The first words out of my mouth this morning are curses – it’s raining. Again. UGH. I loiter around because I don’t want to deal with it, but there are pressing things to think about, like how I’ll only have a Snickers and a pack of Idahoan potatoes left after this day of hiking. I gotta get into town today. Continue reading →

The rain starts up around 4am, defying the weather report’s later prediction; no one starts moving until 6. The regret at leaving the dry confines of our tiny tent worlds is strong this morning. But we have miles to make, so we’re eventually all out and rolling down the trail in the rain. Continue reading →

I’m up around 7:30 – too early for a town day – but I need to get some writing done before I leave town. Lucky for me, there’s room-coffee available. It’s not great coffee, but it’s coffee, and it gives me the motivation to get up off my ass, get dressed, and head for the computer in the lobby. Continue reading →

In the morning, everything is kind of damp – sleeping bag, tent, clothes left outside of sleeping bag. That’s what I get for camping in the open instead of in the trees. I paw through my food bag for food for the morning, but nothing seems particularly appetizing. Nothing does on a town day. I’ve got 16 miles to go to Snoqualmie Pass, where a hotel room is waiting for me; snacks will be acceptable for that distance. So many snacks, but snacks. Continue reading →

It’s not quiet in my site at the end of a gravel road, but it is weird as hell. Around 1am, an elk starts tromping around and yelling near my tent; around 2am, someone goes by with a white headlamp that shines directly into my tent, and around 3am, the elk is at it again. So much for uninterrupted sleep. Continue reading →

The night is quiet, so quiet – this has to be the quietest place I’ve ever been. The deer I spooked earlier going to pee seemed strangely loud, but things have settled in for the evening – myself included – and it’s so quiet that my eyelashes scraping against my sleeping bag are nails on a chalkboard, and my heart is thunder raging in my chest. There’s so little sound that I have no reference for what’s loud or quiet, and, so disoriented, it’s less sleeping than it is my brain deciding that the input not matching expectations requires a hard reset. In the morning, I’m well and truly ready to leave the silence of the evening behind, and my footsteps are loud as I make my way down the hill to Chinook Pass. Continue reading →

I have dreams of finishing the trail, only half-remembered on waking. That’s probably to do with the windstorm howling outside, punctuated by some kind of precipitation – kinda gets your attention, particularly when you know you have to get out into it, make it about 20 miles to your resupply before the place closes. Still, it’s 5:30, and I’m not going out into that if I don’t have to, even if I know it’s going to be light enough to hike by 6:30. I’m not terribly interested in hiking through this. Continue reading →

I sleep alright after I put my earplugs in, dull the edges of the sounds around me. I wake a couple of times given that, with earplugs in, there’s no really localizing sound, and there are a couple of sounds in the night that could be… well, could be whatever; my brain doesn’t care about them, and puts me back to sleep. When my alarm goes off, all it cares about is coffee and food, and I’m the first up and first out, grabbing water at Lava Spring before I head northward into the morning. Continue reading →