26th September 2013
Mile 2393 to mile 2402 : Miller Lake to Snoqualamie Pass
Mileage : 9
My ankle felt better today, my wrist and knee did not. The first couple of miles went well, and my mood was the highest it had been since Chinook Pass thanks in part to the patchy blue sky overhead. Perhaps the weather was going to break just as predicted. My good mood ebbed fairly quickly as the pain in my knee increased with each mile that i hiked. It took about 5 hours to hike the 9 miles into Snoqualamine Pass, but finally i got there. I hobbled straight across to the Snoqualamie Summit Inn to find Peter Pan, Hoop Dreams and Bob, Hoop Dreams' dad preparing to leave. We were all glad to see each other and discussed our hiking options for the next section. It appeared that there would be no let up in the weather for the foreseeable future, infact it would be very bad for as long as anyone could tell. This coupled with my bad knee meant i would not be hiking out that day. Peter Pan and Hoop Dreams however were determined to hike however, so Bob took them up to the nearby trailhead leaving me to have lunch with Fireball, who was staying at the Inn. We talked about our hiking prospects for the next few days and the only thing that we could reasonably conclude is that there was no easy answer. I made the difficult decision to skip up to at least Steven's Pass, cutting out the next immediate section of about 75 miles. I did not feel good about this decision. From the Mexican border up to my present PCT mileage of 2402 miles there is an unbroken line of my footprints, but no farther. With my knee injured to continue up the trail would be very painful, even in ideal hiking conditions, but in the current conditions however it could be very dangerous indeed. The only to keep warm in bad conditions is to keep moving, and i would struggle to do that with my knee and would therefore risk hypothermia. Given that i thought my knee pain was ligament or tendon based, it would take days if not weeks to heal properly, and to spend days and days waiting at the hostel for an injury that might not heal is not financially viable. I decided there therefor that skipping the section was the only way i would stay on the trail. Bob very kindly offered to take me up to a trail angel's house in the small town of Baring, where some trail angels are located about 20 miles west of the trail, so off we went after wishing Hoop Dreams and Peter Pan all the best for their hike out from Snoqualamie Pass. I wished i was wish them.
About 2 hours later Bob dropped me off at the Dinsmore's Hiker Haven, and i was introduced fairly quickly to Andrea and Jerry, the extremely kind trail angels who many years ago turned their expansive garage into a hostel for hikers preparing for the last sections of the trail. At the Dinsmore's i reunited with Chick-Chack, Starfox and Mr Green, all of whom had been there since they left White Pass about 4 days ago. They, along with many other hikers had made themselves at home in the very cosy hikers and made the best of the bad situation. Andrea Dinsmore, aka Mama Dinsmore, did not have good news about the weather. As i was given the form, she stressed the importance of me filling out a next of kin form with all my contact details, along with descriptions of all my equipment and clothing so I could be identified if the worst happened. The form was enough to scare us all, and if it wasn't enough she kept retelling a scare story about a hiker a few years back who went out with 5 days worth of food, and finally made it into Stehekin after 17 days. It did not make everyone feel good. As the weather report was not good at all i resigned myself to staying for a couple days at least, and therefore tried to relax and not get too stressed about the whole situation, there would be plenty of time for that over the next few days.
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