10/12/2023
Section: Milepost 2317.3 to 2336.9
Total Trail Miles: 2334.8 Miles
Distance: 19.4 Miles
Moving Time: 09:22 Hrs
Elevation Gain: 3802 ft
If you didn’t know what it was, the scariest noise you can hear in the night is elk calling to each other. People refer to it as a bugle and, I guess, that’s not a bad description. It's a high, careening call that echoes in the darkness and seems to hang there forever. I hadn’t heard that call in a long time, and I had forgotten what it sounded like until 2 o’clock this morning when, about 200 yards from our tent, one decided to remind me. My eyes shot open as the alien sound reverberated through the thin nylon wall of our tent. The funny thing was that it woke both of us up but we didn’t talk it through because we both assumed the other was sleeping. It was only in the morning that we discovered our shared, momentary terror. I do pity any PCTer who doesn’t know what that sound is and had to figure it out on the trail - it would be terrifying.
After our night of short lived terror, we woke up feeling a little better. The flu continued to subside, leaving me continually amazed at what the human body was capable of, and we were able to rise in the morning mostly refreshed and ready for the day. We prepared ourselves in the typical fashion and quickly downed breakfast and our warm beverage of choice, especially happy for the extra heat on this cold and damp morning. I’m still sticking with the breakfast pucks - as much as I can't stand them.
The stage today continues its northern apogee on the same ridge we slept on the night before, climbing for just under 2 miles before a rollercoaster-style descent past Anderson lake to its low-point at Big and Little Dewey lake, six miles in. From the low-point, the PCT makes a sharp rise, climbing 700 feet in a little over a mile to a small pass below Naches Peak…where it descends again down to Hwy 410 at Chinook Pass. The PCT crosses over Chinook Pass and turns east, paralleling the highway while rising above it, eventually reaching Sheep lake at 11.5 miles in. It continues to climb to Sourdough gap at 6400 feet. The trail briefly intersects Crystal Lakes trail before winding north around a cirque and eventually making a small climb to Bear Gap where the slopes of Crystal Ski Resort are visible. The path then circumnavigates around Pickhandle Point and see-saws along a ridge, passing under Norse Peak and eventually coming to a close on the upper slopes of Big Crow Basin.
We started our day doodling along a ridge. Every once in a while I could pick out big hoof prints of Elk that had clearly come down off the ridge in the night. Probably screaming the entire way… We cruised on, moving a little faster than yesterday but I'm still not there - still a little congested and tired. Just, really rooting for my immune system at this point. Cruising might be an overstatement given that we walked on a lot of slush throughout the morning. In these conditions, you end up tip-toeing on the edge of the trail, trying to avoid the deep puddles in the middle. It’s really non-ideal.
Mid-morning we ran into a fellow PCTer, one of the first we had seen in a long time. He was finishing his section from Snoqualmie to Trout Lake. We exchanged some beta and he told us there was more snow ahead. We thanked him and wished him luck before continuing on.
At Dewey Lake we started to run into loads of Day Hikers. We realized we were in the vicinity of Chinook Pass because conditions were not great and the people we ran into didn’t look like they could have come from far off. We continued on, into a steady stream of day hikers, mostly retirees and international travelers. About 30 minutes took us up from the lake to a small, snow-covered pass and we could suddenly hear the car traffic from Chinook, below. We slipped and slid down to the pass, arriving around lunch time. We crossed a quaint log bridge on the border of Rainier National Park and descended a short distance to the road. Here, we took a long sit and considered our situation.
To be honest, this might have been the lowest point on the Pacific Crest Trail for us. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was. We had crossed over the 2300 mile mark but were sick, tired and just generally out of energy to move on. At no point in the last 150 days had we considered quitting but here, after 10 days of rain, snow and terror we were very close to calling someone to come get us. Ironically, it was the inconvenience of hitching a ride down to Naches that kept us from ultimately calling it. We sat at the eastern entrance to Rainier national park and discussed the option to capitulate to our discomfort for some time but, in the end, decided it would be too difficult to get off this pass and so, decided to see what was between Chinook and Snoqualmie. Painfully, we reshouldered our backpackers and rejoined a string of day hikers making their way up this side of Chinook.
We climbed up out of Chinook, into a dynamic contrast of what we had fought through all morning. I don’t know if we were just in the protective shadow of Mt. Rainier or if our luck went through a phoenix-like rebirth but, all of a sudden, we were no longer on snow and the sun was out in full glory. Our moods lifted as we climbed up past Sheep Lake, smiling and waving to the day-hikers. Mid-afternoon brought us to Sourdough gap, where we left the crowds behind and began to climb along the southern boundary of Crystal Mountain, enjoying the view down onto the dry ski runs. Looking back, we could see all the way to the Goat Rocks and Mt. Adams. We criss-crossed over the top of a ridge and made our way through a number of small notches, occasionally crossing over snow patches but, for the most part, we left the snow of the southern Cascades behind. At one point, OI was able to get some service, check the snow cover and noted that, beyond Chinook, there was very little snow. For some reason, the southern Washington Cascades had gotten the lion’s share of the snow but it had not sustained north of Chinook in appreciable amounts. Guess we were right to carry on!
We stopped at dark this evening, finding a small copse of trees that provided one of the few windbreaks on the ridge and a small trickle of water just a short distance from the campsite. The trees around us definitely made some strange noises as the wind raced through their upper branches but we largely ignored them, enjoying the warm goodness of Peak Refuel's take on Sweet and Sour Pork Rice. Afterwards, we cleaned up and got into bed. The wind was howling but it was all way above us and we were able to drift off to its monotonous roar in the dark.
