Miles today: 24.4
Trail miles sum: 1866.9
Trail location: 2549.2
Elevation: 4552
Spinning on the turntable: The traveling Wilburys collection
I started the day with the big climb with all the switchbacks that I mentioned yesterday. It wasn’t terrible. It was however, very wet.
When I reached the summit I could smell a fire. A few other hikers had camped near the trail and had a fire burning in a pit. As much as I wanted to stop and warm up, I continued moving forward.
I’m having a challenging time with my fingers in relationship to the cold. It’s difficult to perform fine motor skill tasks like sliding a zipper, opening a candy bar package or using my phone. The cold and wet environment is wreaking havoc on my body.
Today there are many logs crossing the trail that require navigating, over, under or around. This tree was a “under”.
This tree was an “over”. Sometimes the larger trees have notches cut into them for foot placement.
The green growth covers everything on the ground. I imagine if I laid down on the ground I’d be covered in moss and green growth pretty quickly too!
I’m expecting to wrap up WA this week. I will skip Stehekin tomorrow and push on to meet up with Noelle the day after that at Rainy pass. (I carried an extra days food to make this feasible.)
I really want to be done with WA. The views, when I see them, are incredible. The rain is challenging.
I can relate to your discussion about contacts with former co-workers. It has been my experience that they usually are very willing to see me but I had to initiate meetings. As I am naturally an introvert I find it hard to contact people but it is always worth the effort.
I am guessing that by now (real time 24 Sept.) You have finished Washington but the weather may have been bad enough to slow you down, I know we had quite a few days with significant rain in Portland. I am glad you found a way to hike in the rain, hopefully you can keep it up long enough to get thru Washington. You are so close to that end of the trail.
Stay warm, I know you probably won’t be dry much of the time.
Did you see any ewoks? You need one of those flying bike things. OMG. It looks so cool. Like out of a movie. Wow.
I was hoping to stop at Sterling and get a report from u . I want to visit there some day.u would be following in Rip Van Winkels footsteps if u laid down on the moss, another 100 years.