No Mercy in the North Cascades

At mile: 2295

Hello friends!

Last time we wrote, David and I were in Sisters, Oregon. Since then, we have hiked around Mt.Jefferson and up the side of Mt. Hood to Timberline Lodge where we took full advantage of an all you can eat buffet.

The trail then descended all the way into the Columbia River Gorge and we crossed into Washington on the Bridge of the Gods. Crossing into our last state felt dramatic, but it was hard to concentrate on the moment because there is no space for pedestrians on the bridge and we had to focus on not getting clipped by cars.

We are well into the state of Washington now, and overall, it has been great. David has been pumped to be back in his home state and we are really settled in to our trail groove. But more recently, the unpredictable weather of the Cascades have really been doing a number on us.

For the past three days, we have been consistantly wet and cold. Everything we own has been slowly and steadily drenched in the intermittant drizzle of the Pacific Northwest. It has been raining 50% of the time, sunny for 25%, and somehow both raining and sunny for the rest. I've caught on to the forecasters here, learning that a 40% chance of rain really means there is a 100% chance it will rain 40% of the day. David is already a pro at handling this climate, but even he agrees it's miserable to put on wet and cold socks in the morning.

Yesterday, David and I had to bundle up our wet things and step out of the relative comfort of our tent and into the rain. We hiked uphill for a few miles, climbing more completely into the cloud that had covered us since waking. We ended up at the end of the knife's edge, a thin and steep ridge we had to follow. I'm sure the drop offs on either side of the mile-long ridge were terrifyingly dangerous, but we couldn't tell because we were caught in a snow storm and couldn't see anything more than a few feet in front of us. When the sun peeked out for twenty minutes in the afternoon to thaw us out, David and I were so excited we were literally screaming and howling at the sky in delight. We finally marched into Packwood, Washington last night by way of a truly terrible fire detour. It was actually the second fire detour, because a fire broke out on the first fire detour.

Today though, we are cozy and warm. Our clothes are clean and our gear is drying out. We're going to hit the trail again later in the day and hopefully we can stay mostly dry as we head up to Snoqualmie and the final leg of our trip.