It rained on us for a bit last night. Nothing big, just a few showers. Stormtrooper likes to get moving early. He takes off around 6 while I’m packing, then I’m off to the trail.

I’m climbing up the next hill and look back to take a picture of the mountains in mist.

I’m thinking how interesting the mountains look in that context and was thinking about writing a long missive about it. A little later I run into a gal Northbounding named Megaphone. We are talking about the mist when she says it looks like smoke. Oh. As the day wears on it gets thicker and smells like smoke. Gone are my thoughts of romantic misty mountains.

Stormtrooper left me a Salty shout-out in the dirt. That brightens the mood a bit.

Took a few photos near the top of the next hill. Misty mountains (not!). Other hikers are telling me I should be seeing spectacular views of Mount Rainier. Instead I get this brown-orangy view of the last hill I hiked. Sucks.

Next comes a long decent toward a major highway which is the main entrance into Mt Rainier park. I finally break out of bug hell. It is Sunday, so I’m running into group after group of fresh smelling day hikers. One asks me how bad the bugs are….I just kind of chuckle and suggest covering up. There are some folks getting their wedding picture by the lake. They look all happy and bug free.

There is a parking lot next to the highway. Sunday, major road crossing the PCT. Often this is a good hunting ground for some trail magic. I diverted down and walked around and chat with a group of folks there waiting for the offer of something good. I get nothing. Damnit. The only trail magic I have received so far is a bag of Cheetos. Others are getting burritos, beer, and soda. Getting a little jealous. On the bright side, there is a nice pit toilet here saving me a squat in the woods.

Washington is getting much harder now. Gone are the easy days of 3k of easy climbing. Now it is 4.5k for this hike. Up/down/up/down. It will continue to get harder as we push North. I took some photos along the way. Visibility is like 5 to 10 miles, so they are kind of meh.

I hooked up with Stormtrooper on the last climb and we passed the time chatting about all sorts of stuff.  We continue the debate about where this smoke is coming from.  I continue whining about having zero tral magic.  

Roll into our destination of Mike Urich Cabin around 7.

I drop my pack at the front of the cabin and start chatting with a South African hiker who has a nice cold mountain dew and 3 bags of empty chips piled up next to him. I’m all hot mopping up sweat with a nasty paper towel I’ve been carrying all day. What’s up with that Dew man? He says there is a bunch of magic in the cooler inside. I cut off our conversation, throw open the door, and there it is !

I yank out a Mountain Dew. It is COLD. I pop the top and drain it in two long gulps. My head starts swimming from the sudden sugar rush. Ahhh Trail Magic. I grab some chips and a cold beer, snap a quick photo of the interior, and head out to the porch to repair my relationship with Mr South African hiker dude. The evening is looking up.

I make some dinner on the porch while talking to few other hikers that are already setup. Dog Bite and Hefe are two older guys on the Northbound route. I focus a bit more on that conversation given that I’ll likely see them again. Always the opportunist.
It is funny. The first thing Dog Bite says to me is “Today I’m officially on Medicare ! ” Now that might seem strange to you young people, but I know exactly why he is so happy. No more $2,000 health insurance.

Apparently this cabin is sponsored by a snowmobile club in the area. They have built it up over the years into a nice base camp. During the summer folks do off-road rides out of here. Wish California had more of these.

Around 8:30, I collapse into my tent feeling very satisfied.

Stormtrooper and I get up before the rest of the crew and pack up. We head out around 6:30. He and I hike together for most of the day trading stories and talking about the folks we met at the beginning of the hike during that Campo to Idylwild stretch that we did together. Gourmet has been busy partying and chasing tail for most of the hike. He is still back in Northern California. His town days are a bit long.

Storm tells me about a group of 20-30 hikers who stick together. They call themselves the “hord”. They try to camp together but since most of the time there isn’t room for tents, they just all cowboy camp all squished together. They call it the “Cuddle Puddle”. Funny Kids.

The mosquitoes are really bad on this stretch. I turn the corner and see this group lounging around in mosquito hell.

They are walking a part of the trail with llamas. I didn’t stop due to the bugs. Would have liked to talk to them. Around that time I also run into Patches. He got his new mobile phone and is back in comission. We talk for a bit then his voice kind of drifts off behind me. I’m keeping a fast pace due to the bugs. Wish I was more tolerent. I HATE this f#$%ing things.

Then I take a wrong turn. I’m pushing my pace and not keeping my head up. I walk almost a mile the wrong way until the trail starts going to hell. It gets narrower, more overgrown, and finally I check my location on the gps. Yup, lost.

I have to double-time it back to the PCT. By now Storm is far in front of me and probably wondering what’s going on. Through my satellite messanger, I ask Alice to text him to let him know what’s up. I pass Patches (again) and pick up another hiker named Nico while for the afternoon. We hike together until I find Stormy sitting on top of a pass eating lunch sitting in a swarm of mosquitoes. I mean, seriously there are a hundred bugs flying around him which he ignores. He tells me they are even worse in Wisconsin somedays. Ugh.

I wolf down a bagel and spray deet all over me between bites. I don’t think I’ll ever adapt to the bug menance.

I’m picking up my pace now that I’m with Stormtrooper. That boy can really hike. His “easy” pace is 3 mile/hr uphill, downhill doesn’t matter. I’ll have to take a video of him sometime.

We make it to a primo tent site on Dewey Lake at 2321. Beautiful spot with a somewhat sandy shore. Stormtrooper walks out into the lake and washes off. He looks pretty cold to me. Did about 25 today + a 2 mile detour. Feeling pretty good.

This morning I checked out of my room, but still needed to upload this journal which seems to take forever. The wordpress setup I have on my site does not work very well with my half-baked Kindle / keyboard setup. So I end up spending hours squinting at some tiny text box where I insert my posts and pictures.

I skulked around the Packwood Inn jumping from picnic table to table leaching on their WIFI while trying to find some shade.
Finished up around 1 and had some pizza from next door. Ordered a large 3 topping. Ate that whole thing. Then headed to the grocery store next that place. That’s Packwood. IGA, Packwood Inn, Pizza place, Saloon across the street, gas station.
I need to get from Packwood back up to Kracker Barrel general store next to the trail. About a 20 minute ride on the highway.

Until today, I’ve been lucky getting rides. Not so today. I dropped my pack in front of IGA on the highway through town and started thumbing. Dozens and dozens of cars and trucks go by. Some wave at me. Why do they wave? Give me a ride asshole !

I’m joined by another hiker named Scavenger. We smile and wave in the hot sun. He’s 31 from NYC and moved to Arizona recently. Did the AT a few years ago. He’s also into bikepacking. When not backpacking he does web customization work on wordpress sites. He is a nice guy, but a little odd. He’s getting frustrated with the hitching situation and starts chatting up people unloading their shopping carts from IGA. “Hey you heading toward White Pass when your done?” Fail.

Eventually some gal pulls up in a little car and asks where we are going. She is in the area to do a few days of backpacking and didn’t think she was going that far. Drives away….then comes back and picks us up ! It took over an hour to get a hitch. Hopefully anyone reading this will think twice when they see a smelly hiker on the road. Give them a ride !

So I make it up to the General Store and reunite with Stormtrooper ! Bunch of other hikers milling around eating and drinking. The store owner ropes Scavenger and me into a little project to put together some shelves. While we are working on that Scavenger is flirting with the checker.

Storm and I decide to camp out back of the store and hit the trail tomorrow. We meet a couple of retired Marine officers and have some long chats about Afghanistan (Attrition and Prichard). Attrition’s specialty was IED discovery and disposal. He telling us all sorts of stories you don’t hear in the news. LIke the ding-dong Afghani army guys he is training. He tells me they Afghani’s get $30 for each IED they find and disarm. Well each time they bring these guys to a training range, they find out someone has planted a bunch of new IED’s around that need to be disarmed. When these guys turn in the evidence and it is scanned for biometric data, it is traced to the same students.

Some of his stories are pretty dark. Like men taking boys as their sex toys who fill that role until released. Some of these boys are trained from an early age to carry explosive vests. How the graft and corruption is so pervasive that soldiers go without pay because others above them have skimmed so much of the money the US and our allies pay to the government to fund their army. God what a mess.

While we are chatting, Scavenger comes over and sets up his tent. The store is about to close. He talks to us for a minute then disappears. We never see him come back…..he got hooked up with the cashier. Must have stayed the night at her place, heh.
Good to be hanging with Stormy again. He is full of trail stories. Love that guy.

Here is a picture of the store when we were leaving in the morning. Those picnic tables were full of hikers the day before and probably every day thereafter during the season.

Been hanging out here in Packwood. Eating. Writing my journal. Eating. I’ve somehow managed to lose my zip-on leggings for my hiking shorts. I had put them on a couple days ago when the mosquitoes were bad and forgot to repack them when I took them off near Goat Rocks.

Saw Work Horse and Chai trying to get a hitch from the grocery story.   Stopped by and chatted with them for a bit.   They are going back on the trail tomorrow morning.   I suspect I’ll catch up to them at some point.   It took them 30 minutes before someone finally picked them up.   I’ll have to go through that routine tomorrow.  

I’m resupplied for the next 7 days in the bush. Tomorrow I’ll head back up to the Kracker Barrel General Store and wait around for Stormtrooper to show up. Then it is back on the trail !

Here is a picture of last night’s tent site

After my dinner of instant mashed potatoes last night, I’m down to a fig bar, some granola, and half roll of sweet tarts. On the bright side, my pack is nice and light 🙂 I’ve been putting a lot of effort into getting extra miles in over the last few days so I can hit Whites Pass around noon.

To be honest, over the last couple days all I can think about is pizza and burgers. Sometimes, when my mind wanders a bit, I can even smell them. Food. Milk shakes. Anything fried. Fresh fruit. I’m thinking about all of that and more. Guess hiker hunger has really grabbed me.

Today, I’ve a little descent, then another 2k climb up to 6.5k. After that, it is downhill for 6 miles to Whites Pass at ~4k. I’m back in the woods for the most part during the descent. There is a burned out section which gives me a short mosquito break, then they come back when I bottom out.

Just before I start the last big climb, I run into a group of backpackers hiking out. 3 40 something guys and one of their teenage boys. The teenager looks like he doesn’t want to be there, heh. They are asking me all these questions about thru-hiking and seem genuinely interested. I’m in a bit of a hurry so I cut the conversation short saying something about burgers and beer. One of the guys keeps up with me for a few minutes chatting, then he drops back. I can hike the shit out of most backpackers right now. It feels good to be in that kind of shape.

Anyway, I climb this last hill, and get a nice view of an alpine lake as well as the last bowl I’ll see before dropping into the trees.

I’m thinking how cool it would be to ski this stuff in the winter. Then on my left, through the trees, I see a chair lift. Apparently there is a ski resort on the other side of the hill. Well how about that? Might need to make a trip up here one day with my planks.

I took a final break before heading into the trees, chatting with yet another crop of SOBO’s. It is funny because I’m noticing the further North I go, more and more of these SOBO’s want to talk. They want to exchange trail names, etc. Then it hits me. These folks have only been on the trail for a few weeks. They are still nooblets.

After eating my last fig bar and polishing off the last of my water, I had 6 miles to go and it is all downhill. I was making good time rocking downhill with my treking poles at an easy jog.  Hot, Hungry, Dirty, and Dry. I decended into Wites Pass like a meteor. 

I covered the 15 miles in little over 5 hours, rocking a 3 mile/hr pace.

As luck would have it, a trail angel was dropping off a hiker and offered me a ride. Trevor took me over to the general store to pick up my resupply package, then drove me down to Packwood for the room I booked at the Packwood Inn. The dude was pretty interesting. He works for Chehalis Indian Reservation as a gaming agent. He was full of interesting facts about legal jurisdiction of the State on Reservation territory.

Apparently, this tribe is very financially successful. All tribal members get a ~$30k check every year. The tribe has used money from their Casino to start up all sorts of other business ventures like brewing craft beers, construction, a state of the art hospital, and tons of other businesses. They are even expanding the reservation’s land by buying up nearby parcels. Every kid gets a full ride scholarship to the university of their choice.

Trevor dropped me at the Inn around 1:00 and the first thing I did was leave my pack at the office and go looking for fried anything and draft beer. Well, it turns out that the good town of Packwood has four places to eat. The first is a bar which is closed until 3:00. The next option is a pizza place where one of the employees tested positive for Covid and that’s closed to Friday. Craft Brewery ? Closed until 3:30. Finally, I walk to the edge of town to a burger joint. They are closed with a “Will be back” dial set to 11 Is that AM or PM? I’ve no idea.

All things eventually work out and I get my meal at 3:30. I head back to the Inn and drop into the bathtub for a long soak. Here’s the result.

For this stretch I did 149 miles in 6.5 days averaging ~23 miles a day. I never expected to keep that kind of pace in Washington. Looking ahead, I suspect I’ll have to slow down somewhat given the steeper terrain, but I’m feeling like I am going to finish this thing. I’ve ~350 miles left !