27 Jul Day 93 – Hiking in pain

At mile 2166.2. Hiked 19.5 miles today. 

I counted 17 PCT’r tents at Cascade Locks Marine Park Camp. Others stayed at the hotels. This is the I’ve seen in town since Warner Springs around mile 100.

Some of the tents.

My tent at Marine Park.

Hiking out of town I saw this wind surfer made from driftwood. I was soon over Bridge if the Gods and in the state of Washington.

With a late start, the hot day seemed even hotter. The trail passed through beautiful fern growth that at least gave the appearance of coolness.

The outside of my lower left leg began to hurt quite painfully for the last 3 miles. I needed to make those 3 miles in order to camp at water (Rock Creek). I tried to block out thought of the pain and kept walking.

With my leg in pain, I stepped on the edge of the trail. The ground crumbled beneath my foot and spilled down the hill. In a moment my right leg was dangling in space over the edge and I was seated firmly on the trail having come down on my left knee. In this awkward position, pack on my back, I could not pull myself up. Weirdly, there was a snake on the edge of the trail not 20 inches from where I sat. Even with my disturbance the snake remained.

Here is a different snake, the first of two snakes I saw today.

I could care less about the snake. I was thinking about the pain and whether I had done any real damage to myself. I leaned forward to push myself up, but the backpack held me down. Swinging my leg back up on the trail, I was able to twist and pull myself up. The snake quickly slithered away. Since I am counting, this was snake number 17.

Still in pain and moving slowly I came up to a lady who told me to go around because she was feeling ill and had no water. I gave her a bottle of water and asked whether she would like some electrolytes. She said no thanks and told me that her friends hadn’t gone on to water and were bringing it back for her. Rock creek was less than a mile away, so I moved on. I found a water bottle with filter on the side of the trail and picked it up.

Reaching Rock Creek, I came across her two female hiking companions. The first had lost her water bottle/filter so I gave it to her. Neither lady had made a move to bring their friend water. One was set up in campsite far away from the other. These two had been fighting and did not want to camp near each other. Eventually the 3rd lady made it to Rock Creek and began asking why the others had not hiked toward her with water as they promised. Argument ensued and soon the lady that was the first to arrive at Rock creek began screaming at the other two . I tried to ignore it and headed across the creek to find a quieter campsite well away from these three ladies. It was hard to believe these three would complete their 150 mile hike when they were acting this way after only progressing 20 miles in 2 days. I later reflected on how stressful a hike could be and how important it was for hiking  companions to get along with each other.

My quiet campsite. It turned out that Einstein wasn’t camped out in the creek bed where he had not heard any of the yelling.