Hiking Dude Blog

I walked 56316 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 26 miles today.
We got up early to start our 5200 foot elevation gain up Abercrombie Mountain over 16 miles, hoping to reach the top before the hot afternoon. Abercrombie is the 2nd highest peakin eastern Washington. A mile out of town, I realized I had forgotten the plastic sheet for under our tent.  While Josh waited with our packs, I went back for it. Water was plentiful up the hill until a water cache at the trailhead.  We topped off there and then had about 10 miles over the top and down the other side with nothing but dust and rocks.  Good thing we filled up! The top of the mountain was super. We left our packs and climbed the spur trail to the very summit. Walking on the loose rock sounded like you were walking on pieces of broken ceramic tiles. There was also the foundation of an old lookout. Coming down, there were 18 full switchbacks back and forth across the hillside baked in the afternoon sun and smoke. When we finally hit Silver Creek at the bottom, we called it a day, got water, and set up camp in a nice, free campground with pit toilet and picnic tables.

I walked 46589 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 23 miles today.
It was still warm when we woke this morning, not chilly as days past. We did our usual pop tarts and water and stayed walking down the gravel road. Less than a mile in, we saw two dogs beside the road. One was all black and the other was grey. They watched us walk toward them until one sauntered into the woods and the other scampered across to the other side of the road and into the trees. They made no noise and we saw nothing more of them except their tracks in the dust for another mile. So, they could have been feral dogs but they were not coyotes and I think they were big enough to have been wolves. Sorry, no pictures. The rest of the day was a long roadwalk on pavement to Northport. We did met a couple nice ladies riding bicycles and they chatted with us. Another woman stopped and offered us a ride to Northport saying everyone else was skipping this awful roadwalk. She sounded like a drug dealer trying to convince us - 'come on, just try it'. :-) And, we found and explored a tunnel chiseled into the hillside with a water pipe running out of it. Creepy! Especially the rodent we ran into. The road was very hot and smoky - surprise! And this one had No Trespassing signs everywhere. We had to slip past an abandoned house to get water from a small creek. 109 cars passed us so that added a little excitement throughout the day. Upon reaching Northport, a lady in a pickup said HI and asked if we were hiking the PNT. I asked if she knew if there was a place liked the city park where we might put up or tent. She directed is to see Sandy in Tony's Grocery. Tony's has a good selection for resupply and Sandy was very nice. She set us up with a tent spot, bathroom, and even WiFi for the evening. Our hiking day finished around 3:30 but once again we find ourselves moving faster than expected and getting to Republic a day early doesn't help us. Tomorrow looks like more road, but the forecast is for a drop of about 15 degrees!

I finished hiking for today. You can check out my current location on the map and I'll post about my day when I am in coverage.

I finished hiking for today. You can check out my current location on the map and I'll post about my day when I am in coverage.

I walked 52477 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 24 miles today.
8/13/17 We had thunder during the night and then real rain just after we packed up our things to start hiking.  So, we waited a bit for it to pass.  First rain in such a long time and a welcome drop in temperature. From our great temporary home in Northport, we crossed the mighty Columbia River and then hiked uphill on gravel roads most of the day.  We passed the Northport International Raceway where the races had kept us up late into the previous evening.  After that, we saw no people all day until reaching the Pierre Lake campground. But, we did see plenty of cows.  Throughout the day, we encountered small clusters of cattle on or along the path with well over 100 head in all. We got to herd a few for over two miles - they just kept walking down the road ahead of us.  This was all in the Colville forest, hence the subject line. The rain continued to mist most of the day but never really came down until after we set up our tent and were inside.  We did get to use our rain ponchos for quite a few hours. I was excited to see clouds at least 5 miles away this evening - because they were not hidden by smoke!

I walked 51390 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 25 miles today.
8/14/17 Roadwalk miles are much different than miles on trails.  Today's walk was completely on roads - paved, gravel, dirt, and primitive.  Since nothing exciting happened, I'm listing pros and cons for roadwalks. Roadwalks have no spider webs, able to walk side by side, an even tread and steady grade, easy to navigate, easier miles, straighter towards destination. Roads have traffic, dust, pavement is hard on legs, less shade We are camped along a creek by the road tonight. Oh, one interesting thing - we were getting water from a creek far up in the mountains and a guy came walking out of the woods. He was a forest service employee doing goshawk research. Very weird.

I finished hiking for today. You can check out my current location on the map and I'll post about my day when I am in coverage.

8/15/17
Josh back in the saddle here to take over story time for this long day. Today started off same as most mornings on the trail: cold, dark, and early. Up in the mountains the temperatures dip surprisingly low at night, so i often find myself needing to throw on all my layers before getting too comfortable. But when we get hiking all those layers are removed to make up for the 50 degree difference in temperature. We are getting good at timing our morning routine so that we're all packed up by the time it's light outside, but only when I don't lay around for an extra 10 minutes. So we got up, bags and bottles full of nice cold water from the creek, and set out on our forest road walk to start the day. Within the first hour we came across our first mylar balloon of the thru-hike! You know, one of those lightweight, vinyl, helium-filled specialty balloons for birthdays or other celebrations. When you have one it's a blast to let it go and watch it float up up up and away as it turns into just a speck in the sky... But they eventually come down and land somewhere, and they last forever. This one still had helium and never popped so I tied it to my pack and hoped it would perk up a bit as the day warmed up and as we would gain altitude. With the balloon on my back helping to lift the load of my pack, we continued to the trailhead of the North Kettle Crest trail. The PNT hikers ahead of us have either followed this trail or have opted to take the alternate route that parallels the mountain ridge trail, but along a road at the foot of the mountains. Since the smoke had cleared out and we are ultimately here for the challenge of the opportunities to glimpse into the beauty that this portion of the country has to offer, we agreed to climb the mountain at the cost of difficult miles.

Before beginning our ascent, we passed by the forest service folks we met the other day who were coming in for another morning of counting and identifying northern goshawks in the area. We made it to the trailhead; the end of the road and the start of the trail. There was an empty forest service vehicle parked there, so we knew to keep our eyes and ears open for potential friends. And then we climbed. And climbed. And climbed and climbed and climbed. Eventually we made it to the top of Copper Butte - the highest altitude for the day. We discovered that we could get mobile data up there, so we took an hour break and played on social media for a bit and quickly re-realized that nothing happening on the internet was as interesting as what we were experiencing. While we were poking away at our gadgets we were unexpectedly subjected to an aerial bombardment of goshawks chasing each other near ground level, weaving and darting between the thin foliage (and us) atop the mountain. We didn't know what they were at first, all we heard was the rush of wind as they whizzed by sounding like fighter jets.

By this time the Mylar balloon had been expanding under the heat of the sun all morning and was flying high. And as cool as it would've been to let it go and watch it float away into a speck over the horizon, I just couldn't bring myself to let it go. So we poked a hole in it and I inhaled the yucky old tasting helium and said things in high pitched voices and got dizzy and packed the trash in my bag. On our way across the ridgeline we met the forest service crew that was working with white bark pine trees across a transect (a line of trees) that had been established 13 years ago for data collection. The crew consisted of 3 ladies with tons of gear that they had hauled up the mountain, and they showed us a spot of cankers that they had found growing on one of the trees. We continued our hike along with our water slowly depleting as we knew it would without any water sources along our route. We eventually made it to our campsite just off of US 20 where a random lady in her car was leaving and informed us that she'd just seen a baby black bear in the area. We set up our tent anyways, ate dinner calories, and dove back into some Netflix episodes saved on my phone as a reward for another successful day.

I walked 49450 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 20 miles today.
8/15/17

I finished hiking for today. You can check out my current location on the map and I'll post about my day when I am in coverage.