Some Wilder Heaven

Wonderland Trail

South Puyallup Creek to Golden Lakes

9-5-2010

Coming into South Puyallup yesterday was, for the eastern hiker, a Brobdingnagian experience. Everything was three times as large as its eastern counterpart. The mountain, three times as high. Glaciers. Gorges three thousand feet deep, as a rule, and not the exception (the only three thousand foot gorge I recall on the AT was Webster Cliffs in NH). I woke up in South Puyallup and packed up for Golden Lakes, anticipating more head-blowing-off wonder.

Clouds began rolling in by about ten, however, which set the tone for much of the rest of the trip. Not so much with the views. Quite a lot with the spooky menace. This was going to be a conditions endurance contest. I had an oldish down sleeping bag with no waterproofing, some crappy Dri-Ducks, and polypro long johns. Gloves, extra pair dry socks, sock liners, and hubris. The gaps I filled in with duct tape. Standard hiking wear is a capilene shirt, shorts that don't dry out nearly fast enough and a pair of underarmour to prevent "macho he-man inner thigh rash". In short, not enough clothes. I fell to relying on the old Appalachian Trail technique of not stopping. The problem on the WT is that you have to stop, unless you're a Seattlite Fitness Leprechaun, which I am not. When you stop, when you're wet and it's forty degrees out and windy you have half an hour before your hands start shaking too much to be usable. I didn't stop. By the time I got to my campsite I was not feeling hungry at all, which is good, because I underpacked this leg of the trip. I set up the tent as fast as I could and got out of wet things and into polypro longjohns and rain gear. Still cold.

Golden Lakes, though, rippled under clouds, the rain canted off into a wind-blown mist. A thoughtful young man told me about pathfinding across the Rockies in Idaho, and a trio of apparently immortal old ladies burst into a perfect harmony, some Nordic song of wandering and redemption. The young man said the ladies do six mile days for most of a month, just wandering the mountain. They sound like angels of a wilder heaven. I'm not feeling hungry but I'm not feeling terribly cold anymore either.

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As a post-script, thank goodness for my Meathead Brand Protein Colossal bars. I would never eat them off trail because they're like five hundred calories apiece, but if you did the math I think the majority of my calories came from these things, and on cold days they were all I would eat. Sort of like Snickers bars for AT hikers in Maine. I also noticed that I didn't have the calf and thigh soreness I should have had after all those big climbs. Either the weight room time is helping or the increased protein intake. Beats the hell out of snickers anyway. At these temps you can barely bite into chocolate.