During our zero day in Packwood, we met, by pure happenstance, a marvelous non-binary Forest Service firefighter named Juno. Juno is also from New England originally, is immensely kind, rocks an excellent set of rollerblades and has a green mullet that I can only dream to live up to. They generously invited us to come to the bunkhouse that evening when they were done with work. After we spent the day resupplying in the charming little town of Packwood, drinking several liters of espresso and chatting with our families on the phone, we followed Juno’s directions and wound our way to the outskirts of town. There we were shown incredible hospitality by the lovely group of fire service folks currently stationed there. The bunkhouse was set up like a mini summer camp, and everyone was welcoming and totally open to having three stinky hikers all cloud up their kitchen. We brought couscous and Juno supplied tofu and fresh chard. Dumptruck and Juno made delicious bowls for everyone for dinner. We laughed and shared stories with Juno, Maddie, another fire worker, and Rose. Rose, thoughtful and clever, is an archaeologist who works for the archaeology department of the forest service, which is a job I didn’t know existed but now think is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. It was so wonderful being there, and honestly hard to want to leave.

The magic continued as the hitch we got back to the trail was with a 2012 PCT thru-hiker alum (hi Nate!) from Salt Lake City who was on his way to compete in Bigfoot, a 200 mile ultramarathon starting at Mt St Helens and traversing the Cascade Mountains. His car was full of M&M’s and energy drinks, and he was so encouraging of our hike. He also gave us parting Red Bulls, which meant once we starting hiking, our legs turned into the legs of those wooden lawn ornaments that spin incessantly when the wind blows, the dust boiling up around us with such velocity that I had to stop several times to blow dirt out of my nose.

This section included Goat Rocks, an exposed ridge that goes up to 7,900 feet and is mostly a knife’s edge of tumbling shale. There are large patches of snow still clinging to the trail, and the wind blows so hard that my pants felt like a sail whipping around my complaining gams. There is a fork in the trail at the top of Goat Rocks, and PCT hikers can elect to either stay on the current PCT (and go over more snow) or take the old PCT, which goes nearly an extra 1,000 feet up, and adds quite a bit of distance. In addition, the alternate route sets you up to take a 0.2 mile side trail up to the top of Old Snowy, a rock pile that has to be climbed with your hands, at the top of which you can perch on top of a teetering boulder, see Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens and Mt Adams all at once, and thank whatever god you believe in that you weren’t cursed with a fear of heights. So, of course we did it.

As soon as we stepped foot onto the alternate trail, the ascent became so dramatic that I couldn’t look up, as each time I did, the grade looked disorientingly, impossibly steep. If I kept my eyes on my feet, I could keep going, the grade just barely shallow enough that I didn’t need to lay my hiking poles down and crawl. It’s a testament to how we truly have our hiker legs that though it was hard, there was never a moment that I felt I couldn’t do it. It was just a matter of continuing to put one foot in front of another. Occasionally the silty trail would shift entirely underfoot, and the thought that kept springing its way into my head, cheerfully menacing, was this would be a bad time for an earthquake.

Once we got to the junction for Old Snowy, we dropped our packs and scampered the 0.2 up, grabbing rocks overhead and following a vague suggestion of a trail. The large slabs of shale shifted and clonked together as we stepped, making a sort of resonating baritone that accompanied the singing soprano of the wind around us. At the very top I was flooded with the adrenaline of standing at the highest elevation I’ve personally ever climbed (to this point), and standing on the tippy-top peak of a pile of rocks, the upper limit of which was about 5 feet across. It make me feel wonderfully, peacefully tiny, an infinitesimal molecule in a vast, living system in which I play only a meager role. Far below, the sun winked a pattern on the back of a golden eagle’s wings as it buoyed itself on thermals, and we watched the miniscule forms of hikers on the now distant trail.

That night we camped just below the peak, in a small valley of rock scree, at the silty base of a snow field. At the base of the enormous expanse of snow, it was melting into a perfect, pristine pond of icewater. We set up our tents a few feet away, and it felt a bit like camping on the beach, if beachsand was made of glacial silt and the ocean was made of snow. Frigid wind rippled the top of the pond, and the sky stretched for infinity above our heads. That night the Perseid meteor shower rained fire across the heavens, the stars so thick and crowded as to make constellations disappear into the fabric of an incomprehensible tapestry.

We woke in the morning to wind so powerful as to be pressing our tents down into our faces, whipping and buffeting everything around in an icy fervor. We packed up as quickly as possible, never setting anything down unattended lest it be whisked away on its own independent adventure of flight. We quite literally ran away, scrambling up the snow field to the trail. We didn’t stop until about 20 minutes later, taking some time to brush our teeth, make instant coffee, listen to a pump-up song and actually let the past 24 glorious hours sink in.

The rest of this section has been beautiful, but as with a lot of the rest of the world right now, brutally hot. The past few days have been a marshy mosquito heaven, the temperature well above 100 degrees, our clothes so sweaty as to render all sweat stains invisible, as its all just one giant sponge of salty wetness. We did have the absolute privilege to find a lake that was FULL of axolotls, and also to meet a very sweet Northbound section hiker named Double Dare who validated the unexpected trudgery of this section, and made us all burst out comraderie laughter when she said,

“It’s been so frustrating that when I got to that dirt road crossing back there all I could do was sit down and rage-eat an entire salami.”

It was so hot that when we first saw Adams Creek, a roaring glacier-melt off river that is directly below Mt Adams, we felt a bit excited about getting our feet wet. All day long we’d been watching giant streams of dust boil up from Mt Adams, distant clamoring thuds echoing across the valley as huge rock slides tumbled gleefully down the mountain. We’d read in FarOut that Adams Creek got higher and more torrent throughout the day, and as we approached it at 4pm, the initial excitement turned to trepidation.

We’d been told there were logs to cross, but the logs we definitively submerged, lost beneath the opaque, silty water. There was one thin log crossing one section, but it didn’t look sturdy to me. I’d rather have wet feet than a broken body from slipping off a skinny log and getting swept away. After removing my socks and insoles and snugly retying my shoes, I scanned the river quickly, picking a traverse point. I immediately went in, knowing the longer I stood and considered, the higher the water would rise. The water was freezing. My toes instantly began to tighten, but their screams of protest were effectively drowned beneath the torrential onslaught of the river. The water was moving so fast and hard that I had to use all my force to spear my hiking poles down against the hidden rocks below, otherwise they simply got tugged away from me by the force of the river. After the first section, I had a moment of respite on a tiny island of wet rocks. I couldn’t take a break longer than a few breaths as my feet were screaming in agony, not only from the cold, but from the emolient rock tumble of pebbles and silt forced into my shoes and ripping across my skin.

I splashed back in again, all at once swallowed up to my hips. By this time I was enveloped in blank, emotionless determination. No fear, no excitement, no indigestion, only me, the river, and the will to cross. About halfway across the second section a sudden burst of water pushed against my hips, tilting me precariously off-balance. I dug in with my poles and shifted my weight through the change in gravitational pull, carrying a foot forward and landing on it hard. I paused, taking a breath and finding my center before moving on.

A few steps later I emerged onto the far shore, awareness of my frozen, shrieking feet slamming into my mind with the force of a semi truck. I stumbled like a newborn baby giraffe to a boulder, plopping down onto my butt and ripping my shoes off. I hugged my feet into my stomach, mentally berating myself for having completely forgotten about my wonderful, waterproof, arctic-level Sealskin socks that were currently completely dry, sitting uselessly in my backpack. I looked up in time to see Argonaut start his traverse, following the path I’d set. He was wearing his Vibram water shoes, and he crossed as nimbly as any seafarer worth his salt.

Once Argie had crossed, we both looked across the river, seeing Dumptruck pacing nervously up and down the shore, looking for logs. Dumptruck is of course a hardy adventurer, but unlike Argonaut and I (with trail names that appropriately mean a sailor and a shark), he didn’t grow up in a family that chucked him in the water when he was an infant. Both Argie and I were taught to swim at such a young age that neither of us even remember learning. Dumptruck on the other hand, not only doesn’t really know how to swim, he also has legs so long that his center of gravity is like 4.5 feet above the ground. This, understandably, leads him to a healthy fear of gigantic, angry, freezing cold rivers. After watching me and Argie cross, he waited for a few moments then hollered across to us, “I think I’ll just stay over here.”

Argonaut stood close to the water on our side, and firmly but kindly yelled to Dumptruck that he could do it, and Argie would save him if something went wrong. He gave clear, direct information on where Dumptruck needed to step, and verbally walked him across. Argonaut, 10 years younger than Dumptruck, is a testament to the fact that leadership comes in the form of believing in the resilience of your companions, and knowing when it is the right time to lend your strength to those who in turn will lend their strength to you.

Moments after Dumptruck successfully forded the river, several Northbounders appeared, followed shortly thereafter by a pair of women just out for a short couple-day hike. Argonaut shared information on how to cross, then stood about 25 feet downstream, waiting with his hiking pole handle out, so that he could throw a lifeline if any of them tumbled in, ever the lifeguard. All three Northbounders made it across, slowly but deftly. However, one of the short-section hikers entirely lost her balance halfway across and fell backward. She was able to use her momentum to fling herself back onto the tiny island as she stumbled through the water in reverse, where she fell heavily to her rump. One of the Northbounders (who clearly hadn’t met her before) who had already made it across, came running back down the hill and held his hands out over the water to her. She trepidatiously went for the tiny log I’d ignored earlier, and leaned across it to catch the hands of the perfect stranger. Slowly she scooted her way across the log, it bending precariously beneath her, submerging into the water. Once she and her hiking partner made it across, they let out whoops of relief and joy, jumping up and down and blowing us kisses from the far side, which we enthusiastically returned. It wasn’t until a little while later, as we were drying and massaging life back into our feet, that we noticed someone’s hiking pole about 30 feet down from where we’d crossed, lodged between unseen rocks beneath the surface of the roiling water, the tip just visible, a terrifying monument to some previous disaster.

As of the first day of this section, my trail runners (shoes) met their sudden end. There is no tread on the soles (my tires are bald) and all the cushion has crushed down to a rigid slab of concrete. What this means is that my feet have been protesting every single day from sun up to sun down, my plantar fasciitis is in full swing on my left foot, and I have several new blisters. I had new shoes waiting for me in Trout Lake, but had to get through this past section, each day a mild escalation of foot torture. This led up to the night after crossing Adams Creek, when I woke up suddenly around 2am, the pinky toe on my right foot absolutely throbbing with pain. Curiously, I pulled back my sleeping quilt and –

TRIGGER WARNING: I’m about to describe some gross medical stuff, after the dashed line. If you don’t want to read gross medical stuff, scroll down to the next dashed line to skip this part.

– – – – – – – – – – –

– felt for my toe, which felt like it had doubled in size. I sat up, and Dumptruck woke up, whispering to ask me if I was okay. I gestured for him to turn on a headlamp and he did so, bathing my foot in a small pool of light. The entire end of my right pinky toe was as swollen and red as a small clown nose, a nasty-colored blister the size of a lima bean perched on the end of it.

“Uh oh,” I said.

“Uh oh,” Dumptruck agreed.

We woke up Argie, who came over to our tent and did his quick EMT assessment. My toe was badly infected, and we needed to lance it, clean it, and get antibiotic ointment into the space under the blister. So, we did. We sterilized my toe with an alcohol swap and prepped our wilderness lance: a safety pin with the tip sterilized via being heated to red-hot with a lighter. Once the tip had cooled we lanced the blister, a gush of yellow-green opaque pus oozing out all over my upper thigh where I’d propped my foot up. I grimaced, the pressure subsiding but the anxiety of whether I’d be able to hike in the morning mounting. We smeared so much neosporin over the open blister that my gigantic red toe now looked like Santa in a snowstorm. We wrapped gauze around it and I propped my foot up on my clothing bag, falling back into a fitful sleep.

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In the morning my toe was still angry and inflamed, and I could barely move without limping. Dumptruck and Argonaut insisted on taking weight from my pack, as we only had 10 more miles to Trout Lake, all of which was going to be downhill. I began to protest, but quickly gave in, knowing that our roles may at some point be reversed, and I would need for them to be willing to let me take their weight if that was needed. So it was that I hobbled the 10 miles down through an old burn section, the sun blazing down unbroken on our backs with 104 degree heat, each step sending violent shocks of rage up from my toe, my lizard brain appalled at my refusal to just lay down on the couch already. I don’t know how to convice my brain stem that there is no couch, but oh how I wish I could. We stopped only once, to try and eat some food, 10,000 flies contentedly swarming every inch of our exposed skin, biting and searching for salt. Argonaut assured us that he was fine, and then just laid down directly on the trail in the one narrow shadow cast from one naked tree trunk, overcome with heat and fatigue. From his place flopped unceremoniously in the dirt he announced happily to us, and the shimmering sky above,

“Boys, if I were to have to be boiling alive, swarmed by flies and oppressed by the sun, dead with exhaustion and drowning in sweat, there’s no one I’d rather do it with than the likes of you.”

After 20 minutes the last of our food was gone, and we staggered to our feet, slowly making our way down the mountain. Before I expected it, we came upon a dirt road. A dirt road and someone familiar. I looked up just in time to see Toasty charging up to me, his arms outstretched and a wide grin in his beautiful red beard. I couldn’t even choke out a “WhaaaaAAaT?!” before I burst into floods of tears, clutching him like a lifeboat after a shipwreck. He hugged each of us in turn then gestured to the Prius, saying,

“Good game! There’s orange slices and capri suns in the car!”

He wasn’t joking. He had baggies of orange slices and a whole cooler of more capri suns than I’d seen in my life. He was also miraculously there a full day ahead of when we’d expected to see him. As we collapsed to the ground behind the prius, our mouths full of oranges, 5 Northbounders happened to walk by and 1 by 1 Toasty summoned them over for his first experience as an ascended Trail Angel. All of them were sweet, funny and so grateful. We delighted in their company. We met Artemis, who’s also from New Hampshire. We met Screagle, who’s finishing his triple crown (AT, CDT and PCT). Screagle has been carrying a California state flag and having all the trail angels he meets sign it, and Toasty, excitedly, got to sign.

Toasty then whisked the 3 of us away to a Motel 6 about 45 minutes away from trail. I cannot express the miracle of this timing, as our other option was going to be to camp behind a convenience store in Trout Lake for our zero day, and today, the zero day in question, is 108 degrees out. Instead we are in a cheap motel, bellies full of fast food, my toe now appropriately treated and healing. This afternoon we’re planning to go to the nearby movie theater to watch Barbie and The Meg 2. Only cinematic masterpieces for us fancy boys.

One more section before we hit the Oregon border! Sloth Squad Slothing On!

Love,

Thresher