PNC Days 39-41 – Surprise Visitors!

These three days had is walking through beautiful mountains covered in wildflowers! We walked through Okanogan, San Polo, Colville, and Sinixt ancestral lands.

Day 39 – PNT Mile 745 – Pushing

Today we walked a mix of trails, bushwhacking, gravel forest roads, and paved roads. The trail is doing a big U-shape around Republic through National Forest land. We saw a coyote. At lunch we went swimming. It has been quite hot, so the swim felt great. Tim’s mom is currently moving across the country and spontaneously decided to meet us on the trail. We found a car-accessible campground on trail, but it’s a little farther than desired. We’re super pumped to see her though, so we’re trying to push miles to get there! We need to do about 30 miles per day for three days make it. -R

Day 40 – PNT Mile 768.9 – Bushwhacking

We had a very nice day overall. The entire day was on a beautiful trail, we are in a remote area, we saw no other people, etc… BUT, what we’ll remember from today is not one of the nice parts. It’s the “bushwhacking”. Bushwhacking doesn’t sound so bad — it means hiking an area with no trail. In today’s case we had to connect two faint trails by finding our own way through a relatively short section of forest with no trail at all (0.6 miles/1 km). The PNT includes several sections of bushwhacking, so we’ve had a lot of time to reflect on how to best describe it:

Bushwhacking in Washington involves trying to move forward through branches and shrubs so thick that forward progress involves a combination of pushing and controlled-falling. Inevitably scrapes and bruises result. After practically every step there is a fallen tree we have to climb over — or worse — under, often on our hands and knees while hoping our backpacks are low enough to avoid damage. In the densest bushwhacks, there is no ground… we walk on an unknowable number of years of built up forest detritus, sometimes comprised of tree trunks or limbs, sometimes made of compressed shrubs, sometimes piles of tree waste left behind by loggers, and sometimes nothing at all — it can be hard to see our feet through the dense undergrowth, so we may find ourselves stepping forward off of a four-foot drop… Oh, and Washington is known for its berries… raspberries, blackberries, salmon berries, and more; they all have thorns. So does devil’s club, with leaves as big as your head and a thorn-encrusted stalk as fat as an arm. The worst of all are the stinging nettles, which always manage to find our exposed skin, or go right through our clothing to leave their burns before we spot them.

We survived. In fact, the bushwhacking here in eastern Washington is much milder than it was west of the Pacific Crest. For dinner we had peanut butter rice and veggies. Yum. -T

Day 41 – PNT Mile 787.2 – Visitors!

Today Tim woke us up early in anticipation of meeting up with his mom later in the day. We did not make it as far as we wanted over the last two days, but luckily we found a different campground option for meeting her (1.5 miles off trail). We are carrying a satellite device this year, a Zoleo. It is an emergency beacon and also allows us to text. 160 characters per message, 250 messages per month, $35 per month. It was great in this situation for helping us coordinate with her! The trail today, the Kettle Crest Trail, was wonderful — well built, well maintained, well graded. There were also tons and tons of colorful wildflowers. We met another thruhiker, Karaoke, on trail (going the opposite direction though). She was only the 5th PNT thruhiker we’ve met so far. We met Janet and Iian at the campground at around 3:30 and had a fun afternoon and evening hanging out and chatting! Plus they brought us tons of tasty food! -R