August 5, 2012
After spending the night on the
trail with Jay, we hiked north six miles early this morning to the car at Windigo Pass.
I waved good-bye to him and drove slowly along an extremely rutted road
through the forest to Hwy 58, then on to the Willamette Pass. Jay continued hiking north along the PCT.
At 2:00 p.m. I started hiking
south, toward Jay, from the Willamette
Pass trail head. The sun shone between the trees, the trail
wound gently across the landscape, and the mosquitoes flocked for a feast. I stopped to put on DEET, then continued, the
mosquitoes only partially deterred by the chemicals.
As I hiked, I tried to reflect on
the past few weeks, wondering if there were any life lessons I had learned, or
if I had been changed in any way by this adventure. But mostly my brain just kept focusing on the
future, mentally gearing up for a new school year.
I was so lost in my reflections
that I didn’t notice the sky clouding up.
Suddenly I heard a long, low growling sound. I peered upwards. It had been so long since I’d seen anything
but blue, the grey above the trees didn’t really register. ‘Was that an airplane passing?’ I
wondered. Another long, continuous growl
answered. I came to a break in the trees
and looked out. Light grey clouds above
me transitioned to dark black on the horizon.
‘It’s thunder!’ I realized. ‘And
that is probably rain over on those mountains!
Oh my gosh, I’m going to get dumped on!’
I looked at my watch. 5:30 p.m.
I didn’t expect to see Jay for at least another hour, perhaps two. With my forward motion ceased, the mosquitoes
swarmed, dancing around my eyes, zeroing in to my nostrils. I definitely needed to keep moving, for
sanity’s sake, as well as to meet Jay sooner.
The trail had been heading uphill
pretty steadily for the last 3 hours, but now it began to gain altitude with
determination. My pace slowed,
mosquitoes buzzed with glee, every rock or root was magnified. Pretty soon I
began crossing small snow patches, each one slippery with melting ice
crystals. Thunder and lightning
continued, crawling slowly closer. I
kept climbing, wishing Jay would walk around a corner of the trail, and we
could just turn around and head downhill.
Raindrops began to splatter, trees were thinning, and I emphatically did
not want to be heading uphill on a mountain in a storm.
At 6:45 p.m., I reached the top of
a ridge. It was raining pretty steadily
now, and the thunder and lightning had not abated, though it was still off to
one side of the trail, not right overhead.
I had not yet met Jay. After some
dithering, I wrote him a note, telling him I was turning around and sure he
could catch up to me. Then I dug a
plastic bag out of my pants pocket, and placed note inside bag in the middle of
the trail, with a small rock cairn holding it down. I also placed a Gatorade next to it, so Jay
would for sure see it.
As I turned to reluctantly start
back on the trail I had just climbed, I took one last look down the opposite
side of the ridge. Through the trees I
glimpsed movement. It was Jay! Hooray!
I waited until he topped the ridge, so glad to see him I wanted to sweep
him off the ridge with the force of my hug!
We discussed our options, and
decided to keep hiking while it was raining, maybe even hiking all the way to
the car. Neither one of us wanted to set
up a tent while it was actively raining.
Our gear was much drier staying inside the packs.
“Did you cross much snow?” Jay
asked.
“Oh yes, I crossed tons of snow
patches,” I replied, then added, “And the trail gets really steep for a while,
with lots of rocks.”
“Hmmm,” Jay said, not sounding very
encouraged. “Well, let’s get walking
while we still have daylight.”
We headed downhill, walking as fast
as possible. Every time we came to a snow
patch, we would climb up on it, then run/slide across to the end of it. After about 15 minutes, we had descended
enough to leave the snow behind.
“I think we are done with the
snow,” I said.
Jay snorted with laughter. “That’s about 1% of what I’ve already crossed
today. I had to cross a huge cirque at
the base of Diamond
Peak. Not fun in a thunderstorm.”
“Oh,” I ventured. “I guess my perspective is a bit
limited. Sounds like you’ve already
hiked much harder stuff than I’ve done today.”
We continued downhill, splashing
through puddles, peering through rain, counting the seconds between lightning
flashes and thunder peals. I was so
grateful to be headed downhill, and with the comforting presence of Jay in
front of me.
We passed a lake with a beautiful
camping spot next to it.
“I was here at 5:15 p.m.,” I told
Jay. “I was thinking at the time that it
would be a good place for us to stop for the day. But with this rain now, I’d rather just keep
walking while we have daylight.”
“You mean, we are still three hours
from the car?” Jay asked, sounding startled.
“Well, three of my hours,” I
replied. “We might be faster since we’re
going downhill now.”
We pressed on, trying to cover as
much ground as possible in the fading daylight.
We came to a trail junction and consulted the map.
“The car is 4½ miles away,” Jay informed
me.
“That’s wonderful!” I
exclaimed. “I know I can hike that
far!”
As the light dimmed, our pace slowed. Soon the ground and surrounding forest were a
dark blur, with the sky above the trees providing the only light source, a
muffled grey. I couldn’t see the ground
or my feet, but I could see Jay’s light-colored pants moving ahead of me. Every time I saw his legs descend abruptly, I
braced myself to find a rock or a root in the trail ahead.
I tried to remember landmarks that
we might be able to see in spite of the dark.
“When we cross an isolated trailhead at a gravel road, we’ll be only 2
miles from the car,” I told Jay. We
continued walking. Raindrops slowed to a
gentle spatter, still raining hard enough to discourage mosquitos, but no
longer a downpour. Without enough light
to see my watch, I couldn’t judge how long we had been walking. ‘That gravel road must be near,’ I
thought. ‘We’ve surely walked far enough!’
The light gradually darkened to
full night. It became hard for Jay to
even see the trail through the forest.
He stopped and put on his headlamp.
Mine was almost burned out, so I didn’t bother. I just followed him even more closely through
the blackness.
Finally we saw the trailhead signs,
and walked out on to a smooth gravel road.
Jay dug out his map once more, and we looked at it. The trail paralleled a paved road leading two
miles to Hwy. 58. According to the map,
we could follow the gravel road less than half a mile to the paved road, then
walk to our car, avoiding two miles of tripping over roots and rocks on the
trail.
The rain had subsided to a tiny
drizzle by this time, and we could have stopped and pitched our tent without
getting too wet. But finding flat ground
in the dark is never easy, and we were so close to the car that it seemed to
make more sense to just keep walking.
The first few yards were lovely,
walking side-by-side on a wide gravel road.
But the road quickly narrowed and began sloping downhill. Ruts appeared in the gravel, and soon I was
blindly following Jay’s dwindling headlamp, my feet tripping over fist-sized
rocks that rolled and tumbled away from me.
Just when I was thinking that we
had somehow missed the road and were descending a creekbed, we came out of the
trees into a vast open space. Above us
clouds scudded by, revealing starlight.
An electric light shone off to our left several yards away. We slowly walked toward it, peering around,
trying to figure out what we had stumbled across. As we got closer, I saw a long, uniform berm
of gravel ahead of us, and the light resolved itself into one bright white
light on a pole with a red light underneath.
Understanding hit us at the same moment.
“It’s a railroad!” I exclaimed.
Once again Jay pulled out his
map. We looked, excited to pinpoint our
position after so much stumbling through darkness.
There was no railroad on the
map.
“What the heck?!” I muttered. Where could we be? Had we missed the gravel road entirely and
ended up going the wrong way?
“Those railroad tracks go into a
tunnel,” Jay observed. Just then we
heard the sound of a train, coming closer, louder. “Let’s get away from the tracks!” Jay
shouted. We quickly ran down the berm
and stood among the weeds next to the forest.
The engine’s light began shining through the tunnel, lighting up the
area around us in brilliant black and white relief. With a rush, the engine swooped through the
tunnel, exploding in sound and motion on the other side, then passing us in a
swirl of hot air, pulling a long string of boxcars after it. We stood there, watching the engine’s
headlight fade away, listening for several minutes as each train car passed us. ‘Whoosha, whoosha, whooosha.’
When the last boxcar had passed,
quiet starlight shone down on the clearing.
“Maybe I should try the GPS,” Jay murmured. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and
turned it on. The GPS did not show the
train tracks either, but it did confirm that we were very close to the paved
road. “Let’s keep going,” Jay
decided. We crossed the tracks, and once
again plunged into the dark forest.
Again my feet found rocks that
rolled and bumped, clicking and clacking like miniature train cars down the
gravel path. ‘I just hope neither of us
turns an ankle on this stuff,’ I thought.
After several yards of blindly following Jay, feeling my way with
trekking poles and feet, Jay suddenly stopped in front of me. ‘What now?’ I wondered.
“We’re here,” he announced.
“Where?” I asked suspiciously.
“At the paved road,” he replied.
“Really?! Are you serious? Really?
It’s the road?” I gasped.
I walked around him and set my feet on smooth, seamless pavement. In the starlight, I could see painted lines
gleaming. I felt like dancing!
“My headlamp is fading by the
second,” Jay told me. “Can you follow
the road without the light?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “Walk on a flat surface without rocks or
roots to trip over? I could walk all
night on this!”
We set out, joyfully taking long
strides, swinging our trekking poles through the air, breathing deeply of
starlit night. Suddenly, around a bend
in the road, a light appeared.
“It’s a car!” Jay exclaimed. “Quick, get over to the side!” I hesitated, a bit confused. Car?
Side of road? Which side? Jay grabbed my arm and pulled me with
him. We stood on the edge of the road,
watching the beam of light. It didn’t
move. We waited. It still didn’t move.
“Let’s walk slowly,” Jay
directed. Carefully we moved forward,
wondering about the source of light. We
rounded the corner of the road to discover a rising MOON in front of us,
sending a cold path of whiteness the length of the road. “Well,” Jay laughed. “We could have used that an hour ago!”
We continued on, walking until we
could hear cars, then see swooping headlights, and finally we came to Hwy.
58. “Hurray!” I cheered, knowing the car
was parked at a trailhead just a few yards away.
We reached our car at 11:00
p.m. Jay had hiked 37 miles, and I had
hiked 20 miles. Quite a feat for my last
day on the trail! Quietly we drove down
the highway, tired and content. We
stopped at the first open motel we reached, and happily collapsed. Shower, clean sheets, and sleeping in . . .
what luxury! Thanks to our adventure,
luxury doubly appreciated!
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