Jen and Jake Hike the PCT

It was drizzling as we came up the hill, but we felt buoyant. We were heading into Ashland, Oregon for our first day off in 11 days.

And then we saw him: a dog.

At first glance, we couldn’t tell if he was friendly or grumpy.

His head was lowered and he was standing in the middle of the trail. Either he was lost or blocking the way.

I held out my hand to give him a sniff.

He obliged and then I scratched behind his ear.

He greeted Jake, as well, looking forlorn.

He had the coat of a mutt but a collar told us he must have a home.

We looked around. Although that section of the trail was close to Interstate 5, we couldn’t see any houses nearby.

“Hello? Has anyone lost a dog?”

No one replied.

“Do you think he’s thirsty?” Jake asked.

We had filled up on too much water at a spring 12 miles back.

I grabbed my titanium dinner cup from the back pocket of my backpack, and Jake filled it with water. The dog sniffed the cup. He didn’t need water.

“Too bad we don’t have any food!” I said.

The dog wasn’t skinny but had the look of a someone looking for a snack.

Unfortunately, we had nothing left.

I had eaten my last Snickers bar (not really suitable dog food anyway) a couple of hours before. Jake has shared some of his last Snickers with me at lunch. All that we had in our food bags were empty ziplocks and trash.

It was about 4 pm. We were in the last miles of a 25-mile day. We were heading toward a side trail that would take us to a lodge and restaurant and freeway to Ashland.

So we walked on. The dog took a few steps in our direction. We hiked on and he ran to catch up.

Oh, well, I thought, we have a new friend.

Every so often, he stopped to mark territory, giving the impression he was familiar with the territory. Sometimes he even walked in front of us as if he were showing us the way.

We rounded the corner onto the side trail down the lodge and the freeway that would take us to Ashland. I was sure he would head back then. I looked back. He paused but continued following us.

The side trail sloped down steeply. At one point I felt a weight fall against my leg.

“Oh! He fell down!” I cried.

The dog’s legs had given out on the steep terrain and he had slid into my leg and trekking poles.

I started to worry. What are we going to do if we can’t find his owner? Big sections of the trail have bans on dogs. We knew a hiker who had a service dog, but that took paperwork and lots to training. I ran a few scenarios through my mind — none of them favorable. Then I put it out of my mind. “The trail provides.” The refrain I’ve heard so often since we started this hike flashed through my mind. A solution will present itself, I thought. I just don’t know what it is yet.

Within seconds, the dog was back on his feet again. We crossed a set of railroad tracks and had to redouble our steps as we momentarily followed the wrong trail. Through it all, man’s best bud trotted along behind us. I wondered if he, too, was imagining a new direction — abandoning his home for a life on the road with two homeless travelers. And then I remembered: he was a canine. He probably just thought we were going to feed him.

Finally we reached the road, which was really the off ramp of the I-5. We crossed it in the rain. And only here, the dog hesitated. There weren’t any cars but he seemed afraid of the road.

Eventually he mustered up the courage. And it was at that point I heard a car’s breaks.

I stopped in fear for this dog we had met only 30 minutes before. He had followed us. I felt responsible for him.

I whipped around.

The dog was ok. The car’s driver was leaning out the window.

“Bennie!” shouted the driver. “What are you doing down here?”

The dog turned toward him.

The driver knows him!

I walked back toward the white SUV.

“Are you his owner?” I asked.

“I’m the neighbor of his owner,” the driver told me.

“We found him up on the PCT,” I told the driver. “He followed us down.”

“Their property is near there,” the man said, already helping the dog into the backseat of his car next to his small child in a car seat.

It all happened so fast. The dog was found fortuitously — right as we were heading to the lodge and road that would take us to Ashland.

Jake and I looked at each other in disbelief.

The trail provides was all I could think.

“Do you smell smoke?” Jake asked.

We were hiking around picturesque Timothy Lake in Oregon at about 8 in the morning. It’s normal to see smoke at night but not in the early morning, especially not on warm mornings like that one.

We were about an hour into what we hoped would be a 31-mile day, our longest yet on trail.

Through the trees, we could see a campsite but no tents. Jake went to investigate. A few seconds later, I heard, “The fire is still burning here! Bring your water bottle!”

After a month of cold in Washington, the weather is starting to feel like summer in Oregon. Hot oatmeal and coffee are unnecessary. We now breakfast on granola bars and cold lemonade. We’re using more sunscreen and breaking out our rain gear less often.

Naturally, the dry weather has us on alert for the possibility of forest fires, which in previous years have closed sections of the PCT.

So when Jake told me there was a fire, I rushed over to help him. He was already drawing water from the lake to pour over a smoking section of soil. A poorly extinguished campfire had somehow burned underneath its fire ring and was smoldering along a scar outside the ring. Jake poured a few liters on the scar, and copious steam erupted. The fire went deep.

I found a stick and started scratching into the dirt to find out what was burning. The fire ring had clearly hosted a huge fire. Large chunks of wood remained inside the ring. They blackened as if campers had poured water on them. The campers were nowhere to be found.

As I scratched at the ground I found still burning embers. The fire had migrated into the roots of a nearby tree. The more water we poured on it, the more it steamed. Because the fire was underneath the tree, it was tough to douse it with water, so I kept digging, trying to expose whatever was still burning.

Eventually, we started separating rocks in the fire ring as well to expose anything still burning below the rocks. Many of the volcanic rocks were still very hot to the touch. They smelled like a sauna and erupted with steam as Jake poured water to cool them down.

It took us about an hour and somewhere around 50 liters of water, but finally the fire seemed to be out. Tired and dirty, we resolved to hike on.

Just to be safe, I called 911 with the bar or so of cell service on my phone and was put through to the local wildfire dispatch. I was cautious about alarming them or diverting resources for something that was probably not an issue anymore. I told them that, while it wasn’t urgent, it would be good for someone to check on the campsite in a day or so to make sure the fire remained out.

A fireman from the area updated me by text later that day. They had found the spot and the fire appeared to be successfully put out.

It was tough hiking after all that, but the trail was kind to us and seemed to level out. We made it the 31 miles to our campsite, and set up our tent just before dark.

“I’m not sure where to camp,” Jake said.

We we standing in the dark, staring down a dilemma. We had just hiked five miles in the dark to get to a campsite. The campsite was full. The next site was five miles on. The previous site was five miles back. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to camp.

Before the PCT, this would have been an impossible situation. Five weeks on trail have redefined my sense of what’s possible.

In outdoor activities, there’s a sense of personal space that I will call “hiker space” in this post. Hiker space defines how far you pitch your tent from another hiker you don’t know. It defines with whom you eat your dinner and with whom you hike. Before this trail, if I had a choice, I would set up my tent as far away from other campers as possible. I would eat dinner with people whose names I knew. I would walk with hiking partners. It’s only polite.

We’re hiking the PCT. The rules of etiquette are different. On this trip, my sense of hiker space has morphed and changed more than I expected.

It started the first night on trail.

That night, Jake and I camped at a spot 11 miles from Harts Pass. Two guys were already there, awkwardly chatting and eating dinner at a campfire pit.

We arrived and set up our tent within view of the trail and within spitting distance of the other tents. We took a spot at the campfire pit, started making dinner and joined the conversation.

Twenty minutes later, another guy showed up. He joined the circle after setting up his tent at the last visible tentsite.

Tentsites are flat spots with space for one tent. They are cleared of debris. They’re in greater demand than you might expect along this trail. In any given space in the forest, you might find trees, flowers, downed logs, ferns and other undergrowth. Making a tentsite involves clearing downed trees, branches, and other debris. In most places along the trail, you’re not allowed to camp anywhere near the trail. Even if allowed, it takes a lot of energy to make a tentsite and it can damage the fragile ecosystem. In other words, it’s mostly out of the question.

With the addition of the last hiker. We thought the campsite was full. We were wrong.

All through dinner, more hikers showed up. Some kept hiking, but many squeezed in. They found spaces between tents. They found tentsites we hadn’t noticed. One group of four somehow found space off in the woods somewhere.

The five of us around the campfire pit stared in awe.

During a momentary lull in the conversation, one guy turned to the four of us and said, “This is the biggest social gathering I’ve been to in the last six months.”

At least I wasn’t the only one feeling awkward about the amount of people on trail!

…

Last week, when Jake and I showed up after night hiking to a full campsite, we knew it wasn’t full. We found a spot next to the trail across from a tent with a snorer. Hoping the snoring camper would be least likely to be disturbed, we set up our tent as quietly as possible.

And it worked! The snorer droned right through. When we left in the morning, the snorer, who turned out to be a fellow PCT hiker, was just waking up.

“I didn’t even hear you get in,” he said.

We breathed a sigh of relief. Hiker space, such that it is, had been maintained.

There’s a cabin halfway between Snoqualmie Pass and White Pass. On this leg of our journey, that cabin became a kind of holy grail.

We knew it would rain last week, but we walked out of Snoqualmie Pass anyway. Other hikers stayed in hotels and hostels, drying out from the previous section and nursing arches and ankles. But we couldn’t let a couple of days of rain get in our way.

On Tuesday, the rain hit. At first it was only drizzle. Then it became a downpour. The wind picked up.

In a few stretches, we walked under power lines so high in voltage they buzzed. No trees sheltered us, and the rain blew sideways into our faces. Drops battered my jacket, finding my pitzips and soaking my shirt. It was about that moment when I started thinking about the cabin.

The app we use as a trail guide calls it “Mike Urich Cabin & Stream.” From the app we could see the cabin is at mile 305.6 and open for public use. It has a wood stove and a pit toilet or two out back.

The idea of four walls and a roof were intoxicating. A log cabin! It sounded sturdy. It sounded warm.

Then I opened the comments about the Mike Urich Cabin…

The app allows users to comment on places along the trail. This comes in handy as the trail can change from week to week — seasonal streams dry up and campsites become buggy.

The reviews about the Urich place were all over the map.

“Watch out for the mice,” wrote one thruhiker.

Mice? I scoffed. There are mice everywhere! How bad can they be?

I read on.

“Nice spot to dry out and do some axe-throwing,” wrote Bearman’s Girlfriend.

In the middle of the downpour, I really focused on the “dryout” part of the comment. Then my eye caught on “axe-throwing.” Were we going to be dodging axes?

Then I read the thread about the “locals.”

“Some locals are here,” wrote one hiker.

“Be prepared that party people may be having their party until 3 a.m.,” commented another.

That, presumably, was a dig at the locals because hikers tent to pack it in around 8 or 9 p.m.

Someone named h.r. filled in the details: “Got here on a Saturday night. Some locals were partying HARD. A 45-year-old man got so hammered that he cried all night while he puked all over the cabin floor.”

“Hey [full name redacted] – did you read h.r.’s comment below? Was that you??? HAHA! Enjoy man!” wrote reddog.

Not only was it the kind of place someone might have a drunken epiphany and toss around axes, it was also the kind of place they’d get called out by their full name!

The cabin’s amenities were no better. The cabin’s wood stove, and biggest selling point might or might not have been attached to a clogged chimney that was ready to “burn the place down.”

And the toilets were likely very, very dirty. Someone whose sole interest, besides thruhiking, is to review toilets on the trail commented, “I’m writing this review from one week later and my nostrils still haven’t recovered.”

To be fair, some people were more positive.

“Pit toilet smells bad but it still beats pooping in the rain,” wrote a well-known hiker who passed us on our first day and is now states ahead of us.

Other people even suggested there was a cooler full of Mountain Dew awaiting us.

The cabin was either a magical dream or a horrible nightmare. Jake was taking everything in stride. He hiked the Appalachian Trail, which I understand is littered with shelters. He still has PTSD from the East Coast mice. So he suggested we “consider” camping near the cabin at a tentsite. I said I would “consider” it.

We eked out 16.8 miles in that rain and were still more than 20 miles from that cabin.

We shivered as we set up our tent. We shivered through dinner. And we shivered as we brushed our teeth. We only stopped shivering when we finally bundled ourselves into our quilts.

Our tent is brand new but has some serious shortcomings: Any condensation that collects on its rainfly falls on us in the middle of the night. When we called Big Agnes to complain about it, they calmly explained that it is an issue they’ve “noted.” Their solution involved using the guy lines and making sure the rainfly is completely dry when we pitch the tent — a perfectly reasonable suggestion for the ultralight car camper and a perfectly ridiculous one when you’re thruhiking in Washington state. We diligently followed their instructions, and still it misted all night inside the tent. We awoke in the morning with a layer of that mist on our down sleeping bags and everything else inside the tent. Every scrap of Jake’s clothing was soaked.

“This is the worst rain I’ve had on any trail,” he said, looking miserable.

I looked at him as he zipped his wet rain jacket over his wet fleece jacket.

“We’re going to that cabin!” I said. “Locals or no locals. Stove or no stove.”

Jake agreed.

We continued to shiver as we ate our oatmeal, brushed our teeth, packed up the sipping wet tent, and trudged through those 20 miles. But we made it to the cabin.

The pit toilets were a mess, but at least there was toilet paper, recently replenished by a lovely and totally sober local.

There were only two other people who stayed at the cabin Wednesday night. They went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Mice were maniacal but only woke me up once when they came over to investigate the loft of my down quilt. I squealed. They went away. And they stayed away from our food thanks to an ingenious trick Jake learned on the AT that involved hanging a paper plate between the hooks and our food bags.

And, most importantly, the woodstove worked like a dream. We were able to dry all of our clothes out. And there was no axe-throwing.

***In case you’re wondering, the cabin was built and maintained by a local group of snowmobilers and dedicated to Mike Urich (1888-1957) with this epitaph:

The mountain gods from seats on high

rejoiced to see Mike Urich die

And at his death gave this decree, ‘To all who pass here, know that we

entrust to big Mike Urich’s hands

these camps, these trails, these forest lands

to rule, protect, to love and scan

well as he did while mortal man.

And deal out sentence stern and just

on those who violate his trust.’

Stranger, beware, leave not a fire –

foul not Mike’s camp, rouse not his ire!

“People like you are the reason I come out here!” A trail runner cheered at Jake and me.

We were hiking into Snoqualmie Pass in the rain when we came across a very energetic runner who stopped to ask our trail names.

“We still don’t have them,” we told him.

He was a little disappointed but he stopped to chat with us anyway. He asked us about our favorite sections of the trail so far and told us about a trip he was training for on the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier.

Rain had been showering us that morning and we were soggy and tired. But something about his energy and enthusiasm lifted my mood.

And then came the question:

“Are you hiking to Mexico?”

…

I’ve been nervous about telling people on trail that I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It is such an audacious declaration like a college freshman declaring she’s getting a PhD. We’ve been officially on trail less than three weeks. I’ve completed less than 10 percent of the trail to date. So when people (day hikers, park rangers, a clerk at the hardware store in Leavenworth) ask if we’re hiking to Mexico, I have generally responded, “I’m trying.” Depending on my resolve at any given moment, “trying” might be paired with a smile or a shrug.

At any given moment I am probably not thinking about the Mexican border but instead our next resupply, the place we plan to camp that night, or on tough days, the next step I’m about to take.

At some point in the last five days (Saturday, to be precise), I crossed from 213.7 miles to 213.8 miles. At that moment, this became the longest I’ve been on an official trail in my life. The John Muir trail is 213.7 miles. I hiked it in 2015 with my friend Maria because it had been on our respective bucket lists and I love Yosemite. I thought the JMT had cured me of long hikes. It turned out to be my gateway drug.

So on Saturday, somewhere overlooking Hyas Lake and the Cle Elum River, somewhere between Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie Pass, when I crossed to 213.8, I decided that I am a thru hiker on this trail.

…

When the trail runner near Snoqualmie asked if we were hiking to Mexico, I proudly told him, “yes!”

And grateful for his energy and enthusiasm, I added, “People like you are the reason we stay on trail.”

The rain suddenly became fatter, somehow. Jake and I had been holed up in the tent for hours.

…

We had stopped in a meadow south of Rock Pass, 14.7 miles from the Canadian border, for lunch at about 1:30 pm. As I squeezed a packet of tuna onto a whole wheat tortilla, I noticed the drizzle becoming incrementally heavier. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees as we sat down.

“Maybe we should set up the tent,” I said.

“Let’s give it a minute,” Jake said. “It’ll probably die down.”

I continued to scrape the delicious tuna-in-olive-oil packet, making sure every scrap of protein made it onto my tortilla. I was perched on a tree root watching the meadow.

A few days before we had lunched in that meadow on the way to the border. It was stunning: 360 degree views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. Mountains layered upon mountains: ice, snow and always Washington green.

Flowers poked out where there had been snow weeks before: yellow, white, dusty pink, brilliant red, and sun-dapped blue.

Now the drizzle was collecting into drops on their petals.

I kept arranging my tuna wrap, talking with Jake about how we were now really hiking the PCT (really heading south now) all the while the rain was getting thicker. A cold chill had seeped into the air.

…

I started to notice how the temperature drops right before it rains in Washington. In Mexico City, it gets suffocatingly hot. I often feel sweat collecting on my brow. But here, I feel goosebumps. A couple of days before, Jake and I had to trudge, sopping wet, through rain, hail, and sleet, unprotected on a ridge before finally making it to a campsite. That’s when I learned that the rain jacket that had lasted four Mexican rainy seasons no longer protected me against a heavy downpour. My shirt was soaked when I arrived to camp and my hands were so cold, I could barely use them.

…

Back in the meadow I heard it. Like tapping on the door, I knew the sound.

“It’s starting to hail now,” I said. “Let’s set up the tent.”

Jake was ahead of me, already pulling the poles out of his bag. I put down my tuna and rushed to my backpack, pulling out dry sacks to get to the tent. In a flash we had the groundsheet down, but hail was already falling on it. Then the tent. Then the poles. But everything felt as if it were in slow motion. We locked the poles into the tent and started to spread the rain fly over it as I noticed the hail splashing mud on the sides of the tent.

I rushed inside, grabbing the tuna, glad we weren’t walking in that stuff. For a while we sat on the tent floor, refusing to set up our sleeping gear. It won’t be long, we promised each other.

But the temperature kept dropping. I put on more and more clothes. I ate my tortilla and we talked about how it would be nice to have cards. I fished out my kindle and started to read. But the temperature seemed to keep dropping. Jake kept checking his thermometer. Thirty-eight degrees turned into 35, turned into 33, then 32, then 31. And the rain kept falling, splashing against the tent.

We pulled out our sleeping pads, “just to have something more comfortable to sit on.” Then Jake brought out his quilt. Then I brought out my bag with its silk liners.

My bag is only rated 35 degrees. So we’ve carried the liners — just in case. But they’ve already become a staple of the trip as every night has been in the 30s. It’s been barely enough to keep me warm. When the temperature is in the 30s, you can feel the cold air just outside the bag and sometimes it drifts through the seams.

It was starting to waft through in the meadow now as I dozed and woke to the sound of the rain and hail.

But suddenly the sound changed. From a pinprick to a splat, the drops were fatter somehow. I looked at the wall of the tent and noticed the rain had now seemed to a accumulate.

“I think it’s snowing,” I said.

I opened the tent door.

“Yes, it’s snowing out here.”

I walked into a winter wonderland in June. Wet, pudgy flakes splattered around me. It was still light out but hours had passed. Jake and I had abandoned hope of packing up the tent and were planning to stay in that spot for the night.

I ran off to take advantage of the change in precipitation to go to the bathroom and collect water for dinner.

There were streams where I hadn’t noticed them before. They were muddy and silt-ladden, but I didn’t have time to look for better. I plunged my bottle into the freezing water to collect water. With icy hands, I dashed back to the tent, where I found Jake making furtive movements with his trekking poles.

“We have to divert the water,” he called. “It’ll go into the tent.” Using his poles he had already scratched canales into the dirt to draw water around our tent. I helped and then we got into the tent hoping for the best.

We cooked our meal just outside the tent vestibule that night. And watched as the rain stated to ease up slightly around nightfall.

But it was still freezing. I tried to sleep but often drifted in and out of it.

We stayed in the tent until 5:30 the next morning, when the rain finally stopped. Seventeen hours in the tent and only our first week on trail.