The weatherman told me it was suppose to be 100 degrees today and there was a wildfire in the Gorge in the same county I live in. So everyone kept asking me if I was going hiking. Oh, how no one understands or comprehends the depth of my little hiking gypsy heart! Of course I was going hiking! It just meant that I would need to find water and lots of it to keep the Arctic Wolf from bursting into flames herself on the trail. Besides, I had made a promise and I always keep my promises. You see, last week, when I was doing a sunrise climb on Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams spotted me on her flanks and was very jealous. Mt. Adams knows he is my true love and he wanted me with him. So then and there as I stood among the avalanches on Helens' side in the first morning rays of sun, I promised him I would come the very next week. Little did I know then about the soaring temps or wildfires, but nothing was stopping me from keeping that promise to my beloved mountain. The closed highway due to the wildfire meant I would have to do 4 toll bridge crossings to get there and back, but I knew it would be worth it and whispered to Adams that I was on my way.
No one tell my husband please, but I truly fell in love for the first time on Mt. Adams. Never before had I felt this way on a hike. The mountain drew me in, caressing me with his beauty and singing a love song into my heart like I had never heard or felt before. He showed me all his rare flowers, burbling brooks, secret waterfalls, hidden pools of quicksand beneath his glaciers, and animals the likes of which I had never encountered. There was the chipmunk who waved me forward with his little paw when I was lost on a backpacking trip and the rare western cascadian red fox with his huge bushy tail beckoning us to follow him near my favorite swimming lake. At times I would glance into a meadow and swear I could see teepees with smoke coming up through them and horses without saddles standing nearby. At other times, I swore I had moved through the wardrobe right into Narnia. It was the most special place on earth and I was smitten beyond belief. Mt. Adams is surely my soul-mate and is a place that fills me with love. If you can ever imagine standing in any one place on this planet and feeling the truest of loves, this is it. So when he calls me, I come to him. I believe God gave me Mt. Adams as my secret treasured possession. I can feel the mountain and his history into my very bones and it is as if I am being called home when I stand on his flanks. I am sure there will be mountains in heaven. If God tells me that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, then He will surely give me mountains in Heaven!
Of course, my relationship with Mt. Adams, gave me a love for all our local volcanoes. I never knew I could feel this way about mountains! My favorite place on them though is that line of the dead-zone. This is usually between 7000-8000 feet up them where nothing can live above that elevation. The stark change as you cross into the dead-zone is enchanting and incredibly compelling. I am drawn to it like a magnet. So when July hits and the upper mountain trails become passable again, I long to spend all my time upon them. There is just something so delightful in feeling the high mountain dust and grit crawl across your skin and coat your boots!! I try to share myself between all the mountains, but I surely spend the most time with Adams. I will also admit that the most supernatural experiences I have had, by far, are on Mt. Adams.
The trailhead we were starting out on today was ironically through an old burn zone. But new life was also all around us if we took the time to look. There is a unique beauty to these areas even though it saddens me to think what they would have been like still in live forests.
Almost as soon as I got out of the air conditioned truck, the heat hit me like an oven. "UGH, that is relentlessly hot" I thought without even moving. I felt pressure knowing that I was going to have to be very careful to watch us in the heat and keep us hydrated and cooled. I had been on part of this trail before and knew where there was some water, but then there was a large section that we would be exploring for the first time and I had no idea. But I knew my mountain would take care of us, so I had faith that we would be okay. Shade, however, would be few and far between as we would be quite exposed. I was instantly sweating buckets as we hiked our first couple of miles and Nova was overheating more than I had ever seen her! She was panting more than Josie wearing her full wolf suit and wearing a loaded pack. I grew worried when the first creek beds we arrived at were empty and bone dry. Even the flowers on the ground were hot to the touch.
I told the girls we should hike slowly and tried to get us all to slow our pace down. This would last about 60 seconds each time I would think of it, but then our legs just went back into auto mode. For some reason, we all act like we are running a race when we hike. I just really struggle to move slowly in this life. I always feel I have things to do and places to be so there is no reason for moving like a sloth. When Josie was a puppy she wanted to stop constantly and explore as we hiked. She forced Nova and I into a slower pace. But at some point, Nova and I must have retrained the wolf and now I think she might hike faster than we do! We are clearly not good influences on one another! It always makes me think of the country song by Alabama with their lyrics "I'm in a hurry to get things done, I rush and rush until life's no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die." So I tried to get myself to just live today and fully enjoy our journey. "We're not running a race today girls", I kept reminding them hoping we would make it to the next watering hole soon and find it full. Luckily we did at about the 4 mile mark in. The girls jumped into the cold water by the perfect crossing bridge for me to not get my boots wet. There were daisies, indian paintbrush, phlox and lupine all around in the long grasses by the river here. We spent quite a bit of time just cooling off. Nova, who normally will get a dainty drink, but doesn't like to get her feet wet, just stood in the frigid glacial melt-water for the longest time. I knew she was struggling with the heat today. Josie found some white water rapids to dig and dunk her head in of course.
While standing here watching the girls playing in the water, I suddenly realized something alarming about myself. I was no longer sweating at all. In fact, I was eerily dry for such a hot day while doing a fast ascent carrying a good weighted pack. Then it dawned on me that I had not been drinking or even thirsty at all. These things were absolutely not normal for me in these conditions. The fact that I had no appetite was normal, so I didn't worry about that. But I knew I was going to have to force myself to drink and really start getting switched on to what was happening in my body. I tried to do a full assessment and realized my legs and shoulders were cramping more than normal. But was that just because they had not yet recovered from last week's 24 mile hike? My left shoulder was clearly worse than my right, but I reasoned that was due to the thermos of garbanzo beans being on the left side of my pack and making my load unbalanced. I would watch it, but we continued onward. Luckily we started to find more creeks, streams and springs as we went and the girls took advantage of every one to tank up.
It was at this point that the mountain started to change. We were getting out of some of the trees and climbing in earnest now. It seemed that every quarter mile or so we were facing deep ravines that we needed to climb and slide in and out of. These were not the kind of places you would ever want to be standing if a flash flood came through! Even Josie and Nova seemed to know that we should not linger in the ravines! But I loved them as they were evidence of the power of the mountain beneath my boots. What intensity this landscape sees to create such places!
We lost track of how many different ravines we moved through. We were thrilled that each one seemed to have some degree of water in them. Adams was gently keeping us safe. Some were peaceful tiny streams that were easy to hop across and others were wild torrents that got our boots wet despite our best jumps from logs to rocks to mossy islands. Throughout this time of moving around the mountain, he was smiling down on us in the sun happy to have us with him again. I agreed that it had been too long, but I reminded him of that cold and snowy January night when we spent the night with him. We all smiled as we remembered trying to keep the crematorium going so we didn't die that night in the shelter. Such a great night that was.
Before long we got to our first big surprise....snow on a 100 degree day right along the trail! Josie was so excited that she could hardly contain herself. Of course she wanted to get right down to it! But this remaining cracking chunk of ice was in a ravine under a small waterfall with the trail running right above and around it. So I convinced her to be patient and told her that we would soon get to some easier snow to access!
But what was so much better than snow (at least to me) was what we heard another a half to three quarter's mile down the trail! We were standing along a good sized stream trying to figure out the best way to cross it when we heard a loud roaring sound up through some brush and rocks to our north. We all stopped to listen around the blood still pounding in our ears. That could only be a waterfall I thought and decided that we needed to go off trail, bushwhacking to discover this secret place! The hidden waterfall that we found was in a small gorge and left me gobsmacked. It was pouring down over some mossy boulders into a deep bowl spraying and splashing all around itself as it did so. We were hemmed in by all kinds of mossy boulders and had to virtually stand in the water to even get to it. On the hot day we were loving the spray and infatuated with our discovery! Everything near the water was intensely green and the moss was inches thick and squishy. The secret oasis seemed so out of place to the dry, dusty and rocky surroundings we had been hiking through.
Now I will share with you that I named our secret waterfall "Naked Shower Falls" and I'll let you figure out why. I will just say that since I was still not sweating or thirsty, I did feel I had to take drastic measures to make sure I was not moving deeper into heat stroke. I will also say that the water was painfully cold!!
As we continued the hike feeling much cooler and more refreshed, we came to another snow patch that was safely right along the trail under some trees in the shade. "Okay Josie" I told her, "it is all yours." She ran over to it only to look surprised that it was more ice than snow. She clawed at it to make her own snow cones to eat. Then she laid down on her tummy and gave me the look. This was the look telling me to come live my best life with her. She cannot understand why anyone would not want to lay and roll in snow! "Okay," I laughed at her, "I will help you make snow angels again this week." So I laid down next to her and realized that my short nylon hiking shorts gave my buttocks no protection from the ice. It did not take long for my cheeks to go completely numb. So just in case you needed to know a life lesson....yes, on a 100 degree day-hike you can still freeze your butt beyond feeling. Nova only stood next to us and refused to lay down of course. She might have been smarter than Josie and I, but then she couldn't appreciate our giggles for the next ten minutes as we waiting for feeling to come back to our frozen parts!
My goal today was to hike this trail we were on until it connected to another section of trail we had done before. I am slowly working my way along every trail and section of the mountain and this was going to connect two big sections for me. I could feel in my bones that we were getting close to that turn around point as we were nearing 8 miles in. The plan was to do an out and back making this a 16 mile round trip day hike. That also meant recrossing all the ravines and streams we had come through to get to this point and staying in the full sun longer. As streams were farther apart once again, I could see that Nova was really panting hard. I was still not sweating and having to force myself to hydrate. I began to think that I should come up with an alternate plan to shave off some miles due to my heat stroke concerns. It is not like me to chose the intelligent option when there is an adventure option and it surely is not like me to drop miles rather than add them. But I was honestly more worried about Nova than myself. I will make myself suffer through most anything, but I won't do that to her. So as we hiked along, I decided that when we got to the other trail system, we could drop down to that trailhead and then do a short dirt road hike back to where our truck was parked. I had not brought any maps with me today knowing that I had memorized what I needed to know, but I figured this would shave off an estimated 3 miles from the original plan and take off the exertion of all those ravine climbs. I also knew that the other trailhead was far more popular and if we did get deeper into trouble, there would be people around to find our unconscious bodies if we needed them. The route we had gone today did not have a single human on them and were pretty remote, which was truly lovely and like a dream.
Before we reached that other trail system though, we found another hillside full of snow. Josie discovered that due to the slant of this snow bank, when she would roll on her back, her body would just start to slide and she could sled upside down to the bottom. She did this over and over again (each time while laying on her back) until our sides hurt from laughing. Then she fell fast asleep on top of the snow looking like I had killed the wolf once again. Nova and I just stood there and stared at her, incredulous that she could fall asleep so quickly! Apparently wolves do not battle insomnia!
We started to see our first humans as we were within a half mile of the other trailhead. They looked up at us as if they were seeing things. I think we looked a bit haggard, but we had all found our second wind about then and were wanting to jog out like crazy people. After all it was all downhill from this point on! We had never stopped during the day to lay down and read or eat like we normally do on a hike (other than the snow angels and showers). But I had suddenly remembered that I parked my truck next to the rare luxury of a picnic table at the trailhead and knew that we could setup a whole little camp there. This gave me the push forward that I needed. I started to yearn for the thermos of iced lemonade that I knew was in my truck too! (Stanley, you are the thermos man for sure as that drink still was full of ice!) We were going to splurge and splurge we did! Until mosquitos the size of hummingbirds came out as dusk descended and had us running to pack up the truck and leave before they drained all our blood!
Adams had given us a wonderful day. The new hidden waterfall was surely the newest chapter in his love story to us. But it also made me think of the bible verse from 1 Corinthians 13, where God tells me that even if I have faith that can move mountains, if I do not have love, I have nothing. Well with Mt. Adams, I can have both and that makes a world of difference to me and my gypsy heart!
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