Day 127 (PNT 32)

Day 127 (PNT 32): 23 miles

I ended up sleeping in cause coyotes woke me up throughout the night. They sounded like they were at a stream about 20 yards away from my tent. I wasn’t scared, but they were annoying as hell. They woke me up twice so I lost some sleep.

After packing up a soaking wet tent from dew for the 3rd day in a row, I started hiking around 8:30. On the descent down to Pasayten River, the trail became more rough. I made the mistake of trying to straight line to a point farther in the trail cause the area was so wrecked. I was soon crawling over downed trees on the side of a steep mountain. I didn’t do that again.

Once I reached the bottom and crossed the Pasayten River is when the real fun began. This area was allegedly all logged out last year, but you really couldn’t tell cause there were so many downed trees to climb over or under. It was certainly the worst part of the trail so far… which has been better than I expected overall.

The area I walked through today really was insane. An entire valley surrounded by mountains where every single tree in sight was burnt to a crisp. I don’t know when this fire happened and don’t know for sure, but I’d guess it had to be one of the biggest in state history. I walked through it all day today and yesterday and still could see it in all directions. The sheer magnitude is unimaginable. And I couldn’t help but constantly think how stunning this area would’ve been covered in pine trees rather than match sticks.

I wasn’t super sad but was going slow through the downed trees. I was kinda just on cruise control and not enjoying it. Then I came across a group of 3 older section hikers. They were so jovial, inspiring, and just happy to be out here, that it set me straight. I’m living my dream. The PNT was my gem of this whole year. I’m doing exactly what I want to every day. I should be more appreciative. I continued on much more appreciative climbing over a tree every 5 seconds. It’s difficult to capture how rough an area is with downed trees on picture or video. It would probably just look like nothing, or it would be a video of a group of trees for 3 seconds until i reached the next group of trees and had to put my phone down to climb over them. As a 6’2” man, I almost always go over. I usually can, and I reallllly hate bending down and doing reverse limbo to get my pack under the tree.

Once I reached the junction with the Pasayten Airfield, the trail became much nicer. The downed trees disappeared for a while… before reappearing again to a lesser extent. Again, I was kinda just going through the motions. I felt pretty hot. I could feel my forehead starting to breakout and become irritated from wearing a sweaty hat all the time. I had a headache. And I still had a lot of climbing to do. Then a couple came up hiking in the opposite direction. We talked for a bit. They were from Anapolis, but the man was originally from Upper Arlington in Columbus. They were super nice and after leaving them my spirits were raised again.

When I reached Dead Lake, which was littered with dead trees, Spotify started to really get good with its shuffle. I ran down the trail the whole time jamming out to Free Bird harder than they do at the end of The Devil’s Rejects. And after that it was banger after banger. It’s pretty rare that I run while on trail so I knew I was in a really good mood.

The day ended with the climb up to frosty pass which was a little disappointing cause the east side where I came up was dark from the sun dropping below the ridge and the other side was tree covered. I continued on to Castle Pass were I camped ON THE PCT. It feels good to be back.