Day 1
Trail Miles 2.5
Miles Hiked 6.5
It only took us two miles to realize we went the wrong way.
Backtracking eventually led us back to the junction we missed and Northbound on the PCT.
Finally on the right track, we put down our packs and fell sound asleep on a rock in the sunshine.
I ran after rainbows and fixed metal trinkets with tiny hammers while the clouds flew by at a thousand miles an hour. Shadow-sun-shadow-sun-hammer-hammer-rainbow. Then I woke, drool on my face but feeling much better.
The snow was three to four feet deep. We walked along until we got deeper into the woods and started post-holing. My left foot dropped suddenly into the snow, all the way to my upper thigh. It took me a while to get out, fighting the gravity of my pack.
The next time it happened, we decided to put on our snow shoes, and that helped.
No one has been out here since it snowed last. Except maybe one set of disintegrated footprints rotted by the sun.
Untrackable.
We wound through thick woods. There is less accumulation of snow around the base of trees and as it warms, those areas melt even further creating what are called wells, and those wells were waiting to swallow us whole. We were breaking trail again and again and again. Constant navigation. Constant GPS and route-finding. Exhausting.
On a rare patch of earth, baby corn lilies poked their little faces out of the ground, just starting to spread their little eyes to the world. And then a tiny, bare flat spot, just the size of the tent, and we were home.
‘The moon is so bright tonight’, I thought as I drifted to sleep…never realizing it was the setting sun…