24th September 2013
Mile 2356 to mile 2372 : Urich Cabin to Tacoma Pass
Mileage : 16
What should have been a night of deep restorative sleep was not, due to a female hiker who shall remain nameless who arrived after us and then snored more loudly than anyone i have ever encountered in my life, ever. There are few things in life which affect my morale as acutely as someone depriving me of sleep when i too am trying to sleep. I did not sleep well. Thanks to the presence of the fire though, all my things were dry in the morning when i finally got up and about, but that was about the only positive thing about the day. I didn't get hiking until just after 9am, and pretty much straight away the pain in my left ankle and right knee was severe. After about a mile i had to stop on a forest road and decide what to do. The pain was so much i could not manage more than about 1 mile per hour, and i had no idea if that could be sustained. Snoqualamie Pass was 45 miles along the trail, and that is along way at 1 mile per hour. I decided first to tape up my ankle, as that was giving the most pain. Not having a razor i had to snip the hairs of my leg off so that the tape would stick properly and i wouldn't have to do it a second time. The tape helped massively, but there wasn't enough to do my knee, so the only thing to do was to carry on and hope it was managable. It was not. Another couple of miles farther up the trail i had to stop again and sort out my knee. It hurt mostly on descents when swinging the knee forward before placing my foot with the pain mostly concentrating on the lower, inner face of the kneecap. Luckily i was carrying a fair amount of duct-tape with me, so decided to use that in lieu of proper medical tape. So again i sat a carefully snipped all the hairs off my knee before applying the tape. As i have not experienced this pain before, i don't know if any of what i was doing actually had any effect at all, but i had to hope that it did. After mummifying my knee as best i could, i hobbled on. I was fortunate that day thahat there was no rain, well not torential rain at least. Late in the afternoon i had come about 12 miles when i just had to stop, and just as i did i met two south boundrs who told me there was some magic at the bottom of the next hill. I resolved to make it to the magic, stop there for the night and re-evaluate my situation in the morning. Unfortuantely for me, the hiking gods weren't finished me and had more injuries to throw my way. This time though it was my upper bodies time to sufffer, specifically my right wrist. My hiking poles today were invaluable in helping me avoid putting weight on my ankle and knee, and clearly the gods were not happy with me escaping pain that easily, and so they contrived to make life even more difficult. My right wrist began to hurt and swell massively as i gripped the hiking pole, and before long i was unable to grip it at all. This meant i had to hobble down the last descent with only my left pole, and un able to give my knee the extra support it needed. It took a long time to get down. About halfway down, i saw a note from Peter Pan and HoopDreams to say they were stopping at an abandoned weather station that night just over 10 miles farther up the trail. There was absolutely no chance i'd be joining them. Eventually the descent was over and I rested at the base of the climb looking for somewhere to string up my tarp. I did so and started my evening routine, grateful for the lack of rain. About half an hour after stopping, Fireball turned up. He was sad to hear of my woes, but there was little he could do about it save give me some extra strapping tape as mine was running out. I was feeling pretty defeated at this stage and was glad of someone to talk to. His advice was 'kiss the monument'. He said in his view we had all come so far up the trail that skipping up to the monument section would not be the end of the world. I seem to be one of the few hikers bent on a continuous hike, which he well knew, and he said i would have to accept that this was no longer possible. He said i should take some time off, wait for my knee to heal up enough to make it to the border and get there any way i could. It was sage advice, but i wasn't ready to hear it. At the same time though i was tempted to put a sign by the road in the hope it would be seen by a passing car, of which there were few, and jump in it regardless of where it was going. Fireball had a couple more miles to do before stopping, so left me to my thoughts as he disappeared up the trail. All I could do was hope that everything would be feeling up to another long day on the PCT tomorrow.
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