Today was miserable.
It started to rain again late last night/early in the morning. It was still raining when the alarm went off at 4. Even after we put on our hiking clothes, made coffee, and ate breakfast, the rain continued to fall.
It was raining so hard that we didn’t think it made sense to pack up the tent or even start hiking. Nick checked the weather with the Bivy and it sounded like it was going to rain all day, but less and less as the day progressed.
Since going outside seemed ridiculous in the downpour, we decided to wait to see if it would let up before packing up.
The extra hour of sleep we got in this hour was amazing, and even though I woke up soaking wet (one the tent stakes had fallen out of the over saturated ground, causing water to pool on the tent and then drip on me) I really enjoyed the extra rest. This was the first good thing about today (I feel like I need to highlight the good things because the day was so overwhelmingly shitty).
The rain did let up a little by 7, so we packed up and started hiking. (I decided to wear the same soaking wet socks I wore yesterday because I didn’t see the point of putting on dry socks that were going to get soaked within 10 minutes.) At first, it wasn’t so bad - sure, it was raining, but we didn’t have the insane mud like we encountered yesterday. There were puddles of water on the trail, sometimes even rivers, but for the first several miles the trail was otherwise hard and non-muddy. I thought, “We should easily be able to get in at least 24 miles as long as the trail stays like this.”
Well, the trail didn’t stay like that and we didn’t get in 24 miles.
We met two CDT SOBOs after about 2 miles who informed us the mud gets pretty crazy up ahead. Likewise, we warned them about the mud THEY have to look forward to. We all walked away disappointed. (At least they had a town day to look forward to).
As promised, the trail quickly turned to a sloppy, muddy mess. I’m pretty sure it’s from the horses because the only times the trail was wet but not insanely muddy was when there wasn’t hoof prints or horse shit on the trail. But whatever. The point is, the trail was just as difficult, if not more so, than yesterday. My arms are actually sore from constantly stabilizing myself with my hiking poles - it was a lot of work.
By 11, we came upon a little cabin. The cabin was locked up, but we were able to sit on the porch to get a little relief from the rain and have a snack. That’s the thing with cold, rainy days - it’s nearly impossible to stop and eat. Since my hands were completely numb, I couldn’t grab my water bottle and so barely drank anything all day. Hell, I could barely even unbuckle my pack because my fingers were so cold they didn’t want to function. While we were eating our snack at the cabin, Nick turned to me and said, “I’ll never complain about it being too hot in Maui again.” I laughed - I will hold him to that.
this cabin was a great place to get out of the rain and eat a snack
Even though I was wearing rain mitts over my fleece gloves, the rain found a way to get inside. The soaking wet fleece still kept my hands from completely freezing, but it wasn’t ideal. Same for my alpaca hoody - it was under my raincoat but it, too, ended up getting completely soaked. It still kept me somewhat warm, though, and I suppose that’s what matters.
My hands were so cold and it was so much work to get them out of the gloves that I barely took any pictures at all. I didn’t realize until today how much taking pictures makes me happy. There were so many shots that I thought might look cool but, as I said, I didn’t want to stop hiking (too cold). Besides, taking off my rain mitts and then my wet gloves would have taken forever, not to mention putting them back on again. I saved pictures for when we were already stopped for some reason or another, but I didn’t have as much fun as I usually do.
We had to ford two (or was it three?) rivers that were flowing pretty fast. Being already wet made it easy to just walk right in without a second thought. In fact, the river water was so cold that when I got out, my body was tricked into thinking she was warm for a few minutes. That was nice.
There was so much mud. So much.
Everything was so wet and slippery that Nick slipped and fell while going over a blowdown. He was happy he didn’t slip in the mud/horse shit, but he did tweak his hamstring and his wrist so I hope he’s ok tomorrow.
Later in the afternoon, we met another SOBO while we were getting more water (well, Nick was - this is when I realized I hadn’t been drinking any and still had almost a full liter on me). She looked just as miserable as I felt. We were all miserable, even this poor bird:
this little guy wasn’t having a good day, either. He didn’t even try to fly away
The brightest part of the day came shortly after seeing the woman SOBO. Nick and I were just leaving the water source when two more SOBOs came up. One of them asked, “Apples?”. It was Dawg Whisperer (DW) from PCT 2016! I knew she was going SOBO and was wondering if/when we’d bump into her. It was amazing seeing her! We reminisced about our shared PCT memories, agreeing that our time in Etna was the best.
It was so very good to see her - it made my day seem a little less miserable. I wish we could have had more than 5 minutes to chat, but we all had to get ourselves to camp.
DW told us the mud was pretty bad where we were going but said it got a little better after the pass. Nick and I had to stop before the pass, though, because going up was a nightmare (we just kept slipping) and I hadn’t been eating or drinking much at all. We stopped to boil water and get our meals started so we could eat dinner sooner than later. At least it had stopped raining by then and all we had to contend with was the f’ing mud.
Dinner was amazing (I ate my favorite- Peak Refuel’s Biscuits and Sausage Gravy), but it started to rain again just as we were down to our last bites. This time there was a cold wind to deal with, too. I was freezing. I wanted to put on my puffy, but since I also wanted at least one dry thing to wear when we got to camp, I held off and just shivered while I hiked along the muddy trail. I started to think about how good it would be to get in the dry tent and then started laughing hysterically - the tent was certainly not going to be dry since it had been soaking wet when we packed up this morning. In fact, the only truly dry thing I had to look forward to was my puffy, which I hadn’t taken out of its bag yesterday. I thought enviously of the two SOBOs we saw this morning, thinking of how dry they must be in town somewhere.
After enduring more mud and more cold rain, we came upon a flat spot near some water just before 8pm. Sold. We weren’t anywhere close to the miles we wanted/needed to get, but we were both unwilling to go on.
It sort-of stopped raining just as Nick got the tent up, and then I saw a rainbow. So that’s another good thing about today- rainbows are always awesome.
One last good thing: my puffy WAS warm and dry.
Along the trail:
a nice little waterfall
Camp:
