Day 196

Day 196 (pct 86): 29 miles

Thankfully my foot felt better this morning. It still hurt, but it was a lot better than last night after jamming it into a rock. The 2,000 foot climb in the morning wasn’t bad. There was a bit of snow near the top of fire creek pass and on one part I postholed straight through and did a face plant in the snow. I learned my lesson and tried to walk around it after this.

After fire creek pass we descended 2,500 feet down to go 2,500 feet back up. I got water at the bottom cause there wouldn’t be water again until 5 miles later at the top of the climb. This was probably the most difficult to get water I’ve had in the trail. It was a raging river and I maneuvered my body to barely be hanging on while leaning over a rock on my stomach to get some water.

While we were taking a short break there Tim Olson rolled up. I had been hearing about him but didn’t know what he looked like. He’s currently tying to break the FKT (aka fastest known time aka speed record) for the pct. Afterwards hammer told me that was him and he passed us a few miles later near the top of the climb. Hammer and I kept up for about a mile then both said “eh I’m good.”

Shortly after we stopped to get water and Terminator rolled up on us. We had met him at snoqualamie pass when he was waiting on a box. He said he would catch us which I only half believed, but hammer used his car salesman persuasion techniques and added him to our crew.

I took a pretty nice tumble today (actually ate shit 4 times in total) while pitching a million dollar idea to terminator and cut up my knee pretty nice. It was bleeding a good amount which didn’t feel great walking through overgrowth all the time.

All day long we were hearing how bad the overgrowth was on the 2nd climb of the day but thankfully sobos are still pure of heart and naive about how bad it can really be so it was overhyped. It wasn’t ideal but it didn’t slow us down too much.

Fire creek pass was probably one of my favorite views in Washington so far. There was also an absolute unit of a marmot that looked like he wanted to square up or bounced at a club in his free time.

When we got to camp I went down to the water and on my way touched some stinging nettle (a painful and evil plant) which hurt for a bit. And the water had too much rock dust in it so it was a total waste anyways.

Song of the day: glitter-Tyler the creator