Days 10-12: Networks (mile 88/211)

South from Deer Creek the scenery was kind of samey. There was frost on the creekside grass as I left camp. I snacked sitting on boulders and tried to record a voice memo for a friend though I had no signal. Instead of hiking shade to shade, I was pausing in every sun patch. 

Then it got hot and the climb over Duck Pass was uncomfortable and snail paced. I passed Purple Lake around 5:30 pm, climbed up out of its valley past a scary landscape of rockslide (some boulders the size of UPS trucks). The big rubble choked the valley, making the pass out feel like a lucky escape. It was dusking up. I thought about how the valleys here offer shelter but can be traps to work free from. How the mountains are named after men and the lakes for ladies.

I looked back at the little ribbon of path skirting the landslide, a grey tailless mouse quivering on a rock. I said “hi, soft mouse” and it was scared of me. 

I finally turned the corner down to Lake Virginia’s valley, a big moon already up. Sun on the high slopes from this angle. I cried in my belly but not my eyes during the descent – I suppose about the brutal indifference and violence of the landscape. The thousands dead under rubble. The crushing weight and grief we all live with. 

I camped at Lake V. near a friendly couple, slept in until it was warm. Doctored my feet really well, needling open the new blisters, sanitizing, filing, cutting, dressing, lubing, socking. The first thing I then did was ford the lake outlet, gaining unavoidably wet feet. Down switchbacks to a valley, poured cold water into a ziploc of someone’s home-dessicated hummus from the Red’s Meadow hiker box (a take it leave it bonanza where someone was very excited about my second abandoned knee sleeve). Hummus soup by the rushing stream was a gourmet dream and I started the slog up Silver Pass garlicking away the bugs. 

High up again, I saw cooing grouse and tiny hairy chipmunks and, I believe, pipers. It was blasting glacial air at the top, and I hurried down through the fading light in my thin shirt/skort combo. I planned to make it about 4 miles more, to a lower elevation camp. 

Got into dusk desperado stride mode, blasting past a meadow that under other circumstances I’d have made the focus of a whole day-hike. I was making 17-minute miles with a heavy pack and 4 blisters. I was briefly proud.

And the saying about pride coming before a fall came true on the switchbacks down to the creek. I was pushing, floating over stone steps and loose rubble. My right ankle twisted out under me and I fell back on my bum and then my pack. Hard rock shelf. Lay there for a few seconds before uprighting, standing, limping on down to pitch right at the border of dark. I stuffed a waterproof sac as a pillow, put my fat right ankle up on that and slept. It would either be better or worse in the morning. 

It wasn’t worse, and in the cold 7am I hiked down 4 miles quite smoothly. The ferry dock was a big rock with a wooden step, and at 930am the little boat pulled ashore. 16 of us sat on benches with our packs at our feet, and coasted 5 miles up effervescent Lake Edison to the promised land… VVR. Where I discovered my cellphone was utterly dead and unrevivable, all photos and precious messages lost. It wouldn’t even turn on.