Damage Plan

Before traveling to Seattle, I decided to take a rental car over to Greensboro and have a little fun with my buddy Wolfpack. First we rolled over to a couple outfitters, so that I could find last minute solutions for my hike.  Some examples; I needed a long sleeve sun shirt for my walk, and I left my headlamp in my unicycle tool bag. After dropping off my rental, we got burgers at a Hops Burger Bar, which was fantastic. They served their sweet potato fries, sprinkled with Cinnamon and sugar. From their we walked(figures…) just about all over town, and visited 6 different bars/breweries. This included Natty Greene’s, and the newly opened Pig Pounder.

After a pretty late night, we both failed to wake up to our alarms and I missed my flight.  Well damn. For a second their, I thought I was out of another four-hundred dollars. But I called up delta, and they switched my flight to one leaving two and a half  hours later.

For the first flight, I had two seats to myself. Kinda nice. I was pretty tired, but I just spent the whole flight reviewing my PCT handbook. My next flight got delayed and I was stuck in the middle seat, but I got to watch a couple movies in the meantime. I think I would have rather been a sleep. Whenever the stewardess would roll by, I’d ask her for a cup of coffee; anything to keep me from sleeping in my neighbors lap, haha..

That’s when it hit me, the Seattle-Tacoma airport is still 4 1/2 hours from the trail-head. So I took the light-rail downtown and walked to REI. This place was huge. Seattle is the REI headquarters, so this one store was something like three times the size of every other REI I’ve been to. I came here hoping to find more last minute provisions, and hopefully some advice on how to get to the trail.

After a couple hours at REI, I grabbed a bus to Bellingham, WA. I figured it was a little too late in the day to hitch that far, so I wanted to get some culture. I visited Boundry Bay Brewery and Bistro for a beer and they closed soon after I arrived. So, I rolled over to the gas station next to my hotel to find stove fuel and something to eat. I commented to the girl at the counter “Kind of a weird mix of things, I know.” And her response was “Well at least its not paper towels, bleach and a butcher knife.”

The next morning I rode a couple buses over to Sedro-Woolley. This was as far as I thought I could get with public transportation. Time to get on the side of the road and start thumbin’ it. After a while I got picked up by two people named Janie and Greg. They lived in Concrete, and were heading my way. When we got to concrete I was hoping to grab a burger, but as it was Sunday, everything was closed. So, I settled for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. I finished my pint, well before anyone picked me up. But eventually, two people about to go do some trail work pick me up and then got me further. Not much longer thereafter, I got picked up by some rad people that fed me blueberries and jerky whilst I rode in the back seat.

They dropped me off at Rainy pass. So now I thought I was 30 miles from the canadian border. I was wrong. I started walking, and walked as far as cutthroat pass before I realized that I was in the wrong place. So, I walked back,  and me and another hiker tried to hitch for a couple hours before dark. We both ended up sleeping at Rainy pass, along with a Southbounder named Susanna, and a friend of her’s Glen.

The next morning, Susanna hiked south, the other hiker got a ride with Glen to Seattle, and I waited on the side of the road for 4-5 hours. Eventually, an SUV pulled over and what do you know, inside were two trail angels and two more southbounders. They gave me a ride to Mazana to resupply, and then up to Hart’s Pass to officially start day zero, my walk to the border. Thanks a bunch KC!( and indirectly Metric and Sticks).

Walking up to Woody pass was great. The snow fields were manageable. When I would get lost, I’d pick the trail back up pretty quickly.  I met a man named Eric. He was waiting around for two friends of his that were doing a “border run.” He was just chilling with most of their food waiting for them to get back because he didn’t feel comfortable matching their miles.

The trail from here till 8 miles from the border was sparsely visible. Washington had gotten a lot of snow this year and apparently some avalanches had wiped the trail out. So standing at the top of this pass, I decide to just go straight down to where I could see a switchback. Eric thought I was crazy, but I was just having fun. Perspective means a lot when it comes to finding your way through a pass. It looks pretty straight forward from the eagles eye, but inside the system, you loose all your bearings. I glissad-ed a little bit past the trail(500 ft) and had to climb back up the scree to get back. That can be exhausting when the ground is moving underneath you.

I made it through the next set of snow covered switchbacks and exited the pass. From there, I followed the trail over more  and more snowfields till it started to get dark. Keep in mind, snow travel was starting to feel like second nature by now, but snow travel in the dark just seemed like a bad idea for now. So, I set up camp in the small dirt patch I found on top of the pass and woke up to lots of condensation. Finally I figured out where the trail headed and was mostly out of the snow till the border.

I met the SoBos(Southbounders), Bug and Mud, whom Eric had been waiting for. The hikers were packing up camp, and had enjoyed a similar experience to mine the day before. They decided they were going to chance an alternate route, part of the Pacific Northwest Trail, to avoid the Woody Pass Section and asked that I give Eric a head’s up on my way back.

So I roll down to the border and take a couple pictures at the monument, and get the chance to meet two more SoBos. One I caught coming out of Canada. Her name was Hanna and she had no idea what was up ahead. The other, Jullian was just an hour or so behind me. He had probably set up camp near Bug and Mud.

OK, now that I had traveled that section of trail, I had a pretty good idea of how to navigate it. Time to go southbound and officially start Day 1. I plowed straight through all the sections that had given me trouble the day before. More or less cutting a straight line through everything. I got to the valley that gave everybody trouble and just jumped right in, sprinted across the snow to what faintly looked like a trail.

“From Rock Pass, you can see Woody Pass. That trail in front of you on the ridge on the left side of the valley is not the PCT. It’s not an alternate route. It is and old abandoned trail. Don’t take it.”

“Whatever you do, don’t take this abandoned trail. I cannot stress this enough. Unless you want to DIE“

Read the guidebook.

I unfortunately did not make this connection until too late. So, I walk this trail. It gets harder to follow, and the closer and closer I get to my destination, the more and more deadly the traverse seems. A lot of the SoBos this year didn’t have ice axes. This baffles me. Trail turned into near vertical scree fields and snow walls over a rocky thousand foot drop. It seemed just as dangerous to turn around as it did to push forward. But it was the unknown ahead of me that kept me going. At the last leg of what I now know to be Narrow Crest Pass, I had to stop and just shake the immense fear out of me, and also consider whether I should signal for an EVAC. I kept my wits about me and remained calm. This mile section ended up taking me 3hrs to traverse. But then, after climbing through some more scree and on some wet slab, a hundred feet below me I found the faint remains of the tail end of the abandoned trail.

I walked out of there, and just kept walking and walking(cause I was still in shock) until I met up with Eric who had camped at lower elevations. Before I had gotten to the border, my right Achilles was getting sore and was really starting to affect my ability to walk. I got as far as I could until I just had to stop, 8 miles before Hart’s Pass.

The following day, I walked past Hart’s pass campground, which was empty, and further down the trail. At which point, I met High Walker. He liked to walk/run big miles too, and is going for the speed record this year. He got his name because he travels the world walking tight ropes and slack lines. Fortunately he had some Ibuprofen, because I was all out.

I ended up walking the rest of the day, covering 43 miles. Only meeting one more SoBo named Hendrick. He tried to give me his crampons, saying he hasn’t used them once, and they’re weighing him down. I enjoyed the sunset over Cutthroat Pass, and walked under a full moon and set up camp around 11:30pm at Rainy Pass.

Day 3 was reasonably easy hiking with lot of switch backs and walking in the valley. Unfortunately, I had walked 43 miles the day before and wasn’t havin’ it. My feet hurt and had been wet for that last 4 days. I broke camp at 8:30am and it took me till 6pm to cover 20 miles because I had to stop so much. But I pushed on, know that I was going to take zero(day off) in Stehekin.

I rode their consession bus into Stehekin and got food and a room. I’ve been treating my feet with care and eating myself silly. I’m all cleaned up, but I’m going to stay in the campground tonight so that I can heal before the trek to Skykomish. Cheers y’all!