Yet another Pass

Day 11  King’s River to Woods Creek

One of my favorite moments of the camping day is peeking out of my sleeping bag at the world outside. The delicate grasses just in front of the tent are dancing in the wind, their grain heads bobbing with each little whiff of breeze. Beyond them the pines stand firm and tall, their branches reaching up to the blue, blue sky.  Off in the distance the sun has just hit the top of the mountain, touching the granite with an early morning glow.  This is a privileged view on this trip, because so far we have been up each morning with the sun and have had no time for gazing at the world about. Today however we are taking the morning off to help my blistered feet recover, thinking we would move on later toward afternoon and do less miles. But right now I am happily lying in my bag, listening to the birds singing and the water rushing past in the river nearby.   I didn’t want to wake Mark, mostly because I was afraid that once awake he would want to get going, so I quietly observed the world around me, trying hard to ignore any bodily functions that would cause me to get out of the tent.   You know how well that works- the more you try to ignore it, the more you can’t, especially with all that water rushing by. I did manage finally to sneak out quietly, do what must be done, and then find a patch of sunlight.  For the first time in about a week, I unbraided my hair and brushed and brushed. That little common act is such a luxury out here, and it felt so good to stroke it until the brush moved through without any stops. It was so tangled and knotty that it took quite a while, so long, in fact, that I had to follow the sunlight to two different spots to stay warm. I sat down on a second log and found myself quickly deposited on the dirt below to the sound of a loud crack.  It hadn’t woken Mark, so I dusted myself off and found a more solid spot to perch and preen.  I even left my hair down for a little while, enjoying the look of the sun reflecting off the nice, smooth strands.

There is something comforting about doing mundane chores.  I enjoyed checking on last night’s laundry- moving socks and shirts to different branches to take advantage of the naked light.  I decided to cook up some breakfast (an absolute indulgence for us) and gather water for the day’s hike. I collected the Bear Cans, set aside the food I would eat for lunch and snacks, and tended to a few other camp chores, all in the lazy tempo of a rest day.  I have had some freeze dried peaches in my pack since VVR and also some oatmeal which we never take the time for in the mornings. Not having cooked in weeks I was feeling creative and decided to try a little peach cobbler, using the oatmeal as a crust.  The peaches were simmering nicely, adding a lovely fragrance to the morning air, when Mark finally crawled out of the tent.  As I had guessed, once up Mark was ready to get on the road.  He folded up the tent, took down the mostly dry clothes and had his pack ready to go.  He did slow down long enough to share the peach cobbler with me, although we ate it standing so as not to take too long. He liked it so much he drew a nice, even line across the top of the oaty crust to make sure that the shares were equal. I was pretty proud of having taken two unwanted ingredients and turned them into something so appealing, and it was very comforting to have warm food on that chilly morning.  Mark was out visiting with passing hikers and trying to make sure the way across the creek was clear to others while I finished cleaning up and packing. I braided my hair, got my feet taped with the bright pink ROC tape that my daughter Hannah had given me (so much more attractive that mole skin- and stretchier too), picked out some freshly washed socks and got ready to hike.  I sang the trail version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” to make sure I had all my equipment- “Hat, Glasses, Pack and Poles, pack and poles” and we were ready to move on down the trail. 

My first PCT hike with Mark was in 2004. We hiked from Walker Pass to Horse Shoe Meadow, a total of about 90 miles in 5 days.  The first day seemed exciting and fun.  But on the second day I realized what I had gotten myself into.  This wasn’t a very nice date.  I was tired, dirty and smelly, and miles away from anything.  I knew that the only way out was to keep going, and, overwhelmed with emotion (and a little fear) I just sat down with my legs dangling over the edge of the trail and had a good cry.  I was better after that, of course, mostly because I had let out all those emotions, and partly because Mark was a little nicer to me after he had made me cry.  I hadn’t done it on purpose, exactly, but pulling out the feminine card and having a good cry works sometimes. Later that day we took a nap on a knoll under an oak tree (see, I told you he started being nicer) and just as I finally relaxed enough to ignore the bugs and the buzzing flies and the noise of the birds and drift off to sleep, Mark was awake and ready to move on.  I groggily pulled myself off the ground, packed my mat, threw my pack on and followed him down the trail.  About a mile and a half down the trail I was being plagued by eye flies- pesky little things always wanting to hitch a ride with you and benefit from your moisture.  After brushing them off a few times I realized something.  I wasn’t wearing my glasses.  I had taken them off when I spread myself on the ground to nap, and hadn’t remembered to pick them up when I awoke.  It was a hard decision: walk a mile back to get the glasses and have to retrace the mile back again, or leave the glasses where they lay and hope some other hiker would find them.  I was too tired to walk an extra two or three miles, so I left the glasses there and moved along, swatting eye flies as I went.   Two years ago, hiking a piece of trail from Sierra City to Belden, I took my glasses off and set them on a rock in the middle of a creek so that I could wash my sweaty face.  Mark had turned an ankle and was keeping us moving along so that his ankle would not freeze up or get worse.  I don’t remember when I realized that my glasses were not on my face, but I know it was quite a while down the path. The first pair of glasses never came back to me, even though we sent a friend to find them a year later, but the second pair were picked up by a hiker named Sapcho and returned to me two weeks later in Old Station.  So now I wear a pair of croakies, keeping my glasses firmly on my face when I hike, and I sing my silly little jingle to make doubly sure I have everything I need before leaving a campsite or rest area.  I also have decided there are some things worth going back for- prescription glasses being one of them.  These are things I think about as we begin our hike, trying to remember which years we did which parts of the trail, how many miles we walked each time, whether we were alone or with kids, and any other details I can think of to keep my mind alert. 

My feet were feeling good, my tummy full and content, my pack, having been relieved of more food, was lighter and my spirits were high.  We had some downhill miles to do before we started the climb to Pinchot Pass, which I had heard was a beautiful, and my mind was busy filling in verses for my pass song.  I am a little tired of passes, actually.  You walk a long way, working your way up and over this mountain, then work your way over the rocks and switchbacks on the other side, only to descend into another valley and have to do it all again the next day.  The first few passes took us into more and more beautiful country, full of waterfalls, wildflowers, meadows and snowcapped mountains, but now it seems we are climbing up just to climb back down again and the new valleys are not prettier than the last ones.  It’s exhausting mentally and physically.  Mark is starting to talk about getting out a day or two early so that we can be sure to make it to the memorial service for our friend, Firewalker, and even though I don’t really want to quit early, it is tempting to miss that last, formidable, highest pass called Forester. You see the trail profile on the top of the page in my data book: a squiggly little line that traipses up and down, kind of like the line of an active seismograph.  It is interesting to note that my moods tend to swing up and down like that profile line, very much like it, in fact, although it tends to be opposite; when the line is crawling up the page, my mood sinks lower, and when the line is working its way down the page, my mood tends to improve.  Not quite like the mood swings we are subjected to when we bring our teenage daughter along, but pitchy, anyway.  And not likely to improve any time soon. 

And then we walked up a hill and into scenery straight out of The Sound of Music.  I was overwhelmed by beauty.  I wanted to drop my pack and walk around with arms outstretched, singing beautiful songs at the top of my lungs, but my husband frowns on public displays of joy (and affection for that matter) so I had to be content with just singing, and of course I had to sing the Sound of Music.  The contrast of the vibrant green meadows and the ultra-blue sky, the deep reddish brown of the cedar trunks, the aqua blue lake, all combined to bring tears to my eyes.  Here this is, and I am here, and it is more beautiful than I can imagine. I wanted to make it last longer but I was too thrilled to slow down much, and we had already started so late in the day so we couldn’t take too long here and still make enough miles before nightfall to stay on schedule, so I just tried to capture it in my memory and enjoy it as I hiked through, singing away as I went.  Mark tried hard not to notice.

Pinchot Pass was stunning and rare. The sun lit up a  mountainside of deep red rock, and the small lake at the base was a turquoise blue.  We inched our way up the trail to 12, 086 feet, made a small “Whoo Hoo” at the top, and inched our way back down the other side.  Rocky, steep and barren, like so many of the other high passes, it seemed to take as long going down as it did coming up.  The tread was steep and slick, with lots of sandy grit over the smooth granite, just the stuff my feet lose their traction on.  I suppose it was my own fault for admiring my nice, strong, tan, muscular calves earlier in the day, because the fall I took left some nasty scratches all across and down my right leg.  No real damage- just a little humiliation, and some scars that were going to ruin my even tan. 

The land here was barren, and rocky.  We took our lunch break behind a few boulders, trying to find a bit of shade.  It was so hot out that our pudding didn’t even set up well, and we had to drink the sickly green pistachio pudding- I’ve wiped way too many noses to be able to eat anything that color and consitency.  I munched on a trail bar instead.  When we moved on after lunch we could see way down into the nice, green valley where the trail used to wind through.  Mark remembered having used that trail before, but the conservancy group had decided that it was less of an impact on the land to take the trail through the rough, arid rocky crest than through that easily eroded meadow, so we walked along the ridge, gazing longingly down at the meadow below. We finally found a small trail leading to a creek and some fresh water, which we splashed around in and used to fill our water bottles.  It cooled us down and lifted our spirits, and within a few miles after that we began to see some little groves of cedar and ground cover.  As we approached the camp, there were several river fords in a row, just little creek hops, really, and the river in the gorge below began to gather momentum from all these creeks.  The water slipped, fell and cascaded over rocks and granite slabs, down the valley below.  There were a few dicey places on this trail that I was afraid it was going to be me slipping and sliding down into the valley, but I focused in on remaining on the trail, using my poles, choosing my steps carefully, and making my way down to camp.  We were distracted by a low, whoop, whoop sound, and finally got to see the bird that we had heard making that sound the past few days.  There was some talk of having Grouse for dinner with our stuffing, but that was just Mark’s hunger talking, the only way he really shoots things is with a camera, and he didn’t even get a really good shot with that. 

After an endless amount of miles, we leveled off with the river and knew we were closer to camp.  We came upon a huge suspension bridge, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  The river here was too small to really call for this huge bridge, which we had to climb a ladder up to, so this area must really get a lot of flooding in the early spring.  Coming off the bridge we found ourselves suddenly in a camp ground.  There were people walking around, getting water, making camp, using the big steel bear cupboards to store their food.  We had seen only two other people all day, and now there were so many we had to walk on for a while to find a place to put up our tent.  We had to walk through the camp of a father and son from Santa Cruz in order to get down to the water, and they were quite interested in the JMT and in the fact that we harvested green onions from the creek to go with our dinner.  They were nice enough to burn our paper trash in their huge fire, and I got to warm my hands for a little while too. Our next door neighbors were a group of fathers and sons out for a few days.  They had so much stuff!!  But they were friendly and talky and let us have some powdered milk to add to our Fettuccine Alfredo.  They told us they might be noisy at night telling stories and enjoying some whiskey and cigars by the camp fire, but once we put our heads on the stuff sacks full of dirty clothes that serve as our pillows, we didn’t hear a thing.