests stretched out in every direction at every view point, in different states of regrowth from the last harvests. I sang again and again a song called Shooting Star that I had learned as a kid at Walden West Summer Camp, memorizing the words because I like it so much. I met a nobo, Stinky Cheese, and talked with him for a long time about all the edible fruits that awaited him and other random stuff that made me laugh. He was fun to talk with, and I hope to see him again since he plans to go Sobo from Chester where he started. The views of Mt. Rainier are ever closer, but unfortunately there seems to be some fire smoke obscuring it. I got to camp where B’Shert was already eating and quickly made my cold soaked couscous and dried mushrooms. The space available wasn’t flat by any means, but I was done for the day and made do.

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Monday July 26; Mile 264.9 to 282.2 (17.3 miles today, day 26). Slow start today, since I only had 16mi to do. A yellow jacket buzzed inside the storm doors the whole morning. A big woodpecker was making very distinctive knocking noises that were so slow and steady I thought it was a person hammering nails or something. At my first stop for water a mile from camp, I finished my breakfast (tortilla wrapped peanut butter, honey, dehydrated strawberries, and seeds and nuts) while sitting cross-legged on a log. I saw motion below me and look down to see a very small weasel-like creature (or otter-like?) carrying another very small weasel-like creature by the neck (perhaps carrying it’s young like cats do). It trotted unhurriedly past me, with not a care in the world and disappeared into the underbrush. A few minutes later, it came trotting back going the other way, now unburdened; this time it noticed me, and took a new, decidedly more hurried route through the rocky stream bed. Several more minutes passed and what do you know, out of the corner of my eye (coming from about 15 feet away to my right, instead of 5 feet to my left where I saw it the last two times), this same strange creature goes trotting through the bushes, again carrying another weasel in its mouth. The next two miles I felt miserable: crampy, back pain, tired, lonely, sad (yay hormones!), so when I got to Mirror Lake, I threw my pack down, stripped to my undergarments, and waded out into the shallow lake. For a half hour I enjoyed the cool water up to my hips, watching the beauty around me, and two young men floating around on inner tubes (blasting rap music). I eventually dove in and then stood in the sun to warm up. Just past the lake, I had enough cell service to give David a call. At about mile 10 I realized I needed to eat a late lunch, and read in the shade for a couple of hours. I had one of those poop moments where own minute you don’t have to go at all and the next you’re about to shit your pants (not fun, especially when the first place I chose for a cathole was too hard to dig in and I had to keep hiking for a better spot). These shoes make me use different muscles for walking, which is pretty interesting: when going uphill, it’s necessary to walk on my toes when the going gets steeper, which then forces me to engage the muscles at the back of the calf and the Achilles tendon area. I video called Chuckwalla and Smiley at the top of a hill (out here the ecosystem looked almost deserty with profusions of bear grass surrounded by sandy dirt, looking like yucca plants in a dry desert), and they perked me up a little and encouraged me to keep on it. They also convinced me to play music quietly on my phone speaker so I’d feel less lonely (I played Wild World and Tiger Striped Sky on repeat, trying to learn the words better). At about 3 miles to my campsite I passed by a grouping of tents near the trail. Some old white dudes (Mark and Clay) were laying outside their tents looking tired, and as I walked by and said hi one of them rudely and patronizingly reminded me (twice!) that it was getting late (aka, he said with words and tone: “silly girl, you should camp here because you can’t take care of yourself and shouldn’t be alone at night”). The nerve of some people. I politely asked him if he’d ever night hiked, and he looked shocked that that was even a thing. I waved goodbye and he said (sounding very much like he didn’t think I would) “well… I hope you make it all the way”. Needless to say, I sped on by. The whole afternoon the woods were giving me weird vibes, and I finally put two and two together. The trail passes through about a million dirt roads in this section (some more overgrown than others) and the woods felt dead (dense, monoculture trees); this is an area where timber is cut down to sell. One of the roads was even a pretty wide one, and I found a bunch of shell casings and bullet holes in the PCT signs (bigger than a .22). At one point when the trail came out under some high voltage power lines, I had a nice view of the top of Mt. Rainier. The sun was setting with lovely pastels when I finally emerged from the creepier parts of the dead forest. I grabbed water at a little spring that wasn’t producing much, and after seeing that the spot I’d been aiming to camp was full, continued on my way until I found a nice flat spot of my own. Pearl couscous takes longer than regular couscous to soak, so I had another rather crunchy dinner. My new tent is pretty snazzy, and somehow even more spacious than my Lanshan. I left the storm doors open to keep condensation down.

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Sunday July 25; Mile 259.8 to 264.9 with 0.6mi skipped because of ride to trailhead, Nero day at Newcastle near Snoqualmie Pass (5.1 miles today, day 25). Welp I did another one of those self destructive no sleep nights (I was up until 3am on my phone), and ended up getting less than 5 hours of sleep. That, along with the heat and my hormones made me feel unwell, almost hung over, all morning. Sarah, Rob and I did a tasty takeout breakfast from Dino’s. With the remaining Ziploc baggies I had, I split all of the food in half (6,000 calories is simply TOO MUCH) to extend the lifespan of all of the food I had bought, and to save my back, knees and shins. I ran to the UPS Store to send some stuff home and then to Safeway to fill in the missing food from all the extra days, and then bought gas to fill up the tank of the car I’d been borrowing. David and I spent the day on and off video calls just chatting and hanging out (and having a little bit of a domestic that we worked out). Then, the four of us (Bells included) loaded into the car and headed up to the pass. We did a really chiller mile from the southern trailhead at Snoqualmie Pass (I missed about 0.6miles of trail since I had left the trail at the northern trailhead a few days ago), before Bells gave up completely and had to be carried back. On I went, stopping to call David for an hour to day goodbye and I miss you and all the gooey relationshippy stuff that you say when you don’t know when you’ll be able to call again. From within a shrub I could hear cheeping, so I crawled between branches and to my joy found 4 tiny tiny little birds sitting on a log. Presumably they couldn’t fly yet, because a bird flew in to mouth feed one of them before flying away. The 5miles of hiking that I did today, I spent thinking about how dead exhausted I was, and about how different these shoes are (and how I don’t think they fit right). I used my Kula cloth for the first time; it’s kind of rough and weird, but it did the trick. At a campsite near Silver Peak Trailhead, I gave up the ghost around 5pm and just decided to have a leisurely evening and go to bed early. I had a fright when I was scrambling out if my tent, because I thought I heard some sort of animal roaring and growling–twas just a motorcycle at the trailhead, nothing more. Note to self: rice is not good for cold soaking if you’re in a hurry. I ate crunchy rice even after having soaked it for over an hour. My new duplex is AMAZING. Although still weird (what’s with the doors?). The good news about my new hiking pants: they’re less warm when I hike and they still keep the bugs out. The bad news about my hiking pants: they’re less warm at night and they show my ankles to the mosquitoes anyway. All this stretching has paid off! I was able to touch my toes for the first time since junior year of high school.

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