Rachel, Adam, Freak Show and Me.
Recently, I had the privilege of hiking with my friends Rachel and Adam (and their new puppy dog "Freak Show") This is Rachel's account of our journey.
Last night I listened to the wind skirling in the pine trees like inconstant surf, ebbing and fading and passing all about us and then away. That day we scrambled over snow. July sun beating down on us and all around snow like scraps, like swaths, like whole bolts of cloth shining in the sun. They fell sheer from crevasses like melting scoops of ice cream, trickling over the trail, the ground, everywhere, in cool clear meltwater streams. We came to one slippery in the sun and steep, stretching out in front of us broad and smooth for about 20 yards. Scrambling across, trying to hold on. Two pairs of footprints to follow, the dog pulling left and right and back and down, frantic with the way the snow felt under his paws.
Today fixed that panic. This morning I dug a hole in our first few miles, a stand of trees to my back and a meadow of green leaves and yellow, red, purple flowers waving in the sun before me. To my left was a rocky mountain knob almost mossy-looking with green. Spread out in front of me, a range of mountains and snow and granite – forbidding even in the early morning sun. 2 hours later we were climbing that mossy knob. The moss resolved itself into sprays of wildflowers and tiny butterflies in blue and orange. There is an herb I can’t place growing in sprawly patches everywhere, and it smells like home.
Crawling across the skin of the green green earth like ants, like turtles. Nothing around us but green and brown thrown into relief by white patches of snow, nothing in sight but the green green blue mountains serrating off into the distance, all overdomed by a perfect blue sky. We occasionally meet other hikers on the trail. When we pass close to a trailhead, day hikers appear like some sort of aliens, walking down the trail clean and white with jogging shorts, children, babies. Almost all the backpackers we meet are through-hikers, all heading towards Canada. We met an older gentleman who showed us the obituary of his friend, who had died his second day out alone on the PCT. He had been seventy, and died of a punctured lung. We nodded solemnly. Today we meet Ewa, a leathery man with a long, wiry beard and wild hair. He is slung all over with packages, wearing a backpacker’s pack with sacks attached behind and a daypack on his front. He tells us he carries a solar shower, and talks about how infrequently he hikes on trails. He points to a peak behind him, Needle Peak, that has a lake frozen straight through, blue ice even in July. You have to bushwack your way up to it, though. He advises us to take the second Tevis fork from our trail to find a really great, broad granite plain to camp on. He talks about lowering your pack over a cliff with a rope, and this one time he slid 1000 vertical feet down a snow face. We come to a great, broad snowfield, with vague footprints tracking off several ways in the distance. There are many spots without snow at the base of trees and in great rocky mudpaths, but the trail is often lost. I tie a rag over my eyes to keep from going blind and we plow up. The steep face rising before us is obviously where we are supposed to go. It is hard, slow work, and although we cut a decent amount of length off the trail by plowing straight up instead of switchbacking, it is no savings. The dog does not help, although he hates the snow less than yesterday. After what seems like hours, we crest the peak and are granted a distant blueing view of Tahoe and its far rim mountains. The other face of the mountain is blissfully free of snow, and we descend into a land of meadows again, only to see a long curving ascent to a windy, rocky, nasty ridge. The trail ends there and we have lost three miles of our day – we followed the wrong trail out of the snowfield. The detour granted us the pleasure of viewing an endless chair lift and abandoned ski resort. Another peak. We climb over and around felled trees, a different obstacle for the dog than for our monkey selves. We mount patches of snow all high and narrow instead of yesterday’s broad. Five miles of dreamlike switchback ascent through big, fat pines, gradually growing gnarly and stunted, eventually breaking through to scrubby bushes that grab across the trail with thorny arms. The trail almost reaches the crest of the ridge and turns, heading laterally 10 feet from the top. A powerful, constant wind blows up and over the ridge. We have split up and I am alone with the dog. I could walk forever, yet each step is a drunkard’s and has been all day. The rocky trail makes me stagger, the wind holding me up like a sober friend. I ought to be playing the part of the drunk, singing and swearing. I shout into the wind. Lake Tahoe has been tantalizing us in the distance for days, appearing and disappearing with the vagaries of the trail. It pitches into view again and sits, shining deep and blue and not so far away, with a ragged fringe of mountains behind it. We descend towards the north fork of Blackwood Creek, and make camp together for the last time. The creek is terraced with snow, great curving arches on each side that reach out and over and touch in places to form perfect, deadly, bridges. The dog escapes and runs out onto one and does not fall through. In the morning, I crane my head out the tent door and around the side to watch, sandwiched between a tree trunk five feet across and a turn of the hill, a tiny sliver of Tahoe’s mountains and the sky above them golding from pink as the hot red sliver of the sun edges up over the side of the world. I shout Here it comes! and we all cheer.
PCT section hike Southbound Boreal trailhead (Soda Springs) to Forest Road 3 (~35 miles, 3.5 days) Civilization Index - 4/35 (instances/total miles)
Last night I listened to the wind skirling in the pine trees like inconstant surf, ebbing and fading and passing all about us and then away. That day we scrambled over snow. July sun beating down on us and all around snow like scraps, like swaths, like whole bolts of cloth shining in the sun. They fell sheer from crevasses like melting scoops of ice cream, trickling over the trail, the ground, everywhere, in cool clear meltwater streams. We came to one slippery in the sun and steep, stretching out in front of us broad and smooth for about 20 yards. Scrambling across, trying to hold on. Two pairs of footprints to follow, the dog pulling left and right and back and down, frantic with the way the snow felt under his paws.
Today fixed that panic. This morning I dug a hole in our first few miles, a stand of trees to my back and a meadow of green leaves and yellow, red, purple flowers waving in the sun before me. To my left was a rocky mountain knob almost mossy-looking with green. Spread out in front of me, a range of mountains and snow and granite – forbidding even in the early morning sun. 2 hours later we were climbing that mossy knob. The moss resolved itself into sprays of wildflowers and tiny butterflies in blue and orange. There is an herb I can’t place growing in sprawly patches everywhere, and it smells like home.
Crawling across the skin of the green green earth like ants, like turtles. Nothing around us but green and brown thrown into relief by white patches of snow, nothing in sight but the green green blue mountains serrating off into the distance, all overdomed by a perfect blue sky. We occasionally meet other hikers on the trail. When we pass close to a trailhead, day hikers appear like some sort of aliens, walking down the trail clean and white with jogging shorts, children, babies. Almost all the backpackers we meet are through-hikers, all heading towards Canada. We met an older gentleman who showed us the obituary of his friend, who had died his second day out alone on the PCT. He had been seventy, and died of a punctured lung. We nodded solemnly. Today we meet Ewa, a leathery man with a long, wiry beard and wild hair. He is slung all over with packages, wearing a backpacker’s pack with sacks attached behind and a daypack on his front. He tells us he carries a solar shower, and talks about how infrequently he hikes on trails. He points to a peak behind him, Needle Peak, that has a lake frozen straight through, blue ice even in July. You have to bushwack your way up to it, though. He advises us to take the second Tevis fork from our trail to find a really great, broad granite plain to camp on. He talks about lowering your pack over a cliff with a rope, and this one time he slid 1000 vertical feet down a snow face. We come to a great, broad snowfield, with vague footprints tracking off several ways in the distance. There are many spots without snow at the base of trees and in great rocky mudpaths, but the trail is often lost. I tie a rag over my eyes to keep from going blind and we plow up. The steep face rising before us is obviously where we are supposed to go. It is hard, slow work, and although we cut a decent amount of length off the trail by plowing straight up instead of switchbacking, it is no savings. The dog does not help, although he hates the snow less than yesterday. After what seems like hours, we crest the peak and are granted a distant blueing view of Tahoe and its far rim mountains. The other face of the mountain is blissfully free of snow, and we descend into a land of meadows again, only to see a long curving ascent to a windy, rocky, nasty ridge. The trail ends there and we have lost three miles of our day – we followed the wrong trail out of the snowfield. The detour granted us the pleasure of viewing an endless chair lift and abandoned ski resort. Another peak. We climb over and around felled trees, a different obstacle for the dog than for our monkey selves. We mount patches of snow all high and narrow instead of yesterday’s broad. Five miles of dreamlike switchback ascent through big, fat pines, gradually growing gnarly and stunted, eventually breaking through to scrubby bushes that grab across the trail with thorny arms. The trail almost reaches the crest of the ridge and turns, heading laterally 10 feet from the top. A powerful, constant wind blows up and over the ridge. We have split up and I am alone with the dog. I could walk forever, yet each step is a drunkard’s and has been all day. The rocky trail makes me stagger, the wind holding me up like a sober friend. I ought to be playing the part of the drunk, singing and swearing. I shout into the wind. Lake Tahoe has been tantalizing us in the distance for days, appearing and disappearing with the vagaries of the trail. It pitches into view again and sits, shining deep and blue and not so far away, with a ragged fringe of mountains behind it. We descend towards the north fork of Blackwood Creek, and make camp together for the last time. The creek is terraced with snow, great curving arches on each side that reach out and over and touch in places to form perfect, deadly, bridges. The dog escapes and runs out onto one and does not fall through. In the morning, I crane my head out the tent door and around the side to watch, sandwiched between a tree trunk five feet across and a turn of the hill, a tiny sliver of Tahoe’s mountains and the sky above them golding from pink as the hot red sliver of the sun edges up over the side of the world. I shout Here it comes! and we all cheer.
posted by chai guy at 11:13 PM
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