Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  I set out with my old REI external frame pack, a five-pound sleeping bag and a six-pound tent for the two of us. In those days I thought three pounds per person for a tent was the lightest possibility. I would never consider carrying such a heavy tent or sleeping bag now.

  From my days in the Mountaineers, I remembered there was a great view from a short climb above Sour Dough Gap. Mike dutifully followed his pastor on a scramble up the rocky crag with a sheer drop on the other side, although he wasn’t particularly comfortable with heights. Mike could have hiked much faster than his pastor on this trip but always let me lead, inexplicably saying going at my pace would keep him from hurting himself.

  The most memorable part of the trip was the elk. We saw a herd of elk from a distance in Big Crow Basin, and the next night we heard more, although we didn’t know at the time what we were hearing was elk. It wasn’t until we reached the Ulrich Cabin on the third night that we definitely identified the strange sounds as elk. We woke up the next morning in the cabin and found 30 to 40 elk outside. We crept as quietly as we could down a creaky wooden ladder from the sleeping loft, carefully opened the squeaky door and took many pictures of quiet elk life as the herd, mostly mothers and calves, grazed all around us.

  Elk sound like ET. I have been amazed ever since at the sounds elk make. Males bugling in the fall rutting season is entirely different. In domestic bliss as they grazed around us in the meadow surrounding the Ulrich Cabin, elk made high pitched sounds very much resembling the sounds ET made in the movie of the same name.

  Leaving Ulrich Cabin, we hiked in clear cuts most of the way to Snoqualmie Pass at the same time as an unusual 90+ degree heat wave hit the Pacific Northwest. Our packs were heavy. I was still carrying a sun-shower, a book to read, a lot of cooking equipment and heavy food for three course dinners as well as a heavy tent and bag. It was very hot, and I have never done well in heat. Hot weather turns me into a dead daisy. At one point, Mike and I struggled upwards to an old logging landing and collapsed on tiny wild strawberries. There was no shade, and we were really spent.

  Mike said, “Pastor Mary, I don’t think we should bring the rest of the church on this hike.”

  I laughed almost hysterically as I thought it the funniest statement ever, right when I was wondering why we had ever come on this hike.

  We survived the heat and the hike, and at the end of our six days arrived at Snoqualmie Pass. The folks in the motel were kind enough to let us wait for pick up inside their air-conditioned lobby, even though we were not paying guests. I’d completed 69.5 miles of the 2,654 mile Pacific Crest Trail.

  Chapter 4 April 2004

  AT

  “Hey, I could do this even solo.”

  In 2003 I planned a visit with my daughter, Sara, who then lived in North Carolina. Her husband had come home from the Kuwait War with severe kidney stones. As he recovered, we took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. I picked up a couple of books about the Appalachian Trail: Walking the Appalachian Trail by Larry Luxenberg and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Later I found a series of books at a used bookstore in Tacoma: Exploring the Appalachian Trail. I read them all. I was hooked. My daughter and I planned to start at Springer Mountain, Georgia, in April, 2004 for an eleven-day backpack trip.

  We were still decked out with heavy gear: old external frame REI (Recreational Equipment Incorporated) packs, heavy sleeping bags, a six pound REI tent, too much food, cooking gear and the sun shower. We carried foam pads to place under our sleeping bags, the only lightweight item in our packs. I discovered a foam pad was just not enough for my old bones. Consequently, I had very little sleep on this trip. We were still wearing heavy boots and I got my usual silver dollar sized blisters on my heels. We didn’t make it eleven days as Sara’s knee, dislocated in dancing classes in high school, started swelling about day five. Our packs were not monster-class, but heavy enough that we searched for rock formations, which we called dismount rocks, allowing us to more easily put on and take off our heavy packs. Lacking such rocks, we had to help each other into our packs.

  On the AT we discovered a whole different way of doing a backpack.

  The Appalachian Trail has shelters in which one can sometimes stay, a whole lot of people and access to towns. I’d never considered making a hike easier with town stops. I thought one just hiked from point A to point B with, perhaps, a stop somewhere for a food drop if you couldn’t carry enough for the whole trip. We met many who hoped to be thru-hikers, going all the way to Maine that year. There was much discussion as to what percentage of those who started at Springer actually would make it to Katahdin. Lots of hikers were starting and hoped to go the distance. Others were section hikers, weekend hikers, or day hikers. Some of them stopped frequently at nearby towns taking zero days (rest days walking zero miles) before heading on again.

  We had a great trip. The weather was quite warm, sometimes hot. We made friends. We met many other hikers, some of whom I captured in photos scribbled with strange trail names on the back, like Nitro, Mr Clean and Frenchy. (Nitro and I would meet in future years on the PCT. And I saw Mr Clean years later, too, although he’d changed his trail name to Cog by then.)

  Others on the AT had very heavy packs, but some had lightweight packs. Nitro had a Mountain Smith Ghost, an internal frame pack, and it wasn’t as loaded as ours. I took note of it.

  The climb up Blood Mountain was difficult with our overloaded packs. I struggled. Sara went ahead to find us a camping spot, not an easy task as it was a weekend and roughly a zillion people were camped on Blood Mountain, including at least two Boy Scout troops. Every available spot on that mountain had a tent on it, including many camped on rock slabs. Sara found us slanted grass hummocks just the size of our tent that others had by-passed. Those grass hummocks may have been lumpy, but they made my softest bed and provided the only night of solid sleep on that trip.

  Blue Mountain and Tray Mountain were also challenges. The Appalachian Trail begins on a mountain (Springer Mountain, Georgia), ends on a mountain (Mt. Katahdin, Maine) and tries to go up and down most every mountain in between, even if the trail almost goes in circles to do so. Every state brags about its difficult trail. There may be an easy way up a mountain, but the AT, with perverse pride, will go up and down the hard way.

  We had good times. We saw the views. We soaked up trail culture new to us such as trail names, which reminded me of Girl Scout camp names. We learned about trail magic first hand when we found a six pack of cokes at the Unicoi Gap trailhead with a note saying they were for any hiker who wanted one. We each took one, not wanting to be greedy with trail magic.

  Some of the time we needed our good camping skills, but I learned there were other ways to hike. Many hikers were solo hikers. I’d never considered solo hiking. Both the Girl Scouts and the Mountaineers had always stressed safety in numbers. I’d been taught the safest minimum number was three: If one is injured that left one to stay with the injured person and one to hike for help. That is still the safest rule for hiking. Hiking with two was OK, but not as safe as three. I could organize and lead group hikes and backpack trips. I’d many skills, but solo hiking was new to me. The AT wasn’t isolated wilderness hiking. There was plenty of room to hike alone, but there were also others on the trail. Friends were made as you went along. Being solo didn’t mean I couldn’t go. “Hey, I could do this.” Even if I didn’t have a hiking partner, I could do this.

  In preparing for this trip, I’d read Appalachian Trail books that described the trail and interesting things along the trail. Sara and I were the only ones we knew who visited the Hickory Flats Cemetery Pavilion and its strange playground equipment where we had fun on the two-person Merry Go Round just before Hawk Mountain Shelter.

  Nitro had a trail journal online on trailjournals.com, which I followed when I returned home.

  Sara learned about hitchhiking etiquette on the AT when her swelling knee forced her off trail. We met hikers who hitchhiked to get to small towns along the way, and we
heard some motels regularly sent vans to pick people up at trailheads. We trusted the hitchhiking lore told to us, and she left me at Dick’s Creek Gap to find her own way to her car stashed with the person who had shuttled us up the road to Springer Mountain at the beginning of our hike. I continued on into North Carolina for another day and night solo. Sara picked me up at Deep Gap in her bright yellow car. I’d hiked 82.4 miles on the Appalachian Trail and gone from one state into another. Georgia was done. I only had 2,064.6 miles to go. ☺

  Chapter 5 August 2004

  PCT

  “Lose a pound for each year past 60.”

  In 2004, I split my vacation time between East and West, and started to hike the AT and the PCT together, a section on each trail each year. As far as I know, I am the only one to have hiked these trails in this way. Usually people hike one trail until finished with that trail, then, maybe later, hike another long trail. I was entranced with both.

  So, in August, it was time for another section of the PCT. Although I was pretty sure I could manage the AT as a solo hiker, I wasn’t so certain about doing that on the PCT. My daughter wasn’t available. What should I do? I simply wrote about what I was planning to do in the church newsletter and asked if anyone wanted to come along. Two people were interested in coming with me for two different sections. Wonderful.

  Gary, a younger man from my congregation, and I set out from Panther Lake Campground as a storm system moved into Washington. It poured. All day. Gary pulled out a yellow poncho from his pack and found it was his small daughter’s and didn’t cover much of a full sized man. At lunch, I rigged the rain fly with some cord, a good thing as Gary was almost hypothermic by then. He found something dry to wear and also found his own poncho, the right sized one. Life was better then, even in the rain. It rained the next day, too. We walked through wet foliage in the Indian Heaven Wilderness, and it left us even wetter. When the sun finally came out and we could dry out, we were overjoyed. In spite of the rain, we enjoyed walking by lakes and peeking through the trees at Mt. St Helens. Gary’s family picked him up at Big Mosquito Lake. My son wondered why in the world I chose to camp at something named Big Mosquito anything. It’s just how the miles worked out. Yes, there were mosquitoes.

  The rain had stopped, and I braved a night alone at Big Mosquito. I hadn’t camped alone before, but I thought I could manage one night. After a day of solo hiking, I met Kathy near Mount Adams. Her dog, Tasha, came with us. We loved the Mount Adams area and later the Goat Rocks. Kathy was a kindred spirit, who loved the mountains as much as I did and also had hiking and climbing experience, making us a good team.

  The flowers were in full bloom near Mount Adams and also coming to the Goat Rocks. The views were spectacular, some of the best the PCT has to offer, with high mountain crags and two glaciated mountains. Mount Adams and Mount Rainier. We camped by one of my favorite waterfalls in the Mount Adams area, not seeing the sign telling us not to camp in the overused area until the next morning as we left. Fields of lupine accented with Indian paintbrush were abundant and filled the air with perfume.

  Kathy’s husband, David, brought us a food drop at a road half way through and Kathy took a break as I walked an uninteresting section. She wanted to walk only the pretty parts; I wanted to walk it all.

  Before we reached Sheep Lake we crossed Walupt Creek on an incredibly hot day. We were so glad to see water, and it was so hot that we shed all our clothes and sat in the creek. All went well until Kathy sat on my glasses, which I’d placed on the bank when taking my shirt off, her bare butt popping the lenses out. I repaired them with duct tape and looked like Mr Magoo for the rest of the trip.

  I took a short Thermarest air mattress, having learned that old bones don’t do well with just a foam pad. I borrowed a two- pound down sleeping bag. I was still thinking a three-pound tent was lightweight. I still wore heavy boots that gave me blisters and used my ancient external frame REI pack. An older hiker in the Goat Rocks said he hiked stoveless to save weight and tried to cut a pound of weight from his pack for each year he hiked past 60 years of age. I took note of stoveless hiking and lightweight goals. Hmm, I was already 63. How could I lose three pounds? Or did my down sleeping bag mean I’d shed three pounds already? But I’d added the air mattress. How could I go lighter the next year?

  Mountain goats grazed on a mountain below us as we went over the side of Old Snowy Mountain and Packwood Glacier. Mount Rainier stuck its lofty head above a sea of clouds before us from the knife-edge ridge. Near our highest campsite were banks of bright pink Monkey Flower. From our tents tucked behind trees we had an incredible view.

  Descending from Goat Rocks, we reached our campsite on a very hot day. Kathy and her dog were resting, and it was so hot she took off all her clothes and sat leaning against a downed log. I thought she was the funniest sight I ever saw, casually walking around stark naked except for her hiking boots. After a while, she put a shirt and shorts on, and almost immediately four guys walked into the camp. Her timing was good.

  It rained again the last half-mile into White Pass, where we met Kathy’s husband. I’d walked another 110 miles of the PCT.

  Chapter 6 April 2005

  AT

  “We don’t exactly hike together; we just sleep together.”

  I’d now sampled the two most famous long-distance trails in America. And I now had a goal, or, actually, two goals. I wanted to walk them both, all of them, from end to end. It was obviously going to take me a while to do that. I’d walked only 82.4 miles on the AT and my two trips on the PCT had netted 179.5 miles. I was definitely NOT a thru-hiker. I was also still working and not retired. At best I could manage a week or ten days of each trail a year until I retired. I really liked the idea of hiking on each trail each year. Each had a different flavor, and I liked them both.

  Finding Trailjournals.com, I enjoyed reading other people’s trail journals. I’d followed Nitro’s and had found one written by Yogi. I learned a lot by reading their journals. Maybe I would have my own someday. I was beginning to learn about lightweight hiking.

  In April of 2005 I flew off to the AT. I’d found someone who could shuttle me near to where I left off the previous year. I had a new pack, a Mountain Smith Ghost like Nitro’s. I had a 3 pound solo tent and still wore heavy boots, which still gave me blisters. But I didn’t get as many blisters since I’d spent half a day at REI trying on boots and found a pair that fit much better than my older ones. But they were still boots and they still gave me blisters.

  I started up the Kimsey Creek Trail to join the AT. (Section hikers sometimes have to add a few miles to meet the trail.) The Kimsey Creek Trail ended up just being Kimsey Creek, the first of many trails I’ve hiked that were really creeks, complete with small waterfalls. The weather that year was much different than my first trip. I didn’t have hot weather and sunny skies but found rain, fog and snow.

  I stopped in Franklin for motel, food, and shower. The day I hiked out of Franklin I was caught in a sudden thunderstorm. The wind of an eastern thunderstorm swept in through the leafless trees of early spring, sounding like a freight train coming up the valley. I wasn’t prepared for its speed. I stood under a tree wondering if I should put on rain gear and before I could decide, I was drenched. That cotton long sleeve shirt stayed wet for days. I never took a cotton shirt on a hike again.

  Later that day, at Siler Bald Shelter, hikers arrived and laid out sleeping bags in the shelter like cordwood. Everyone knew the weather was bringing more rain, and we squeezed in everyone who came, which was quite a trick. I think 11 people were on the floor of that shelter that night. Rain pounded and lightning flashed over and over. Those on the shelter ends got wet as the rain blew in. We weren’t quite so tight that everyone had to roll over as one, but pretty darn close to that. The lone hiker who had set up his hammock-tent outside came running in the middle of the storm and took up residence under the picnic table, which wasn’t exactly dry, but better than his hammock-tent. It was quite a storm.

/>   I only remember a few names of hikers from that night, but one that stood out was Lightning Rod. He received his trail name because he’d been hit by lightning hiking the AT as a boy with his parents and lived to tell about it. Roller Girl and Weatherman were there, too. Roller Girl told stories about spring on the PCT and the dangerous river crossings in the Sierra. I took note of those tales also.

  Hiking on the long trails, especially on the AT, you acquire trail families, people who are traveling at roughly the same speed. You see each other more than once and become friends very quickly. It was a somewhat changing family as people move into and out of the group depending on schedule and pace. I describe this as, “We don’t exactly hike together; we just sleep together.” You hike at your own pace but congregate at shelters or water sources for the night, hiking the same number of miles, even at different paces, you still end up in the same place and a trail family bond is formed.

  Wayah Bald came after Siler Bald and should have had good views. But not that year. There were too many foggy clouds reaching to the ground with accompanying rain or drizzle. I gratefully ate lunch in a restroom overhang. My destination for the night was Cold Spring Shelter, smaller than Siler Bald. The weather matched the name of the shelter.

  Just before I reached the shelter, rain turned to spitting snow. Six of us were there, the shelter holding six like tightly laid cordwood. Being close together wasn’t a problem. We needed the warmth of our neighbors. Quite concerned about the cold, I sacrificed my red nylon rope and a couple people sacrificed their ponchos so we could cover the front of the shelter. We were glad we did so. It was definitely below freezing that night and it snowed 4-6 inches, making great morning pictures.