After a relaxing week in Portland where I did my first atempt on sending resupply packages I was going back to Cascade Locks.

 

 

I missed the bus only by 2 minutes… but missed is missed and I had to call an Uber to drive me all the way back to Cascade Locks. 57$ which I could habe better spent than this.

Eve, my driver dropped me if in front of the supermarket where I had to buy a new propane-canister. I bought some Ice-cream as well before I headed out to the bridge of the gods 🙂

Motivation was high so the 1000 meter climb over 16 km felt easier as I thought it would feel. The weather although was not good. The clouds were getting darker and darker.

 

After 3 hours my headphones started to stop working correctly… one of the few moments where it comes in handy to be deaf on one ear. I just had to switch sides and the working headphone was in the hearing ear again 🙂

I reached the tentsite asexpected just after 7pm to set up my tent and crawl inside to cook dinner and try to sleep. The old rythm is forgotten, so I had a hard time falling asleep. The rain which started didn’t made it better.

 

 

 

 

After a rough night I woke up at 7 in a drippin wet tent, the single walls keep of the rain but as soon as one touches them they left the water trough.

 

 

I made sure everything was well stuffed into drybags to keep things dry over the day.

 

When I got out of the tent I realized that a puddle had where I camped and I was literally floating on the water, which made it very hard to pack up the tent. All the water and pine needles stuck to it made it heavy and bigger. I had a lot of trouble to fit it in its bag.

 

It was raining the whole morning, sometimes more, sometimes I dared to hope it’d be over only to be soaked again a few minutes later.

 

Washington welcomes me as everyone warned me. Cold and wet…

I skipped breakfast because I didn’t wanted to stop in the rain. I ate Cliffbars to fight the hunger.

 

At 2pm when it only rained a little I took the chance to get a late breakfast. Cooking seemed to risky and I didn’t trust the weathe enough to unpack my backpack.

 

 

3 miles before I would get to my designated campsite I saw a tipi next to a small lake. It for sure had to be someones but as it was 5 feet from the trail and there was no “no hikers” sign on it I took a look inside.

 

Empty and dry!

 

After thinking about it for 10 minutes I decided to stay here for the night to get out of the rain and maybe be able to get my stuff a bit dry.

 

My puffy which isn’t supposed to get wet at all was soaked even trough my raincoat. Hopefully it’ll dry a bit over night, otherwise I’ll be cold tomorrow.

 

 

The weatherforecast says sunny at 5-9 degrees Celsius. Could be better, but could be a lot worse too 🙂

 

After an early dinner I was cuddled into my quilt at 5pm. It took me almost 3 hours to finally feel warm again…

 

 

 

 

The night was cold but good. Winter is coming… the cold nights will stay till I reach Canada.

 

Because it was do cold not everything dried during the night so I had to pack up some things still beeing wet.

 

When I was almost done packing up I heard a car driving up the road to the house next to the tipi. I hurried and sneaked out before someone saw me. Of course I left the tipi as I found it an no-one will ever know 🙂

There was supposed to be sun today but it was still freezing cold outside and cloudy. At least the clouds didn’t look like rain, so they might go away during the day.

 

 

The total elevation I had to climb today is over 1600 meters spread to 2 major mountains over 24 miles.

 

All the plants along the trail were still wet and I had to take care that my puffy doesn’t get wet again.

 

Because I left so late I took second breakfast while walking to save time.

 

The sun came outout from time to time but the sky was still covered in clouds so there was no way to heat up and I had to wear my puffy for almost the whole morning.

 

 

I had lunch in a meadow where I was able to spread out all my stuff do dry as much as possible without the sun.

 

The ony human interaction for the day was Diggy, a girl I’ve met a few weeks ago who was off trail to attend the burning man festival. She has about the same pace as I do so I might see her again but for now she’s ahead of me.

 

I was able to see Mt Hood where I was 2 weeks ago and it is covered in snow again.

 

 

Mount James where I will be in 2 days is covered in snow too.

 

 

And Mt st. Helens which I won’t pass is covered in snow too.

 

 

The whole afternoon was covered with views of those 3 mountains.

When I set up my tent I tought that I might need some extra clothes for the next 18 days. My raingaer is not as waterproof as expected and it is getting very cold.

 

In the cities around the trail temperatures drop below freezing point and I’m 1500 meters in evelation above them, so here it is even colder.

 

Tomorrow will be flat compared to the last two days so I might be able to do a big mile day 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Coldness and humidity don’t mix well together if you want to get up early… I snoozed my alarm about 10 times before I started to get dressed. But as I took my time to pack things in the backpack I felt that the need to pee grew faster then I would finish packing.

 

I ended up with all the stuff not well organized in my pack and myself out of the tent without socks, otherwise I would have exploded.

At 8 am I was on the trail. Nothing special due today, no major mountain to climb, just an easy day.

 

 

After two hours I saw trail-maintenance, about 10 men and a single woman wete about to cut the trees along the trail.

 

After a few small chats with some of them my fear of the snow grew. On told me that in 2014 mid September when he did the trail they got 6 feet of snow within 1 day while they were on trail.

Hopefully this year the snow waits till mid October!

 

When I had lunch a met an elk-hunter who offered me an apple which I really enjoyed 🙂

 

A few hours later I then saw about 7-8 elks running away from me. They are huge! It’s good that they were scared and ran, because If they would be comming after me I am not sure if it would end well.

 

A few miles down the trail I heard a scratching noise on wood and I saw branches bend on a tree 10 feet away from me. I thought about a Lynx or a Cougar but moments later a blackbaer-cub fell out of the tree and screamed as it would have hurt itself.

 

I panicked because it was too young to be alone in the woods and I started to look for its mom.

 

Of course mama-baer heard her cub and stormed towards him, I just had enough time to hide behind a rree and hope that they didn’t see me.

 

No time to take pictures, just beeing glad that they ran away from where the trail was going.

I whistled and shouted a few times over the next 30 minutes to make sure that the bears know that someone is around them before I felt safe again.

 

After 27 miles I set up my tent next to a river and I was happy to have a bench to sit
while I was cooking instead of beeing crawled up in my tent.

 

When I got finally in my tent I realized that I miscounted the cliffbars and I had only 2 more left fpr 2,5 days. I ate 3 instead of 2 per day since I started…

 

 

 

 

While I watched Netflix yesterday night I thought I had felt something on my head but as I checked with the headlamp nothing was in or around the tent. This morning I realized that again a chipmunk has been in my tent and in my bread!

 

 

At least this time it used the hole which was already there and didn’t bite another one in the tent.

 

I was on trail just before 8 to manage the first 800 meter elevation climb before second breakfast, which I almost managed.

 

The view from was just to amazing when I got out of the clouds and I had to stop and sit down just a mile before the climb would have been done.

 

 

Pictures never get you the real image of how breathtaking those moments are but at least they can try.

Except for the stunning views nothing special happened till lunchtime.

 

 

I passed a trail-register which I signed. When I started the trail there were about 50 people per day on the trail and so the registers were quite full and it was hard to find someone because there were so many.

 

In this register I’ve counted 17 hiker, south- and northbounders, in an entire week. This shows incredible well how alone I feel to be on trail right now and how many hikers have already quit.

After lunch I realized that I could manage a 30+ mile day if I would push myself a bit and so I tried. The only thing keeping my from going really fast were the views… I had to stop and take so many pictures that it did really slow me down a lot.

 

 

 

 

But as soon as I got into the dense forest again I stepped up my game and hiked at an rarely seen speed. I usually do around 2,5 to 2,7 miles per hour on average with pauses. This afternoon I managed 3,2 miles over a 6 hour period even with the first hour of picture taking 🙂

 

There was trail-magic with coke and an apple for me, but I had such a good run that I just ate and drank while walking instead of sitting down in a chair.

 

Not a single animal today, strange how different their apperances can be…

I set up my tent after 30,5 miles at 18h45 because the next official tentsite is 12 more miles away and that seemed a bit too much 🙂

 

Not for everybody tough, around 20h 3 hikers passed me. They either know tentsites which are not on the app or they plan on hiking till after midnight. Maybe I’ll pass them tomorrow morning.

 

 

 

 

This was one of the coldest nights I’ve had on trail. So far.

 

My quilt is fine but my matress isn’t meant to isolate floors this cold so all the coldness from the ground gets to me and makes it had to get some quality sleep.

Nevertheless I had to continue hiking. Just after 8 I was on trail for a hell of a climb. 3 steps of each 500 meters in elevation gain.

 

 

Except that I crashed my drone softly but it still wrecked the battery somehow and messed up tha possible best shot of the trail I’ll let images talk instead of taking your time reading 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fire detour because of a fire which burned 2 months close to the trail was still not lifted, so I had to take it.

 

Walking detours are freestyle hiking, one has no idea where water or tentsites are, it’s just hiking and hoping that there are no junctions to get lost at.

 

The main difference between other trails and the pct is the horse-friendlyness. The pct is not as steep and dangerous to walk. This detour however was ridiculously steep on the uphill and downhill parts.

 

Temperatures around freezing point do not help either, walking uphill makes you wanna put away your puffy but as soon as it flattens out or some wind occurs you would have to put the puffy back on immediately.

 

So I just kept it on and walked the uphill sections slower to avoid sweating too much.

 

 

Around 19h I found a nice camping spot next to a lake and even tough I was motivated to continue walkinh I didn’t dared because the trail is along the ridge and campsites are rare and the risk of not finding another one is too high…

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow I should arrive in White Pass where I have to charge my powerbank, test if the drone-battery is really broken and get my first resupply package 🙂

 

Look at this sneaky little fucker!

 

The first time I catched him I guided him out gently. The second time he entered I catched him, trew him out and left him more bread than he could eat to satisfy his needs and that he would leave me alone.

 

The third time he was trying to get to the rest of my bread I saw no other possibility to get some sleep without my tent beeing chewed on than ending the mouses life…

After this incident I had peace an got some decent sleep even tough it was cold.

 

I had the brilliant but stupidly dangerous idea of turning on the stove for a few minutes before I got out of my quilt to heat up the tent. Works perfectly, it has been the earliest I’ve been on trail since Portland!

The morning was dominated by spectacular views of Mt Rainier.

 

 

 

While crossing this river I had to realize that I was out of shape in river-crossing…

 

 

Wet feet proved that point!

 

It took me 4 hours to finally get to the street to get to the White Pass. I gave up on getting a hitch quite fast because there was not a lot of traffic, so 3 more miles of uphill roadwalking.

 

At the gas station I got my package, food and a 760ml beer-can.

 

I sat down in their lounge to charge my stuff and eat what I bought at their store but as I opened my beer I was told that they were only allowed to sell buy beer but not to have guests drink it inside.

 

So I grabbed the can, got outside of the door an drank it without putting down the can. As I got back in the cashier starred at my “you’re not from america, are you?” She asked…

 

After I finished eating and repacking my food all I had to do was waiting for my stuff to be charged enough for 3,5 more days. This is the reason why I always carried the big solar panel to not depend on power-outlets.

 

But because all the smoke made the solar-charger almost useless I just go a faster powerbank and a dual-usb wallcharger to fasten the charging up.

 

After 4 hours in the lounge I ate so much snacks out of their well stocked hikerbox that I hadn’t even to touch my own snacks for that day 🙂

 

On the way back to the trail I called Fabienne to book our tickets to Hanoi. 335€ one-way from Luxemburg with perfect connections is an unbeatably good price!

 

2,5 more hours on trail and I reached the campsite. I wasn’t even done eating when 5 more hikers showed up where I only knew Starburst. The pitched next to me and we started a fire around which we sat until almost 22h when it started to rain…

 

 

 

 

 

Washington is not really interested in rain probability. 30% chance of rain and sorry for the lack of suspense but it rained 21 hours this day, so far, there are 3 more hours to go as I am writing this.

 

It rained all night and still rained in the morning when I got up. The heat made it slightly better, even more because I’ve got a second gas canister only for the tent-heating purpose!

 

 

There is no way of making it better than it was, it took the rain 10 minutes to get me soaked wet. I had to put my puffy in a drybag to avoid it getting wet too because my rain-jacket doesn’t like rain so much…

 

It in fact rained so much that I stopped avoiding puddles and just walked trough them because my feet didn’t got any wetter.

 

 

I had to skip lunch and eat M&M’s instead because there was not a single tree on trail who stayed dry underneath to cook. Tell noone I eat 500 gramm of them… thats 2500 calories…

 

 

 

This was the highlight of the day, the moment where it stopped raining heavily and only rained a bit. I dared to get my hoped up for a dry tentspot but I learned the hard way that Washington had other plans…

 

 

The picture doesn’t shoe all the water that was flowing over the trail well but at the bottom you can see it a bit.

 

I was so happy to finally reach a campsite even tough it was not flat, nor dry or windproof.

 

I was so cold hiking the whole day in wet clothes in temperatures  below 5 °C with a lot of wind that I was barely capable of pitching the tent. Undoing the laces of my shoes took me 2 minutes, my finers were just too cold and forceless.

 

 

They were purple and blue from beeing cold and wet the whole day and this only worked for a bit.  Now after almost 3 hours in my quilt I slowly start to regain feeling in my toes.

 

I had 2 dinners while warming up in the quilt before updating this.

 

Tomorrow there’s a 10% chance of rain, if it rains as much as today I’ll get a room at the Snoqualmie Pass no matter what it costs!