I was motivated this morning. I was a man on a mission. I woke up before the alarm and made breakfast. I even made lukewarm coffee so Bunny didn’t have the excuse she had to wait for it to cool. We were ON the trail at 7:45. The mission was simple, make it to Chinook Pass before either Bunny or I exploded. There are pit latrines and trash cans there—I intend to drop a load in each.
Within a quarter mile of leaving the lake, something mysterious happened. A joyful mystery, so we didn’t question it. All the mosquitoes disappeared. We also started encountering people on the trail who were…different. When we approached them, we could smell tide or cologne. We were in the land of day hikers.
It’s never a good thing to start the morning on an incline—Bunny’s hips need to get warmed up first. It’s also not a good idea to start the day on a decline—Bunny’s hips need to get warmed up first. Come to think of it, it’s not a good idea to start the day on level ground—Bunny’s hips need to get warmed up first. Bunny prefers to lay in bed until the sun strikes the tent and it’s rays penetrate through the quilt and warm up her hips the way god intended. This is why we don’t let Bunny set the alarm. She won’t do it.
In spite of creaky, cold hips, we made pretty decent time ascending the first 750’ climb of the day. The trail also widened out as further indication of a day use area. We encountered dozens of hikers and a couple of llamas. We tried to hurry past, but who can resist llamas, or dogs. We had to slow down for them which usually required interacting with other humans in some manner. I no longer have to quiz sobos. We’ve encountered the only person we knew is heading our direction. That’s why I was stunned when I rounded a bend and heard someone say “It can’t be. It’s Curtis.”
It took me a second to recognize John and Jenny who we hiked with on the Wonderland Trail nearly 3 years ago. We’ve kept in regular touch ever since and we have been planning to meet up since they live in Sisters, OR. It was a great surprise to see our old friends and make plans to meet again in a few weeks. We were actually able to stop and chat for about 15 minutes without swatting mosquitoes. If only all the day hikers hadn’t been around constantly cutting between us on the trail (I kind of wanted to swat them instead). Jenny had hiked this section of trail yesterday without John who was on a multi day hike. He cut it short and got a hitch back to their campsite as a surprise. Today, they were looking for a good loop hike and Jenny said she’d gladly do this section again because of all the wildflowers. They had also been out on the Oregon Coast when we were hiking that, but we didn’t manage an encounter then.
I would have liked to spend more time together, but since the crowds were coming and we were hiking in opposite directions, we decided to move on. We still had a couple of explosions to prevent and these weren’t the type you can just snip a wire and call it a day. It wasn’t that much further to the mini-hiker nirvana. We dropped our packs in the shade of a pit latrine, deposited a few loads (in trash cans and otherwise) and then sat down to start the manual reloading process. A few people were interested in the people eating at the latrine…it was a conversation starter.
There was still 10 beautiful miles to hike. There were still amazing views of the big 3 volcanoes in the area. It was a hot day. But most importantly, there were no mosquitoes. Today, we could mingle on the trail and do so leisurely. We had a 1600’ climb up to Sour Dough Gap. Because it was so warm, we made use of every shady spot along the way which led to Bunny conversing endlessly. She must have had a lot bottled up inside because it took us almost 12 hours to go 13 miles, today.
I tried leading for a while and I noticed a couple of sobos that Bunny would like to talk to when she caught up. This was Abstract and Toasty. They were a young couple that met thru-hiking the AT in 2016. They’ve got an impressive travel resume including part of the Israel National Trail. Abstract has been to India and Nepal. They’ve both spent a lot of time in South America and gave us some ideas of things to do down there. Toasty did some guiding in Bolivia and gave us some great tour ideas other than the salt flats. I was the only one sitting, so the other 3 gave out before I did, but we still had about 8 miles to cover.
As we were finishing off our last big climb, we met 3 successive sobos that we stopped and talked with for quite a while. The first was an old man. It’s not too often I get to use that term anymore, but he was 65ish. He was out on a test hike to see if he was capable of doing long distance hiking at his age. He was so excited and happy to be out. He was averaging 15 miles per day while he hiked the Washington section of the PCT. we didn’t get his name, but it was great to see someone that age clearly living a longtime dream and thoroughly loving it.
There’s a couple of trends I see developing on trail this year. I’m thinking a lot of sobos are feeling a little put out that there are so many other hikers on the trail with them. Im feeling a bit of attitude from some of them being unwilling to talk and hearing responses like “Im a TRUE sobo thru hiker.” There is a feeling of superiority coming from quite a few that don’t even want to talk to someone who is tainted, like Bunny and I are, because we didn’t stay true to our hike. Plus, a lot of people just don’t think we’re thru hikers because I shave, we bathe regularly, and we’re not carrying ultralight equipment.
Then there’s another trend that I’m liking. There’s a feeling of ease and calm among a large group of hikers saying “Slow down. Enjoy the day.” We rarely saw this on the AT (Mizman excepted). A big contributor to this is the weather screwing with everyone’s plans for a straight thru hike. Nobos are flipping everywhere. The hike they had planned to have is not possible. Rather than give up and go home, they are adapting and mellowing out about it. Then there are just a few zen hikers.
Wesley is a true sobo zen hiker. He quit his well paying job as an office manager at an architectural firm in the SF Bay Area. He started out highly driven averaging 25 miles per day but hurt his ankle. He took a couple days off to recover. When he returned to the trail, his attitude had changed to believe that he was lucky to be out here, and why rush through the experience. Slow down and take it in. When I first saw Wesley, his head was almost completely covered. I asked if it was because of mosquitoes or sun. From there we spent about 20 minutes talking on a wide range of topics. It was so cool to watch Wesley open up to us. The more he opened up, the more he uncovered his head and face. He was literally, opening himself to us.
The third encounter was with someone just completely infectious about life. I was finishing up our last big climb of 600’ when this guy in front of me just starts waving and saying “hi, how’s it going.” I’m flashing through my memory trying to figure out where we’ve met and I can’t place him. He was just 100% happy to be out here and meet people. Feast had on a Hawaiian shirt so I asked if he was flipping. No, just been on the trail for a few weeks heading south. He saw a flipper wearing a Hawaiian shirt and thought it was a great idea. Feast is the type of person you like to have around—always happy, always positive, always on.
As if meeting all these great people and running into old friends wasn’t enough for one day. It was getting to be past 5 and we still had about 3 miles left to go. We decided to take a water break and check the Gut to see exactly where we were. Only 2.4 miles, so better than we thought. As we were getting ready, Bunny lost her balance and started falling towards the downhill side of the trail. She easily caught her balance, but noticed something big moving in the grass just below us. We saw our first bear in Washington today!
The final bit of hiking was a breeze. We were hyped from the day. Our bodies were aching a bit from the amount of time we have been on our feet with our overweight packs on our backs. We were ready for camp when we arrived. We met a Josh who had a fire going. We found out he’s from NC and is hiking between 15-20 miles a day sobo. He thought he should be doing more by now and is worried about not getting his trail legs. He has them but doesn’t realize it. He is one of maybe a handful of people on the trail cooking on wood. To hike a full day then build a fire to eat takes more time than just lighting a stove. I used to love to carry my Biolite stove (still do) but when you’re thru hiking, I don’t want to give the Biolite the time and effort it takes to cook on it. That’s why we now carry a jet boil.
Because of limited flat spots in the area, we had to wait until Josh’s fire went out before we set up our tent. Bunny didn’t get to lie down until almost 9 so already she’s saying we don’t need to set an alarm in the morning. This has been a long, but satisfying day. We didn’t cover a lot of miles, but we got to talk to lots of great people. I know it’s said so much that it’s a cliche, but it’s not the trail so much as the people you meet. That’s very true about long distance hiking, unless you are Hannibal Lechter and then it’s always been about the people you eat.
EFG