| PCT Section I, Friday, August 25th 2006 Day 2 At some point during the night I woke to hear a creature scurrying outside, presumably near my bear canister which I left 50 feet from the tent, in plain sight. As I endeavored to sit up and growl "get outta here" I found myself unable to move or speak. All I could muster was a twitch and a soft sound from deep within my throat. Subsequent attempts yielded similarly pathetic results. The next morning I decided it must have been a dream, nightmare actually, but didn't give it much thought as I had much bigger problems. Because I was wary of my first night out alone, I had located my tent in an open meadow next to a stream and because of this the outside of my tent, the inside of my tent, and the outside of my quilt were all covered in ice (frost)! And my poor bear canister was in equally dire straights as ice had frozen the lid on tight. It was 6:00 am and I had a lot of miles to cover so all I could do was stuff everything in my pack and plan to dry it out later in the day. As I walked along that morning I beat myself up since I know that meadows, especially next to water, are a terrible place to camp and if I had moved 50 feet to the trees I would have been in a micro-climate such that I would have woken up ice free.
After cruising by Wilma (Wilmer) Lake I climbed up to a ridge, descended into a valley, climbed another ridge, descended into another valley, and then began to climb up towards Seavey Pass. As much as I was flying yesterday, today I was really not moving very fast. It seemed as if I was either going up or down, and fairly slow in both directions. The flat stretches of yesterday were not to be found and I didn't have the energy to charge up the hills. I was not hungry, but I expected this as a result of not acclimating to the altitude and not surprisingly I just didn't have any kick on this third climb of the day. As I went up I noted that on my first day I hadn't peed at all during the day, only once before bed, and I seemed to be following the same protocol today. I was drinking all the time, and my pee (at least the previous night) was light yellow so I was not severely dehydrated but probably needed more fluid.
At 12:50 pm, part of the way up Seavey Pass and after 7 hours of hiking, the trail was following a creek and crossed very close to nice area to dry my frozen gear. I was in a canyon but the sun shone bright and soon everything was baking in the sun, including myself after I submerged myself in the water, the first time so far on this trip. To illustrate how slow I was going relative to yesterday, I had planned on drying my gear at Smedberg Lake around 2 pm and I was at least 9 miles from my goal with only an hour to reach it. As I was optimizing my tent in the sun, naked as a jay bird, on a large rock above my other gear, the unthinkable happened; a gust of wind blew my quilt right into the river. Aggggghhhhhh! The quilt wasn't in danger of floating downstream but in the 10 seconds it took to pull it out of the water I imagined soggy/clumpy down and cold nights to come. When I arrived at the water I found the quilt floating peacefully with the outside/top on the water and when I pulled it out it appeared to have taken on little to no water at all and after shaking it out most of that water disappeared. After 15 minutes in the sun everything, including the quilt, were bone dry. At 1:25 pm I was back on the trail and reached Seavey Pass 5 minutes later. After a 90-minute descent I reached the junction for Benson Lake then began the long slog up to Smedberg Lake and eventually Benson Pass.
If I suffered while climbing Seavey Pass then, well, Benson Pass was much worse. It was hot, I had no energy, and wasn't hungry. I left the junction to Benson Lake at 3:05 pm and reached Smedberg Lake at 6:00 pm; 3 hours and only 4.5 miles later! I don't know if I've ever gone that slow. During the last bit of the tramp I began to question my health and decision making ability, so I was very glad to find other people camped at the lake (just in case I died that night I suppose, woe is me). I set up my tent near them, went for a brief swim in the lake, chugged another chocolate milk, and was in bed by 7:00 pm feeling like throwing up. I had made my chocolate milk rich, with 1/2 a liter of water instead of a full liter and was paying the price. My body certainly needed the fuel and water, but not in that super rich format. By 8:00 pm I felt better, fell asleep, and didn't get up until 6:00 am the next day.
Yesterday I had covered 27.5 miles in 9.5 hours, averaging 2.9 miles per hour but today I only made 21.9 miles in 11.5 hours, or 1.9 miles per hour. I'm also pretty sure that I didn't pee during the day, only at night (light yellow, I think), just like yesterday. |
