I slept hard almost all night, waking at 5:40am to the sound of raindrops hitting the tent fly of my mountain Hardware Trilight tent. The extra weight of the tent may be well worth carrying if we have foul weather here in the Cascades. Up at 6:05, I packed as much gear into my pack as possible and donned the raingear before scurrying out to quickly take down the tent before it got any wetter. Tabasco and I both moved a little slower, it seemed, in the cold drizzle, which began picking up about the time we began hiking at 6:50am. The initial climb was gradual and took us from 5400 feet to 7100 feet, up to Lakeview Ridge.
The rain was very cold and my hands were freezing cold as they frequently are since I have Raynauld’s Phenomenon, a condition where fingers and toes sometimes over-react to cold temperatures and send the blood in the capillaries back toward the core of the body. The result is whitish skin with almost total numbness in affected areas. The higher we climbed, the harder it rained and at about 6800 feet, it changed to snow. By then I was miserable from the wet and cold and couldn’t even get excited about the large, wet snowflakes falling on us.
Once we reached 7100 feet we descended only slightly over the next couple miles and the snow increased in intensity. It began to lay on the ground just above us and made a nice dusting on the rocky tops of the ridgeline. Finally we lowered to about 6500 feet and were able to find a tree for temporary shelter, while we fumbled with numb hands to get on more clothing. The snow finally ceased, changing back to rain a little farther down the trail, before stopping to a spritz misty rain emanating out of the clouds all around and just above us.
I was not having fun at all and was thinking that if the rest of the journey, even just Washington, is going to be like this, then I won’t continue. I’m not a fair weather only hiker and I’ve had plenty of miserable weather days in my backpacking life, but Washington Cascades can be brutal with days or weeks of cold rain and that just wouldn’t be my idea of fun.
My darkened spirit and mood were suddenly uplifted as we came down the trail and two hikers huddled under a tree recognized me as I recognized them. It was Panda and Gloves, who hiked with us in the Sierra. The last time I saw them was the day we hiked back over Kearsarge Pass to re-enter the High Sierra, after getting more food at Independence. That day I had altitude sickness and our group stopped for me before going over Glen Pass. Panda and Gloves, as well as Chubbs and Jackhammer, kept going. I actually saw them once more at VVR, the fateful day I got off trail, due to the infected foot, but didn’t talk to them at the boat landing because I was so sick. It was so uplifting to see them on their final day on the trail. Gloves lives in Portland and Panda plans to move there, so I will have additional friends to spend time with when I stay this winter and spring.
After 30 minutes of catching up, we had to go, as Tabasco and I were both very cold and wet. We continued down trail and barely an hour later met Zip and Patch, who were also finishing their thru-hike today. After a few minutes of talking, we continued on and at 11:15am found a clump of trees in the otherwise exposed mountain, where we broke for lunch and put on more clothes to get warm. After lunch we got a break from the drizzle and we reached Holman Pass, a low point at 5050 feet. It was warmer there and with no precip, so we stopped to take off a layer of clothing for the next climb.
Just as we were beginning to hike again, two more hikers appeared. They looked familiar and I knew I had met them, but only briefly. It was Brooke and Virge, two gals I had met back in Idyllwild at the Kettle restaurant one morning as I entered the restaurant, and they were just leaving to resume their hike. Tabasco and I talked with them for a while and I shared the funny story about Freebird’s mountain lion experience. Their hike ends tomorrow.
As we began our climb, the sun broke through for a couple minutes and two miles later into the climb, broke through again. We quickly removed gear from our packs, especially damp sleeping bags, to see if we could get anything to dry. Unfortunately the sun only lasted about 10 minutes before another cloud got in the way and it immediately got cold again. Later in the afternoon we got mini-breaks where we could briefly get views across the range.
We met a couple that live nearby, Sarah and Brian, out for a week. They gave us chocolate chip cookies (great trail magic) and a more positive forecast for the next two days than we had earlier heard. The last northbounder of the day was Smiley, from Israel, who didn’t start hiking today until 3pm because he hates rain so much. His plan was to hike all the way to Manning Park tonight, thinking he’ll get there around 3am. Still cold and climbing, my feet (heels) both developed blisters from the new shoes and the right foot, which started getting tender yesterday, was fairly painful on the climb. Tabasco was getting used to new shoes as well and at 4:50pm we passed a nice campsite with water flowing and decided to stop for the day.
We leisurely set up, then collected firewood and made a great campfire to eat by. I crawled in the tent an hour ago (now 9pm) and started journaling on this cold, damp night. The fire is almost gone and the woods are very quiet with no sound except occasional crackling from the firepit. Hopefully there will be no more rain tonight and I am rolling the dice by not putting the fly over my tent. I sure hope we’ll see sun tomorrow so we can warm up and dry out. Today’s weather: rain, snow, cloudy. Low 34, high 50. today’s mileage: 21.8, cumulative 1348.5.
