Day 139 - Snoqualmie Pass

I wish I had an hour worth of free time and Blackberry battery every day to post on my hike, because I'd have plenty of thoughts to share. After all, besides walking, what else is there to do hour after hour in the wilderness? I usually have about five moments a day when I think about something I want to include in my nightly blog update, only to promptly forget what it was while actually writing the blog update. I really wish I could have a voice recorder convenient. Then you could catch all my wit and wisdom...ha!

Anyway, today was a long and sometimes frustrating day, especially towards the end. The weather was again very cold when I woke up, and after a night of hard-blowing wind, I was tired. Everything in my tent was damp, if not outright wet, despite my tent holding up in the crazy wind. The downside of packing up a wet tent is that it usually gets the rest of your stuff wet the following night. But I knew that I was going to be in a dry hotel room at day's end, so I manned up and got going. At about 10:30 am, the clouds burned off (mostly) and I had to downsize my wardrobe that I was wearing. Even though, it wasn't raining, I still wore my raingear to keep me from getting too drenched by the water still hanging to the trees and bushes. It definitely got warm. I've decided that raingear is really only useful when you aren't moving. Otherwise you are just as soaked inside as out due to sweat.

One thing that made the miles go by slowly was all the wild blueberries and huckleberries I passed along the way. I've seen them for days now and these were the best by far! Blueberries and huckleberries living in perfect harmony...might as well be nirvana!

As pleasant as the berries were, the last 10 miles of the trail were not. I really hate it when the trail takes a route that is totally pointless and requires a lot more work. I'm already hiking 2,664 miles, why not give me some extra work while I'm out here? It seemed like there were a lot of those sections today. Yuck. And one of my favorite (note sarcasm) points on the trail was the section where it looked like they just backed up a dumptruck full of rock--the smallest of which were about 6" in diameter, and dumped where the trail should have been and said, "There's the trail!" It was awful and slowed me WAY down. I left this morning on a schedule to get to the pass by 5 pm tonight and I didn't get there until 6:30 at least.

But the day ended on a very good note because my college buddy Peter met me up there and helped me get my gear started drying, started my laundry, and took me out for dinner. It was awesome. Thanks Pejo!

So now my room looks like a house if a hobo owned it with everything I own strewn about, trying to get dry. It's rather comical. Tomorrow I'll get started in the afternoon and hopefully get 15 miles in before the end of the day. That would be a good start to a 75-mile section. But after doing 100 miles in 3.5 days, my legs don't feel like doing much walking.

Thanks to Larry and Karla (and Jack) for the recent donation!