Have you ever woken up in a rainstorm, knowing you need to go dig a cat-hole, knowing the only place to go is on a steep downhill slope? If so, when you finally dug the cat-hole and perched yourself perilously on the decline and did your business, did you also accidentally punch your toilet paper down the hill, the roll just escaping your outstretched fingers to tumble down the soaking wet mountainside of dirt and underbrush, uncoiling itself irrevocably with every slow-motion bounce? Did your cry of “NooooooooOoOoOooo!!” also catch in your throat with the realization that such an exclamation would inevitably bring your hiking family running to the top of the hill to check on your safety, only to see the full moon of your exposed rear being pelted with rain? And so instead, you let out a silent yell of horror, accept your fate, and then slowly, arduously, waddle the 10 feet down the wet slope with your pants around your ankles to collect your escaped toilet paper, any shred of dignity you had remaining getting subsequently buried in the cat-hole that you painstakingly shuffled back up to? No? Oh yeah. Me… neither.

Oddly, this experience was an improvement from the previous day’s cat-hole experience, wherein halfway through my business a hornet saw fit to land directly on my face. I was frozen in place, holding my breath as the stinger-butted bastard lazily explored the salty sweat remnants on my cheeks, my nose, my left eyelid. If you’ve ever needed a personal trainer to help you work on sustaining a perfect, unmoving squat, hit me up, I know a guy. Spoiler alert: the guy is a hornet. And honestly he sucks.

This section of trail between Snoqualmie and White Pass was the first time that our hiking family truly understood what folks are talking about with the PCT being non-aggressively graded. Meaning, the steepest incline and/or decline we encountered in this section was only about 9% (for context, in the Glacier Peak Wilderness the grade was at times 19%). Also, the trail here had a lot more dirt road access, which meant that the trail was beautifully maintained. We finally are averaging about 13 miles a day, and had a couple of 15’s in there. This happy change could also be a reflection of our regular-life jelly legs finally building into hiker legs. Don’t worry, we still had a fellow SoBo fly past us one evening, hand waving happily as he hollered “Sloth Squuaaaad!” at us, and we yelled it back at him happily.

About halfway through this section there is a beautiful cabin, built just for hikers in the summer and snowmobilers in the winter. It is perched on the edge of a gorgeous meadow, butterflies and dragonflies zipping around one another in a secret choreography, their wings creating a quiet symphony in the open mountain air. The cabin looks like it was built straight out of an 80’s summer camp movie, and when we came upon it, it was warmly empty, the timber frame smelling sweetly of nostalgia and someone’s distant memory of home. The door yawned open like a mother with her arms thrown wide for a comforting hug. And just like the sirens who sang the argonauts to their watery screaming death, the cabin called to us, beckoning us to our own graves.

The cabin is full of noro virus.

Luckily, the navigation app we use (FarOut) warned of the legions of hikers past and present who fell victim to the cabin’s menacing embrace, finding themselves turning inside out some 12 hours later, their bodies ravaged with what likely killed Cortés. Both Dumptruck and I fell victim to noro 10 years ago when we did the AT, and not being keen on repeating the experience, we gazed upon the cabin from a safe distance, the darkness beyond the door now a foreboding terror, a mouth waiting to swallow us whole.

In the long run, what this meant is that we had to avoid the water sources on either side of the cabin for fear of contamination, and we had to do several 10-12 mile water carries, and double-treat the water (filter and chemical treat). I like to think of it as training for when we get to the desert section, where there could be 20+ miles between water sources. It also meant that there was one morning that we got to have a miniature trail festival, a small contingency of NoBo’s all stopping at the same safe water source as us and having breakfast together. We got a lot of excellent advice about the trail ahead, and had a lot of encouraging words about Hike Your Own Hike.

Due to the fact that a lot of NoBo’s had to skip the 500 mile Sierra section because of dangerous snow conditions, we’ve met a lot of the front of “The Bubble,” meaning the group of NoBo’s that will cross paths with us. The front runners of The Bubble are folks who are gritting their teeth and forcing themselves to average 27+ miles a day, seeing the trail as a job to be accomplished. I have a lot of respect for that, but it is very much in sharp contrast to our loafing floppily down the trail, taking every opportunity to take breaks and goggle at the mountains with our mouths open. Though very few NoBos have projected judgment for this, it’s hard not to internalize a bit of feeling like imposters, like we are goofy children playing at being hikers. When we hung out at that water spot, there were at least 5 NoBo’s who emphatically enthused their support of our approach, reminding us that the trail is to be enjoyed, not conquered. Buoyed by this, we hung out at the water spot for 2 hours, drinking instant coffee and finding community.

The joy is a necessary contrast to the comedy of small miseries that are the inevitability of living in the woods. I woke up with a terribly bloody nose (from all the dust on the trail being kicked up into my sinuses) the same morning that a mouse had merrily crapped all over Dumptruck’s shoes. There was an overnight storm that was so wild as to cause Dumptruck to be up all night, the wind buffeting the tent into his skull at regular intervals. A bee fell into my open packet of tuna, rolling desperately around in the mayo before dragging itself to freedom. Argie excitedly thought he’d found one extra M&M in Toasty’s trail mix, only to discover, horrifyingly, that it was in fact a raisin. The soles of Dumptruck’s shoes are falling apart, and are currently vaguely held together with super glue, duct tape and dreams. I accidentally ripped open a packet of mayo with such enthusiasm that it exploded its entire contents all over the knees of my already disgusting pants. Dumptruck passed gas in our tent that was so nauseating that I called out “Argiiiiieeee, Dumptruck farted in here.” To which Argie replied, “Awwww, do you want me to come over and fart in there too?”

Within 24 hours we were the privileged and lucky recipients of 3 instances of trail magic. One evening as we were approaching the last peak of the day, a slender German man named Jonas came bounding down the trail to us with a tiny backpack, excitedly asking if we were thru-hikers, and gifting Dumptruck a peanut butter bar. He then hiked with us to the peak, jack-rabbiting ahead of us while still actively engaging me in happy conversation the whole time, which meant that we got to the top in record time and with record lack of breath.

The next day we passed through Chinook Pass, a small parking lot with bathrooms whose level of disgusting approaches legendary. But we were greeted almost immediately by a pair of weekend hikers who gave us their unopened food, and there was a minor feeding frenzy as hikers ravaged the open bear cannisters, trading goods and bartering for fancy beef jerky. At the same time, a young man pulled into the parking lot with a flat tire, totally flummoxed as to what to do. Dumptruck, ever the generous project-happy person, immediately changed it for him. About 10 minutes later, we were approached by a woman who announced that her name was Mindy, and she and her buddy Leslie were setting up a grill station and had beer, hamburgers and hot dogs for thru-hikers. Our jaws hit the pavement, and we staggered over to the oasis of glory, wondering if it was real or if we’d finally descended into the realm of hallucination.

Mindy and Leslie, section hikers who live near Chinook Pass, had decided that this was the first time they wanted to do trail magic. True Trail Angels, they had a BBQ spread that would put even the most ardent grilling dad to shame. We sat in a circle with several NoBos, all of us munching gleefully on the best food we’d had in WEEKS, tears in our eyes and joy in our hearts.

Speaking of tears, this is the section that the Sloth Squad has finally dropped from 4 to 3. Toasty, our proud Pun Commander, Planner of Mileage and Master of Bear Bag Hangs, had to officially end his thru-hike and make his final ascension to Trail Angel. It was always the plan that he would hike for a month, then get off-trail, return home briefly to retrieve his car, then come back West to work remotely and also provide trail magic to hikers. He will be able to occasionally hop on and do small sections with us, and we’ll see him when we get into towns, but it’ll be different. We were all devastated and simultaneously excited. The 4 of us wept openly and had a group hug before Toasty hitch-hiked away to Seattle at a road crossing, my face getting absolutely crushed between the chests of Argie and Dumptruck, my tears soaking into the dirt of their hiking shirts as we all clung to each other. We were family before this, and we’ll be family after, but not being together in this way felt like our hearts had became dandelion puffs, the pieces gently being carried away into the wind on the breath of a dreaming child.

There’s something funny about being together out in the woods, your whole soul laid bare for your family to see. There’s no screens to hide behind, no to-do lists, no errands to run or bureaucracy to slog through. There is only you. The you that has to honor honesty and communication, love and respect, lest you lose yourself. The you that can forget what it was like to know what TMI is, and the you that can laugh so loud as to startle to wing the birds who were patiently waiting in the trees to see if you might drop a sunflower seed behind. The you that smells terribly but feels deeply.

The you that flies.

Love,

Thresher

P.s. Yesterday we pulled into White Pass, got a hitch to Packwood, and are staying in an open field behind an inn, where they give you a towel and a broom closet to shower in for $15 a night. This morning I woke up to a double rainbow. All in all, pretty darn magical.