epilogue

August 24, 2017

I woke early and lay in bed for a couple hours while everyone came to. Tiny, Brainstorm, and I were all heading out to the same trailhead, the Hoh, to hike 9.7 miles along the Hoh River before I split off to climb up to the High Divide and they continued on up to the base of Mt. Olympus, which they would summit the next day. I could have been ready to go at seven but they had errands to run and so I sat, feet swinging off the foot of the bed. Tiny, Sandman, and I ate breakfast at the diner and had service so bad that Sandman had to flag down our waitress after 30 minutes without even getting coffee. All of us have worked in service and the faux pas made us cringe, but there was nothing to be done for it. Small towns can produce the best, most intimate and friendly service, or entirely clueless, untrained waitstaff. 

It was not until ten that we bid Sandman farewell and headed down the road to hitch. Unfortunately, all the cars seemed to be shiny tourist SUVs and no one wanted to stop. A local man eventually pulled over and told us he had to run a couple errands, but if we were still there when he was done he could take us the 15 miles to the road to the Hoh Trailhead. Indeed, when he came back around eleven we were still waiting. We spent the next 20 Minutes getting our ear talked off about the sauna he was building at his cabin. From there we still had to hitch 18 miles to the actual trailhead. Tiny and Brainstorm amused themselves throwing rocks at the stop sign whenever cars were not passing. Within ten or fifteen minutes a small sedan stopped. We quickly realized the drivers spoke little English but were happy to drive us down to the trailhead. Getting in to the backseat with all our packs piled on our laps was laughably difficult. I sat in the middle while both Tiny and Brainstorm attempted to close the doors. In the end we shut one door then squished as much as possible and heaved the other closed, pinning us all together. Our drivers were an Italien couple going on “a short trek” and that was about all we got out of them on the whole ride. 

By the time we had tumbled out of the car and started hiking it was noon. I had 25 miles to go (though at the time I thought I had 27 and assumed I would be hiking until 10:00). Tiny and Brainstorm had 18. We crushed out the first nine along the highway-wide river trail. Thru hiking along busy trails can feel like a scene in a movie where everyone is frozen except the main character who walks through the still scene past people paused mid-conversation, mid-step. People were sprawled everywhere along the sides of the trail, eating, taking pictures, and staring at us as we powered through. I imagined we presented an odd image. One young woman with a tiny pack framed by two Goliath-tall men carrying shiny mountaineering gear on the outside of what must have looked like absurdly small packs for summitting Olympus, all of us in sneakers and shorts. Where was my gear? they might have wondered. Was that girl just going to sit in base camp or were her friends carrying her gear? Why were they all walking so fast? Why were two of them wearing spandex shorts? A couple pulled off to the side to let us pass and the man stated just that. “I’ll let you all go ahead,” he said as if that were a novel idea. Away, away, we flew from the trailhead with all its clueless daywalkers. Back to the stunning heart of the mountains. 

At the Olympus Ranger Station we paused to eat. Just before 3:00 I hugged them both goodbye (until we all got down to Portland post-hike, not forever) then turned to start my 4,000-foot climb up to the High Divide. Within 20 minutes sweat was running off my forehead and catching in my eyelashes. I stopped 3,000 feet into the climb to chug a liter of water and was instantly covered in goosebumps. I felt like Brainstorm, who is forever sweating as much as one human can then freezing within seconds of stopping. 

When I did reach the High Divide I could see everything we had seen just a week before, now blanketed in low-hanging clouds. Just as I was reaching the trail who should I see but Christie, the dumb bear we had encountered several times along the same stretch. “Christie, you dumb bear!” I shouted to her. 

Instead of heading back toward the Baileys along the tail-end of the High Divide, this time I plunged down into the Seven Lakes Basin toward Heart Lake. As I cruised through the campsites a bunch of backpackers howled at the sky. I gritted my teeth at the unnecessary noise and plowed on, eager to be away from the weekenders. A man in camp asked if I was on a day hike. “No,” I responded, “heading to Appleton Pass.” With that I was gone, but I was pleased that he had mistaken my full pack for a day pack. 

Around seven, as I continued down through the alpine valley, I rounded a corner to see a familiar young woman in bright tank top cruising up the hill. 

“No way!” I exclaimed. “So good to see you!” It was Night Rider, the last female thru hiker I had seen on trail, whom I had met back in Northport. We hugged and chatted about the trail, but it was already late and we both had many miles more so altogether too soon we parted ways and headed off, with congratulations in each direction. 

The setting sun poured through the trees as I dropped down to the Sol Duc River and by the time I started the final 2,000-foot climb to my campsite at Appleton Pass dusk had settled in. At 8:30 I pulled out my headlamp and watched the trail through the fog of my breath in the night chill. At 9:10 I hit the top of the pass and a little wooden marker with a tent carved in to it. Fortunately there were no other tents at the first campsite. I threw up my tent and climbed in. I ate a yogurt I had packed out as a last night treat and heard hoofsteps just outside my tent. Even though I knew there were just a few deer or goats outside my heart rate sped up a little. It is amazing what the cover of dark can do to spur on irrational fear. I stepped out of my tent, gathered everything inside so they could not make off with some sweaty sock, and looked out at the several set of eyes trotting around me in circles. Yelling at them seemed to have no effect so I threw a rock in the general direction of the pests. That did the trick for the moment at least. They scattered. Shortly I heard other human voices threw the trees, seemingly also talking to the deer. So I had company after all somewhere nearby. I got back in my tent and continued dinner when two headlamps bobbed into my tentsite. Turns out they were a young couple who had struggled to find the water source and were only now, at 9:30 getting in. They asked where I had come from and seemed astonished that I had hiked all the way from the Hoh (only 25 miles I will remind you). I assumed they just thought that was a big day and when they asked if it had taken me two days I could not resist telling them that I had only been hiking since noon that day. Oh thru hiker pride, sometimes my own arrogance can get the better of me. 

They left to set up their tents in another site, asking somewhat stumblingly if I was alright by myself. It never ends. I fell asleep by ten. 

August 25, 2017

The sky was pink behind dark trees in the morning. I lay unmotivated in my tent until finally packing up and hiking out around seven. My pack was starting to rip again so I took the short way down. After a couple hours I got to the Olympic Hot Springs. There were a couple people in one of the pools but I found a pool above the trail with no one in it and I sank into the hot, gray, sulphuric water. When my feet and fingers were thoroughly pruned I dressed again, heat radiating off my body in the cold air, and walked down the last mile to the road, passing horses of people heading in to the springs. It took half a hour for a car to be leaving the parking lot but the first car stopped and took me the nine miles down to the Elawha Ranger Station. The driver, a man in his early sixties or so who liked to come up and see the park every year, was curious to hear about the gear I carried. He told me that he had stopped backpacking because as he got older it was too difficult to carry all the heavy gear, but seeing my set-up inspired him to look into updating his gear and getting back into the woods. 

As I was standing in the road attempting to thumb a ride down to Port Angeles an older man walked past. He stopped to talk and offered me a ride if I wanted to walk the mile back to his car with him. Bob was a retired backcountry ranger. He had worked in parks on several states and now was a local oddity who walked some 5,000 miles a year in his quest to stay healthy mentally and physically. Bob drove me to the ranger station to return my bear canister, but not before stopping twice to introduce me to people he knew along the mile back to his car. 

From there I walked into town, got some lunch and a cotton t-shirt, and hitched out of town. I got a ride in a second, but spent a few more minutes on the side of the road in Sequim before a woman with her two high school aged daughters and one of her daughters friends stopped. Turns out they were also headed to the ferry in Kingston. By 4:00 I was on a ferry heading away from the Peninsula and with that my hike was truly done. 

Unlike the AT and PCT, both of which felt like odysseys that spit me out tired and ill at the end, but with a profound sense of accomplishment, the PNT felt like a fun adventure, full of all the same ups and downs, more difficult from a navigational standpoint, but more a part of what has now become my regular life, rather than a departure from it. As at the end of the previous years’ hiking seasons, I have the bug bad and I am more than ready to get back out into the mountains and play.