Day 130 (PNT 35)

Day 130 (PNT 35): 23 miles

I felt pretty rough today. The pack was loaded with 6 days of food from my resupply at Ross Lake. And by the end of the day I really felt it.

I entered into North Cascades NP in the morning. It was really chill until I got near Stillwell camp. Allegedly there were about 4 miles of hellacious blowdown, starting there. But they turned out to not be that bad. The area hadn’t been worked on yet, but I did pass 2 NPS workers slowly making their way down there. It wasn’t bad relative to other blowdown sections I’ve dealt with, but cleaning it up with 2 people would take forever

Shortly after entering the park, I encountered a bear. I didn’t see it, but I heard something making noise in the brush off to my right. I tried to locate it but couldn’t find it. I heard it panting heavily and kind of snarling. It sounded like it started to climb a tree a few times but I couldn’t see it. I just kept talking with my bear spray in hand while backing away. I was really surprised it didn’t take off running when I talked like most black bears.

After mostly flat walking all day, I began the climb to Whatcom Pass in the evening. Whatnot Pass would’ve been a much better name but that’s beside the point. The climb was over 1,000 feet per mile for a couple miles but it wasn’t too bad.

I did however feel terrible, but not from the climb. By this point in the day, I had a raging headache, neck pain, and extreme tightness in my upper and lower back. I couldn’t get a good crack in. I tried stretching a little at the end of the day but it didn’t seem to do much.

At the end of the day I saw some massive glaciers. I’ve seen a few before but these were really cool. They looked big from far away but seeing the raging waterfalls doing down the mountain form their melting really put into perspective how insanely big they are.

Song of the day: man of the year-juice world