July 30, 2023

~8 miles hiked

I think I developed some sort of negative association with being the last to get ready in the morning on the PCT. This morning, I wake up and think I have all the time in the world because everyone else is still in their tents, but somewhere along the way, between eating breakfast, packing up, brushing my teeth, and cathole time, I’m still standing there shoving stuff into my pack while all three of the others have been ready to go for several minutes. It doesn’t put me in a great mental state for the day. I hate feeling like I’m holding people up, even if they’re not really bothered. I’m scared of being left behind. Maybe it also comes from always being a slow runner? I don’t know. Enough psychoanalysis. Point is, I’m stressed out and angry with myself. And that kind of vibes with how today pans out. 

Chelsea waits for me as I pack up, then we go to meet Carrot and Gahl at the creek. Carrot lets me use the SteriPen again (another reminder of the feeling that I’ve royally fucked up my preparation for this trip) and then we’re off. It is really beautiful for the first part of the day. We follow this river valley along the faint remains of the ATV track as far as they go, then pick up another to go into our next drainage. There is willow, historically the only firewood available to the Nunamiut, and then there is fluffy cottongrass swaying in the wind. It looks like something from Dr. Seuss. We all crouch down to take photos of it.

There’s a small incline as we turn right and  work our way up the next section. It becomes hard-packed ground strewn with flowers and mosses. No bog here. Carrot recalls how Andrew Skurka, a big-time hiker dude and superathlete famous in our little world, described a certain flower as being indicative of “good walking” in the Brooks. We think we see that flower, so it seems to be an indicator we’re on the right track. 

There are clouds shifting around the mountains. It looks and feels mystical and old. We’re walking along a nice table and then we come upon a creek, take a snack break, and descend to cross it. Back up the hill and onto another shelf. Then we go down towards the creek, cross it, and follow along the other side. There is another small creek crossing. It’s in a sort of gully, and when we get down into it there are flowers and neon green grass and a little waterfall sculpting the rocks. One of said rocks is very sharp and swipes me on the side of the knee as I walk past, but I’m not terribly bothered.

Back up into a shelf, down, cross, up again. We see caribou sheds and more wildflowers. A descent into another valley and another creek crossing. Far up and to our right, a stream of water tumbles gracefully in a thin waterfall. 

We take a break alongside a creek with perfectly green moss strewn with flowers. There are little tiny blue ones, purple ones, yellow ones with nodding flowers that look something like the flower of a trout lily. I wish I knew their names. 

We follow that creek for a while, climbing again, load up on water, and make a final ascent towards the bench that will constitute our lunch spot. I feel my blood sugar, attitude, and concentration tank as we get closer. It’s accompanied by a feeling of dread. Oh no. I need to eat. I’m so scared that if I hike too close to people and try to interact, I will become the goblin I am when I get hungry. I shove part of a cinnamon raisin Bobo in my mouth (Carrot smells it, recognizes the scent immediately, and asks, “Is that a cinnamon raisin Bobo bar?”). 

Suddenly I feel so depressed. I miss Dan. I miss my tramily. People who know me and have already seen the terrible truth about who I am and love me anyway, around whom I can be completely awful and still be loved. I’m thinking about Wolfson’s “bulge theory” in sociolinguistics, which holds that you’re the rudest to complete strangers and people who know you well because in the case of strangers either you’re never going to see them again and so have no incentive to be polite if you don’t have to, and with already-stable connections you trust them to understand your humanness and keep you around. People are usually the most polite to acquaintances or people they just met because there’s more to be lost by being a trash monster to people who might possibly become your friends. Maybe that’s terrible? “I want to be with my close people because I can be a complete bitch when I’m hungry and they’ll understand.” I feel very small and human today. I feel like I am very far from the emotional version of myself that I want to be. 

But the bar gets me to lunch. I spread out on my Tyvek and set about consuming all of the calories. I go for wraps with mayo, tuna, and chip drink. I finish it up with a coffee. I don’t really have the fuel budget for it but it’s cold and damp and I need it. It’s delightful. 

“I think you adjusted the fastest back to your trail self,” Gahl notes. She’s not wrong. I know how to be this way. 

Carrot says we’ve been here for 20 minutes and proposes we do 20 more, or offers an hour. I ask for an hour, but we later cut it short thinking about getting to camp. Everything inside me is like NO! More chill lunch! But it starts misting and I finish my coffee and yeah, I guess getting to camp at a decent time is good stuff, so here we go. 

We descend to a mystical bog valley with towering walls. Then there is a steep climb on scree. It’s actually pretty fun at first. There are enough good places to put your feet that you can get into a kind of rhythm. We’re all laughing and joking and generally having a good time.

The hill takes a turn to the left and we see a giant snow patch. It seems to get even more giant as we go up. It’s ice and snow, it’s not on the map, and it’s very steep. We stay to the right of it on the scree, but the problem is that the steeper the incline gets, the less stable the rock becomes. Every step sends you sliding down, not quickly or in a way that feels life threatening, but scary enough to make you freeze. I head up after Carrot and then cling to the rocks. Gahl and Chelsea follow, neither of them loving the loose rocks either. I guess my lunch really worked wonders because I get a little more confident the higher we get. I realize that if I walk right next to the snow, the rocks can’t go anywhere so they don’t slide. It’s precarious because one step on the ice could send me sliding down, but it’s a lot faster, and I just rely on adrenaline to rocket me up. Then I’m at the top away from the snow. 

The others follow, and we take a minute to regroup at the summit. That was scary! But we’re okay. Then we head to the left and find ourselves on an alien planet. It’s misty and we can’t see anything except for the gray rocky ground. There are some lichens at least? But no other life apart from that.

We work our way around and then down closer towards the line on our GPS. It’s nice soft loose rock at first, like little shale shards, nothing like the bigger rocks we walked up earlier, and it’s actually rather pleasant. Then the rocks start getting bigger until it’s full-on talus. We’re talking rocks the size of large coolers. And it’s steep, going downhill. Carrot starts going one way, realizes it’s unstable, and comes back towards us. She’s repeating the phrase “Light as a feather” out loud as she crosses the rocks, which she explains as her mantra when she’s crossing terrain like this and is a little sketched out. 

We cross another short field of talus very slowly, then thread between two snow patches on rocky, loose ground. It starts crumbling beneath our feet as we scramble up onto a little ledge and catch our breath again. Water, snacks, gathering ourselves. Then downhill on okayish ground, across a snow patch, and down again. We wind up in a sort of bowl ringed with walls that look icy, almost like a glacier clinging to a vertical edge. Then we have to go slightly uphill again in order to get to the downhill that will take us to our campsite. We hope. 

This is where the talus begins in earnest. We keep hoping we’ll just go over another hill and it will be good walking, but it never happens. We go up and over one hill, then down another, and before long, it’s talus as far as the eyes can see. Martian talus. Moon talus. Wet, dripping talus. Huge steps on huge talus that may or may not be unstable. Covered in slippery brown lichen. I use my arms, my shoulders, I slip and bang my ankle against a rock, twice. Every step is an effort because every step is precarious and carries real risk of injury. 

At first it’s fine; I just do it and concentrate and think of the positives: there are no mosquitoes. It’s not hot. It could be colder. It could be raining harder than it is. It’s really just a kind of mist, after all. There’s a mystical nature to it. (Mistical?) It could be seen as kind of beautiful. 

But that wears off. I take a big step and feel a rock move beneath me and I go sliding down into a hole. “FUCK THIS!” I scream, to which Carrot emphatically replies, “YEAH!” I slide again and hit the same ankle. I take a deep breath and try so hard not to let the tears come to the surface. 

“Crying is good,” Carrot says. “It releases cortisol.”

We keep picking our way through the terrible moonscape, Carrot and Gahl ahead and Chelsea and me following. It’s getting pretty cold now, and still misting. Gahl asks if we want to stop and put rain pants on, but I’m already so wet and I keep thinking that we’ll arrive soon, so it doesn’t seem worth it. 

It just keeps going on and on. Soon we come to a creek that has less bad rocks, and we follow that down and then up. Chelsea asks me if I’m okay, and I just start sobbing. She hugs me, and I just let it rip until the wave passes, and finally we keep going and then we’re out of the rocks and onto moss. Moss! I never thought I would be so happy to see moss in my life. Sweet, glorious greenery. You hold the rocks together and make our path so soft. Bless the moss.

We follow the contour of a hill, cross another few rock fields that aren’t as bad because the rocks are smaller, and wind up on a mossy (sweet moss!) ledge. It’s not the place we were aiming to end up, but it’s flat enough and we decide to call it a night. I’m shivering hard by now and I throw my duplex up as fast as I can and dive inside. I put on all the warm layers I have and lie in my sleeping bag dissociating until I’m warm enough to cook. 

“I think I’m eating my fancy meal,” I say out loud. A chorus of “Do it!” and “Hell yeah!” answers me. 

It’s my one PoshPort™ I splurged on. My favorite: Peak Refuel Chicken Coconut Curry. While it’s rehydrating I lie with it in my hands, curled around its warmth inside my sleeping bag. Then when I’m about to eat it I take big whiffs of it. It smells, and I cannot emphasize this enough, so good. Like the PCT. No, like all my hopes and dreams distilled into one bag. I finish it, brush my teeth, lie down, and pass out.

Welcome to the Brooks Range: where hubris goes to die.