I slept very peacefully and almost through the entire night. The temperature was perfect. My campsite was quiet and I just slept like a log. I was waking up now and moving pretty early, so that was not a bad thing. The weather was still overcast and the thought of fires being on the trail was now a thing of the past. This was going to be the day of the worst blowdowns, so I was prepared for a long one. It started almost immediately. There were constantly big trees to get around. The trail was downhill for the first mile to get to Chetwot Creek. It just felt so dark and ominous, but it wasn't quite wet yet. I crossed Chetwot Creek on an old bridge and then there was a fairly easy ford around Sitkum Creek. It was Kennedy Creek that I was worried about as the footbridge was broken likely to never be replaced.
It looked like a large drainage on the map and when I got there it felt even bigger. You could tell that a large glacier used to make its home here which now had turned it into a large river. Whatever bridge used to be here was probably broken beyond recognition never to be seen again. The lucky part was that once I got there I quickly found some logs to cross. It is sort of a funny decision though because either it goes smoothly or my whole trip could be ruined pretty rapidly. I got myself together and made the crossing. Even on my numb foot I could still be very careful. I balanced the logs and soon found myself on the other side of the river with all of me and my belongings dry. My reward for that was a trip uphill in the woods through the pouring rain crossing many deadfall trees. These weren't just little guys either. These were old growth forest with massive logs coming down.
When I wasn't crossing blowdowns, I was dealing with huckleberries growing right over the trail. Huckleberries, especially the blue kind, have the ability to retain a lot of moisture until you brush up against them with your leg. As soon as you do, though, it goes rushing down your pants and into the top of your socks and shoes quickly making damp feet into wet feet. There was no avoiding it on this day. I was just going to have to accept the wetness and keep plodding along uphill. The goal today was to make it up to Fire Creek Pass. Once I made it there, I knew I was going to be able to go downhill after that. I sure had to work for it though as the trail seemed steeper uphill than most of the rest of the PCT had been in Washington. I kept myself entertained and luckily I had a lot of energy for it. After a while I started to find my way out of the forest and into some more open meadows. It still seemed pretty brushy and the wildflowers were very thick. This portion of the trail traversed around the slopes of Glacier Peak and what was unique about today was that I would be spending the entire day on one section of my National Geographic map. Usually I would cover one, two, or three map sections in a day. But this was so much of an around the mountain trail, that I would never leave page 10 at all today.
Every little piece was a win, though. When I got to Glacier Creek the trail continued to climb until I reached Pumice Creek. Then the trail sort of flattened out in the way that it went downhill, then uphill again, so not really flat, but more evenly distributed. It opened up in places and eventually the rain stopped and revealed some pretty nice landscapes. The weather got significantly better as the day went on, but since I started the day with wet feet, that was how I traveled through it. Pass Pumice Creek, the next big landmark was Fire Creek. This announced to me that I would be going uphill again. At the morning, I started at around 4000 feet. Fire Creek pass was at 6300 feet, so I was going to have to work for it. I put in the miles and was rewarded with some amazing views.
Getting on top of the pass was pretty monumental. There were 360 degree views. There were mountains to the north, mountains to the west, and Glacier Peak to the east. Behind me to the south was the journey I had taken to make it to this point. The sun even made its appearance and I felt new life return to me. There were times where I was even able to sneak peaks of Glacier Peak showing its face. From what I had heard, it was not the most difficult mountain to climb, just difficult to reach. I truly appreciated the pleasure of being out here where not many people would actually go. This area was just as breathtaking as any other National Park, but since it was so hard to get to, not many people got to experience it.
I enjoyed some lunch which was still beef jerky and dried mango. I was getting really thin at the same time my beard was getting rather shaggy. Fire Creek Pass would be a fantastic campsite to spend a few days at just enjoying the peaks around it. You could climb one or two and really have a great campsite. I could not spend too long there, though, as I still had a full day ahead of me. It was time to keep going. From here, the trail went downhill. It started out incredibly open with just some fantastic views. Every few minutes it seemed like another piece of Glacier Peak would show its face and I would get excited to see it. Here I was, right on the doorstep and I could barely see the mountain because the weather had been so cool and wet.
This was obviously not something to complain about as I would take the cool weather over the 90 degree days and fire danger at any point. As I wandered on down in a round about way, the views just seemed so amazing all around me. This was definitely the day where I seemed to take the most pictures without many of them being able to be shown on this blog. The highlight of this day had to be Mica Lake, though. Here was a mountain tarn that was just about perfect. If the weather had been warmer and it would have been closer to camp time I would have taken a dip. The depth of the blue in this lake was so very striking and here I was enjoying it by my very lonesome.
I didn't stay long, though it felt like a place I could hang for a very long time. There really were not a lot of people around on this day. I saw only a handful in this section as the south bounders were really starting to fizzle out and all that was left were section hikers like me. The trail continued going downhill and soon it would become very brushy. So on top of the downed trees to climb over frequently, the trail was now almost completely engulfed with salmon berries. The one benefit of this was definitely salmon berries as I ate like a pig. They were ripe, red, juicy monsters that provided me with a few extra calories while I walked. I met another couple that were obviously European and they were enjoying them also. I actually passed them which was strange for me because they were doing the whole thing and I passed them. That never happened.
Down and down I went until I found my way to a beautiful bridge. There is nothing like coming out of a brushy mess with slippery roots and whipping branches to an absolutely well built beautiful bridge. I was actually a little bit nervous about crossing Milk Creek as I thought the bridge was gone. What turned out happening was that the bridge was gone, but this bridge was on another trail and the PCT had been rerouted to meet up with this bridge. This put me slightly off the traditional path, which actually led to my wife contacting me on my Garmin inReach Mini to let me know I was off the trail. I assured her that was not the case as there was nowhere else to go in this sea of vegetation.
For all my hard work finally getting across Milk Creek, my reward was to go up a massive amount of switchbacks through extremely brushy trail. There was even a set of tools left at one point that if people wanted to, they could use their energy to help brush out the trail. I was happy to leave the machete and loppers for another brave soul as I continued to fight my way up the haphazard trail. It got a little better once the reroute was accomplished, but it still took a lot of energy to force my way up those switchbacks with the occasional deadfall to keep me on my toes. The views got better and better as I got higher though and after a little while, I was lucky enough to get a full view of Glacier Peak.
This day was starting to crawl to an end. I was feeling good, though, and really I just kept going uphill. As the clock approached 5 pm, I was ready to find a place to camp. I was lucky because this area was one of the most beautiful and most peaceful of the places that I had hiked all day. There were big views including those of Glacier Peak. I needed some water, though, and when I finally found it, I was near the headwaters of the East Fork of Milk Creek. I filtered some water and then looked for a campsite. Luckily, one appeared right around the corner. It was almost on an island in the middle of this huge mountain drainage with streams flowing all around me.
The first site I tried seemed so impacted that the soil was fluffy. As I walked on it, it poofed out in little clouds around my feet. I figured I could make it work, but when I put up my tent, I realized I would be inhaling dust all night. So I looked to the other side of the creek I was camped near and saw a less impacted site on the other side of the creek. I decided to carry my tent over there and this turned out to be a much less dusty site. My original site was taken later by the European couple I had talked to earlier. I was pretty tired, but still went through with all my camp chores. In the end, my watch said I had climbed 499 floors which is about 5000 feet in elevation. This was my biggest day so far, but my reward was this beautiful mountain meadow to spend my evening in. This was a challenging day, but I met it with excitement and this was truly a fantastic day out on the trail.
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