National Parks and Recreation

Long Trail Miles: 14.5
Extra Miles: .5
9.28.20
60˚ and rain rain rain
Corliss Camp

“I’m still waiting on 3 things:

1. Hiker hunger
2. Hiker legs
3. Hiker exhaustion

I still can’t fall asleep at night. I have no problem waking up at 6am every morning and I don’t feel tired at all. I just can’t adjust to the early bedtime. Shouldn’t I be exhausted??”

I didn’t get going as quickly as I wanted this morning, but it was way easier to pack up without having to worry about my tent. We ended up getting a fourth person in the shelter right before sunset. He was 25 days into his Northbound journey and finishing up soon. It started to rain right as we were all about to leave camp in the morning and he commented that this was the first rain he had seen in 25 days. Crazy!

(It was about to rain quite a bit over the next couple of weeks which had its downsides, including an epic mental breakdown coming soon, but it was a blessing in disguise. I never had to worry about where my next water source was going to come from. Apparently it was pretty rough in the Southern section of the LT throughout most of September with the drought.)

So I broke out my waterproof pack cover and took off with the hope of hiking over 14 miles.

And most of it looked like this:

It honestly felt pretty nice to finally have rain. It was still hot and sticky out, but the free shower was nice. I didn’t even have to break out the poncho because it was light enough.

It was a pretty gloomy and boring morning. The SOBO climb up Mount Belvidere was easy peasy and I soon arrived at the viewless spur trail up to the fire tower. I realized it would be a pointless .5 mile hike up to a view of nothing and elected to just keep on hiking. It did make me a little mad that I hadn’t actually tried to camp there last night so I could’ve seen the view, but alas. On I went.

The highlight of my morning was playing leapfrog with Riley. I passed her owners a couple of miles in, but never got too far ahead of them. So Riley would occasionally catch up and hike with me for a bit before falling back to rejoin her humans.

It was a long way down on the South side of Mount Belvidere, but it wasn’t particularly steep. A lot of it actually felt pretty flat and easy.

Until I got to Devil’s Gulch.

I was not prepared for how difficult Devil’s Gulch was. I’m sure it’s way easier when it’s not super slippery from the rain, but still. The entire quarter mile leading up to and including the gulch was super confusing. I kept losing the trail or being convinced that I was not going the right way.

But every time I was convinced I was in the wrong spot or not going the right way, I would see a white blaze. I almost had to take my pack off just to explore more easily and make sure I knew what I was doing. But I ended up making it with my pack on the entire time. It was tricky though. There were some steep climbs and slippery falls. I remember thinking at the time that I had no idea how Riley the dog would make it through there.

Shortly after conquering Devil’s Gulch, I came to the Spruce Ledge Camp spur trail. The midway point of my day. I made the steep .2 mile hike up to camp to dry off a bit and eat some food (as usual, I had struggled to get food down throughout the morning despite being starving).

The weather began to improve a little and I was able to get this pretty nice view from the camp.

About 20 minutes after I arrived, Riley and company showed up. They also complained about how difficult Devil’s Gulch was. I told them I was impressed Riley made it, but they said that was the least of their worries. Ben fell on some rocks and scraped himself up pretty good and Ana had to take off her pack to find the trail. (Luckily, this would end up being the most technically challenging part of the entire trail.)

After about half an hour, I packed all my stuff up and braced myself for the rain yet again. It had decreased to a light drizzle at this point so it wasn’t bad at all. And the trail ahead looked pretty easy, but I was still 7 miles away from my goal.

Exhaustion and ankle pain slowly creeped up on me.

The hike from Spruce Ledge to Corliss camp was incredibly uneventful. No views or big mountains or really anything to write home about. I did pass a good amount of interesting people on the trail though, including a middle-aged woman in a Chiefs shirt encouraging me to keep at it even when the rain gets you down! I also ran into another solo female thru hiker my age named Megan. You wouldn’t think people would want to stop and chat for too long when it’s raining, but everyone was in weirdly good spirits all day.

Finally, I arrived at camp. The rain had completely stopped at that point so I decided to go back to tent life. (All night long, I kept getting scared when leaves would fall on my tent and make a noise. I never got used to it. It was comical.)

It was beautiful though, and there was the perfect branch to hang all my wet clothes on.

Riley and her owners showed up shortly after me. We were all pretty pumped that we successfully navigated our first really long day of hiking! (Although, I was about to make the first of my difficult decisions of the trip. I’ll quote directly from my journal:)

“I made the nearly impossible decision to take a rest day tomorrow. Canada is picking me up at the end of a 1.5 mile spur trail from this campsite and taking me home for the night. My ankle is killing me. I’ve always had issues with it and I just don’t want it to get any worse so I’d have to step off the trail for good. I’ll get a bandage, ice it, and do nothing but sit on the couch watching crap TV all day. It’ll be great. I’ll just need to figure out what this means for the timing of the rest of my trip.”

(I was 12 miles away from where I was supposed to meet my friend Canada the next day for a food reup, hot lunch, and day of driving around rural Vermont. I probably could’ve made it by that afternoon if I wanted, but that’s just the never-ending doubt and regret I have talking. It was the right decision. My ankle would bother me a little bit occasionally over the next couple of weeks, but the brace I bought helped immensely and it was nothing like the pain I had on this day through Devil’s Gulch. Plus, by the time it really started acting up again, my knees and feet and shins and every other part of my lower legs were also in excruciating pain so it didn’t really matter anyway.)

So I texted Canada the new plan and a pin for where to pick me up. Then I called James to talk it out and basically make him tell me that I wasn’t being a failure. And I felt just a little bit better.

It’s very jarring now to read my journal and see how awful I felt this night. It was super difficult to make this decision just 4 days into my trip. I felt so weak. It honestly hadn’t even remotely crossed my mind that this meant I wouldn’t finish the trail. I was confident I could easily rework my schedule and it would be fine. So then why was I so upset that I was simply taking a day off? I think I just put too much pressure on myself to hike a certain number of miles a day or complete the trail in a certain number of days. Hiking only 37 miles in 4 days and then needing to take a day off was not what I had in mind. I just thought I was so much stronger than this.

It was pretty obvious in those first 1.3 miles that this was going to be a lot harder than I anticipated, but I was falling further and further behind what I thought I was capable of. But the truth is, I just set unrealistic expectations for myself. I had just thrown myself into this very difficult thing and left little to no room for failure. Because I’d never really failed before. Maybe that sounds conceited, but it’s kind of true. The confidence to jump right into this endeavor with no experience at all didn’t come from nothing. I’d been able to just jump into most things and make it work. But this year was different. My confidence had already taken a hit. I lost my job. I all but gave up on a dream of moving to LA. I sat on my butt for 3 months being useless and unemployed. I couldn’t bare to fail at another thing. And that’s what this felt like.

I won’t dwell on this any longer. There are more tough decisions and “failures” to come. But it’s been oddly encouraging to go back and read this journal entry. I’m in no way upset at myself for making this decision on this night. It was obviously 100% the right one. So to see how distraught I was about it at the time gives me perspective and it’s honestly encouraging. It’s easy to criticize yourself and feel like you’re making every wrong decision in the moment. It would be nice if we all had the ability to see ourselves as we will four weeks from now. Because most of the time we’re looking back on our decisions–and even our shortcomings–fondly, and we’re doing just fine.

Life has funny ways of letting you know that you’re on the exact path you’re meant to be on.