It's time to pick back up where I left off, before hiking the Chilkoot becomes nothing more than a nostalgic smile.
It's amazing how I can only half sleep while on the trail and still feel more rested than I ever will after an undisturbed night on a queen size mattress. Rocky called out to us to wake up around 4:15 am, but I had already been expecting this for hours. We packed our things in the dim light of dawn, not worrying about disturbing sleeping neighbors. The boys had somehow slipped out of camp quite silently, not even setting off our internal bear alarms. We wondered if they had even bothered to go to bed, as we had heard a lot of noise around midnight. We hypothesized that they might have packed up and slept in the cabin also.
The mosquitos weren't too bad as we ate our breakfasts and shoved things into backpacks at the last minute. Rocky tried to get me to add chocolate chips to my breakfast. He'd brought an entire Nestle's bag, and he realised this was the last chance to get some weight off before the Pass. After refusals all around, he decided to leave the ziplock bag in the bear bin, perhaps as a longed-for treat for future summer hikers low on food. Yvette followed his lead and dropped some power bars into the bin, with a note that offered them up to anyone not worried about minimizing their own weight load.
The mosquitos began to move around just as we were getting ready to hit the trail, and Ken decided to power hike out of the riparian area to save himself. I stayed back, somewhere in between him and Rocky and Yvette. I sang as I walked and clapped my hands: this was thick-brushed bear country. The ranger had told us that a bear family was hanging around his hut up the trail, and I expected to meet one or two on an early morning search for food at any moment. Despite the ominous feeling, I stopped to appreciate the beautiful surroundings and the mountains on each side of the trail. This section of the trail is a long avalanche shoot, and the brushy growth is the result of a 1996 avalanche taking out much of the older forest we had previously seen on the trail. This marked a sudden vegetation change from the other side of the Sheep Camp island.
So imagine my surprise when I saw Ken, hiking at me from behind. He was red faced and out of breath, and we stopped at the old Sheep Camp for a water break. Rocky and Yvette caught up to us, and Ken found it necessary to answer the quizzical expressions on all of our faces. Ken had hiked out with the intent of getting away from the mosquitos, putting one foot in front of the other rapidly and keeping his head down. He hadn't noticed for at least a half mile that he was hiking back the way we came in. Now before that sounds like a ridiculous mistake for an experienced hiker, remember that the sun doesn't truly set in the west and rise in the east in Alaska. With mountains on every side of the trail, it took Ken a while to look up and notice that something was wrong. But go ahead and laugh. We did.
Ken and I hiked pretty much side by side after his detour. We had 4.2 miles (6.8 kms) to go to reach the base of the Golden Staircase, otherwise known as the Scales; and we had to get there as quickly as possible, before the sun rotted the snow in the Pass. Rocky had advised that Long Hill was the next section of the hike that we had to look forward to (although those weren't his words), and I found myself constantly wondering when it would start.
We were anticipating a brutal, slow and long ascent. I had plenty of water, but Ken had already used up a lot of his after his vigorous morning wakeup. We stopped so he could fill up (as much as he ever does... Ken doesn't like to carry water weight, which is why it is good he is a man and also why he isn't convinced that hiking the PCT is a good idea) at a stream near the boundary between the subalpine and alpine vegetation. I love alpine tundra, for both its vegetation and interesting geologic formations. I don't even mind scrambling over difficult terrain, like this giant field of chunky, sharp-angled boulders. I felt a bit like a mountain goat, as I hauled myself, my pack, and my trekking poles up and over rocks taller than me. I wasn't at all surprised when I saw a sheep on the distant hillside, but it was still impressive to watch it walk down cliffs at a nearly ninety degree angle.
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It dawned on us, as we scrambled past the boulders and begin to reach patches of snow, that we had been hiking the notorious Long Hill for a Long Time. It didn't really seem to deserve this reputation, even at 5:30 in the morning with a looming deadline. Soon all we could see ahead was snow. When I post-holed through a soft patch, Ken and I decided to pull out our gaiters and wait for Rocky and Yvette to catch up.
We had read that the Taiya River flowed down from the Pass and through the chute where we stood, and we had to cross over it in order to continue with our hike. We could hear water flowing but couldn't see it under the snow. Crossing over a deep, fast-flowing glacial river covered in rapidly melting, unstable snow is an unnerving thought; but it was just a hint of what we would experience in the next several hours.
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Ken and I scoped out the area; and once we regrouped, we headed up slope, crossed the River safely, and soon arrived at the Scales.
I dropped my pack and began to prepare a mid-morning snack. It was 8:30 in the morning
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