Day 30-32: The Southern Pintlers

July 21-23; Mile 423-476

Day 30

The bugs were still sleeping as I hiked around the edge of Warren Lake the next morning and climbed the final few hundred feet to the nearby saddle. Descending was tough; my tired feet tripped and stumbled over the rocks poking out of the trail, sometimes small as an apple, sometimes large boulders I had to hop down from. Glacial erratics – the massive car- and room-sized boulders left behind when the glaciers retreated – loomed beside the trail. 

Lark and Young Blood passed me, and a mile later I heard crashing through the trees. It sounded too large to be a deer, but it was definitely galloping/trotting. My first thought was an elk, but there were piles of moose poop every ten feet along the trail. I did get a tiny glimpse of dark brown fur; I’d say 90% certainty it was a moose. 

I stopped for breakfast beside the trail on the climb above Rainbow Lake. People doing trail maintenance slogged past with saws towering out of their packs. One of the downsides of a wilderness area: no chainsaws allowed. All the downed trees had to be sawed by hand. 

I climbed over Rainbow and Pintler Passes before having lunch down in the valley. The clouds had been building all day, and as I ascended toward the final climb, the forest was eerily quiet. No birds chirped, no squirrels chittered. Dark clouds swirled above, and rain pattered onto the dusty trail. 

I paused among the trees, warily eyeing the sky. At 8500’ I was standing at nearly the highest point of the day – not a good place to get stuck in a storm. There was half a mile of ascent remaining before the trail would head downward again. I was in relatively good tree cover here, but the topo map showed the trail ahead hugging a steep section where it was likely to be talus slopes. For the first time ever, I used my Garmin to get a localized forecast. 

Lightning: 70% chance beginning at 3 pm until 9 pm. 

It was 2:50 pm. The section ahead looked fairly forested. I decided to go for it. Adrenaline coursing through my veins, my legs forgot the 15 miles already covered that day and ratcheted up the pace. I kept my rain jacket on – despite quickly overheating – unwilling to pause. Plus, the quickest way to bring rain is to put your rain jacket away. 

I hit the downhill and started to jog. The trail turned a corner into a burn scar, and my tree cover dried up. I felt like I was doing steeplechase with all the blowdowns; I’d hop onto the smaller trees, place a hand on the large trunks and swing my legs over in a fluid motion. Or at least, I tried to be fluid. Mostly I cursed the obstacles and the trail for descending so serenely when it had been straight up and down all day. 

I got to my backup campsite at 4 pm, set up my tent in the pattering rain, and dithered over whether I should continue another 2 miles to where the others would be camped. I was in good tree cover with water nearby; but I didn’t relish the idea of camping alone. The sun was starting to poke through the clouds, and I had all but decided to continue on. And then the thunder began. 

I climbed inside my tent and listened to the rumbling sky all around, rain falling in sheets that drummed along the taut fabric above me. Slowly I unpacked and snuggled into my quilt. Around 7 pm the sky lightened enough that I was able to cook dinner, covered in rain gear – not for the rain, but for the bugs. 

Day 31

I set my alarm extra early the next morning so that I would get to the original campsite by 7am. I packed up my tent in the dark, but it was thankfully bright enough by 6 that I could hike without my headlamp. 

It turned out that all four of us had camped along the night before. Strix was half a day behind since one of her toenails had become ingrown and was causing her pain. Lark had apparently gone too far; Handy hadn’t seen him all day. Hopefully we would catch up with him later. 

Big, puffy clouds drifted past all day, their shadows dancing in slow motion along the ridges. The light around me flickered like someone was having fun with a dimmer switch. 

The day was full of blowdowns and old burn scars, which meant some tricky gymnastics while ascending with a heavy pack. After 14 miles I stopped for lunch in a nice meadow area – and promptly lost the o-ring for my new filter. Thankfully I located it in the grass near my shoes. 

After lunch I hiked through more old burn scars full of silvery trees. Dark clouds scudded along the horizon to my left and right, sheets of rain blurring the sky beneath them. Above me the sun shone in bright blue sky until some clouds drifted past. I paused for a few minutes in the trees while rain pattered down, but the weather cleared quickly and I was able to hike along the very top of the ridge. It was mostly treed, but I hurried through the exposed rocky areas and burn scars. 

The PCT had flirted with ridge lines, switchbacking away from the tops just as soon as you had crested them. The CDT, I was quickly realizing, would toss you up onto the spine of the ridge for miles through exposed burn scars while thunderheads blotted out the sky. 

The silver trees gave way to charred, blackened sticks as I passed into a recent burn. I filled up on water at the final source for the section – with still 20 miles until the road into town. Ash puffed up with every step I took, but luckily there was a strip of living trees along the dirt road ahead. Lark and Handy were waiting among the trees, and I quickly set up my tent in a tiny spot before joining them for dinner. 

I was just putting away my cook pot as the rain began to fall. Inside my tent I listened to the thunder rumble nearby; the sun broke through a final time before it slipped below the horizon. 

Day 32

As I was tearing down my tent, I saw someone walking over to their bear hang – it looked like Strix?! It turned out she had gotten there at 9:30 the night before after hiking 27 miles in one day. And she had been caught up on the exposed ridge during the thunderstorm. 

Walking through the new burn in the slanting light of morning, I thought it held a certain beauty. Mostly because the sun wasn’t blazing directly overhead. The ground was a sea of fireweed and lupine, and in the areas where the fire had burned the hottest and reduced the trees to nothing but ash, it was easy to imagine the wide-open swathes of flowers as meadows instead of dead forest. 

Still, it was nice to step off the CDT after 3 miles and onto an alternate route that would take us out of the burn and past some more water sources. We hiked down Elk Creek trail to a road, and then followed that to the Hogan Creek trail. The path was a little overgrown but easy to follow, and the forest roads were lined with living trees and draped in shade. We passed through tall grasses and over several small creeks before coming to a wide-open meadow. In the distance, sand hill cranes squawked an alarm call. 

Past Hogan cabin, we began to climb up an old forest road lined with strawberry plants. At Gibbons Pass road, we had the option to bushwhack up toward the CDT, or else we could walk the road all the way to the highway. I opted for the more adventurous route, following orange blazes through a marshy stretch with only some bent grass to show the way. A bird exploded out of the grass and into a nearby tree, and I got an excellent view of a grouse and her two offspring. A short while later, a snowshoe hare lazily hopped across the trail, white paws blazing against the brown dirt. 

Back on a forest road, I cruised toward the pass. We tried hitching for an hour and a half before splitting into two groups further apart. Soon after, a truck stopped across the way to take a hiker north, and the woman asked Strix and me if we wanted some food. She was toting a full delivery from the bakery in Salmon, ID up to a farmer’s market, and she gave us a loaf of kalamata bread and a cardamom bun! And maybe 5 minutes later a truck pulled up and gave us a ride. The driver – Derek – had been reading a book about two teens hitchhiking from SC to ID and was inspired to help us out. 

We arrived in North Fork, ID, our home for the evening, and officially crossed into our second state of the trip.