november 30, 2009

dirty, dirty fingernails (or) a hike in the olympic national forest (or) tldr.

hi.

cat told me all about your rescue plans. i'm sorry that you didn't get the chance.

i'm back, safe but exhausted from it all.

we checked in on friday afternoon at the ranger station in port angeles to pick up our permit and bear canister, and also to do some last-minute checking on the tides and weather. the ranger spoke with us at length regarding the conditions. he spent most of the time warning us about the tides and the swells, and about a minute briefly stating that some of the creeks we would have to ford can be (and i quote) “tricky” if there has been heavy rain. he checked the weather and tide reports with us right there in the station. the forecast called for partly cloudy weather with some winds and temperatures in the high forties to low fifties, no cause for alarm. we got our bear canister and permit, and hurried on to the trailhead.

we started from the trialhead just off of la push road (twihards take note). the trail itself is quite interesting. about two thirds of it is actually on the beach, which, at low tide, ranges from fifty feet wide to only five or six feet wide at the narrowest points. we were told to pay careful attention to the tides, as we could easily get stuck out on a point during a rising tide and have to spend the night huddled on a boulder while the ocean had its way with us. along with half-moon bays and jutting sand bars, there were numerous sea stacks, some a hundred feet tall and featuring their own miniature forests upon their summits.

we hiked in on friday and saturday. the weather was cloudy with scattered showers, pretty mild considering this was mid-november on the coast of washington. we had to ford several streams on the hike in, but this was to be expected. on saturday night it began raining, much to my delight and i think luke's annoyance. i wanted to push my new rain gear and tent to it's maximum potential. it rained all night and didn't stop for the next seventy-two hours. when we woke in the morning we floated on a puddle of water some inches deep, but luckily i decided on a real water proof tent, so it literally felt like a water bed when you pushed on the floor with your finger. we got up and dug trenches in the ground with the heals of our boots to drain the considerable pool from under the tent. we then set out on a morning hike without packs farther south on the trail. we ran across a family of dear, the most life we'd seen in days, they didn't seem to care too much that we were there and getting closer. the hike was classically beautiful, each turn could be a different postcard. to the right it'd be a picture of drizzly rain, cloudy skies and huge waves breaking on a far rock with the title, "come see our coast!", to the left it'd be a perfect rainforest of old growth cedars and ferns for as far as the eyes could see with the title, "come see our rainforest!" at any rate, you get the point, it was beautiful in the way that you'd expect it to be, because you've seen these postcards a hundred times before.

we knew that we couldn't cross the hoh river, we already established that fact when we talked to the ranger at the station a few days prior. apparently it was already too deep and swift, but we wanted to see it before we had to turn around, plus we had six hours to kill before the tide receded enough for us to start hiking north back to the car. we never made it to the hoh river. there was an unnamed stream just short of the hoh that was already too big to cross comfortably, but we'd already hiked three miles one way in the pouring rain, and it didn't seem worth the effort to go any farther, so we turned around and headed back to the tent to pack up for our return trip.

the first night we camped right off the beach. we tried to start a fire, but even with fire starters everything was already too wet, no fire would be enjoyed. on the second night we camped at mosquito creek. you cross the creek on the beach at low tide so it's relatively shallow, only ankle-deep, but it's quick, rocky, and fairly wide, add a fifty pound backpack, take off your boots, and i hope you like frigid water. from here, the trail was blocked by what can only be described as a minefield of driftwood stacked four feet high and extending a good ten yards in every direction. with a pack on your back, slippery driftwood is not exactly negotiable. once you cross the creek and scramble across the driftwood, you hike up a steep trail with the aid of rope ladders, and you camp at the top. rope ladders and steep muddy hillsides are something of a common occurrence on this hike. the view from the top of mosquito creek camp is pretty stunning, something we wouldn't fully realize until first light the following morning. each night a fire of enthusiastic proportions was planned, every effort proving less and less successful, we never did get a fire started, every scrap of wood more closely resembling a sopping sponge than something you'd burn for heat.

arriving back at camp from our day hike, we broke down the tent, packed up, ate a light lunch, and headed back to the driftwood minefield, inadvertently taking more and more rain water with us each day. by this time, the tide had receded considerably, but the creek had also notably risen. where before it had been thirty feet across and ankle-deep, it was now easily sixty feet across and knee-deep. while i was packing the tent, luke procured what turned out to be two indispensable walking sticks to cross the creek with. the current was so strong that as i lifted a foot and stepped forward, my leg was actually pushed backward half a step before it hit the ground. i ended up fording the creek facing into the current so as to keep some semblance of balance. as i crossed, i watched, somewhat distressed, as a piece of driftwood about half as tall as i and thick as my leg rush between luke and myself in the current. after a few minutes of calculated maneuvering, we cleared the creek, put our boots back on, and began heading north up the beach.

the weather began to truly deteriorate. the winds were severe, they'd blow us back and forth, left and right down the beach almost knocking us over. it never stopped raining, which is what proved to be the biggest problem. we hiked north crossing swollen creeks, one after another, then around 4:30 we came to goodman creek, it was about fifty yards wide, likely well over our heads, and quick, probably a twenty-five mile per hour current. luke even asked, "is that the same creek we crossed on the way in?" in disbelief at it's size. after standing at the edge of the creek in silence for some time we both determined that there was no easy way across. we hiked up the bank of the creek a ways after dropping our packs by a large downed tree, to see if we could cross goodman elsewhere. we found that the creek split into about six parts a few hundred yards off the trail. after some experimentation we found that we could cross a few legs of goodman by way of fallen trees, but not the entire creek. luke did most of the exploring, i stayed put for several reasons, partly because i didn't see a point in us both falling in, and mostly because if one of us did fall in it'd likely be me, my balance is not one of my strong points. luke teetered along, then meandered his way across the small thickly wooded island in the middle of the river. he broke off a piece of wood about shoulder-height and shoved it into the water to test the depth. it didn't touch bottom. it was dark by this point, and luke was well out of earshot over the noise of the river and out of sight beyond the scraggly tree line on the island. he later related to me that he found an area where we could cross the second section of the river and reach the opposite shore, but the log across the river was too narrow to walk across even without a pack.

he had been gone for what seemed like too long. i caught glimpse of him as i squinted frantically to make out shapes in an ever darkening forest, but some time had passed since then and i was growing nervous. thoughts of a bear silently attacking him drove me to cross one leg of the river myself where i could get a better look. standing atop a fallen tree above a rushing creek i scanned the horizon of dense woods and tall brush not too frantically to betray alarm, no need to look like an idiot until absolutely necessary. i began whistling in sort of a "hello are you out there?" sort of way. no return whistle from luke like i was hoping for. i kept scanning the horizon and whistling every fifteen seconds or so. after five minutes of this i finally spotted him crossing back to my side of the bank, but some distance up the creek, crossing a different fallen tree on his way back than the one i was currently standing on. after spotting luke and making an internal leap for joy that i wouldn't have to hike out alone i crossed back to the other side to wait for him. he ended up crossing an enormous log with an equally enormous root ball at its end. later that night he told me his half of the story,

"i actually had to climb up the root ball to stand on top of it. of course, as i stood there staring down into the water, this log, it turned out, did not cross the creek completely, the dirt gave way. i had a cliffhanger moment where I had to quickly grab the roots, and hung for a moment suspended a foot above the water. secretly, i’d always wondered if my reflexes were actually fast enough to grab something if i were falling. turns out they are. i scrambled back up, found a reasonable way off the root ball, and began crossing the rest of the way via another tree. of course, after all this negotiation and agile teetering, i finally fell in. the creek was only waist-deep at this part, so i managed to trudge my way to the shore. the shore was too steep to just walk up, so i had to dig myself some handholds in the mud in order to climb it."

from my waiting spot i heard luke calling out my name, testing to see where i was. he wasn't but ten feet from me when i replied in a talking voice, "yeah, over here." he pushed his way through thick brush and under heavy cedar boughs appearing in the tree line five feet from me but on top of the bank. the steep bank gave way without warning and luke came rolling down literally landing on my feet, my legs stopping him from rolling any farther. we decided later that night that crossing by way of fallen trees with packs on was not a possibility, we couldn't even do it without packs on. we hiked back to the trail, luke confessing that he heard my whistling all along, but had never been able to whistle loudly (good to know...) it's amazing how fast and how black it gets when the sun goes down there (i later found out in writing this, that it was a new moon during the four days that we were hiking out there. a new moon being the darkest time of the month, when the moon is behind the earth. twihards take note.) we decided to setup the tent under an old growth cedar tree that was off the trail by the river, it was just barely large enough to fit the tent. we had to tear out some salmon berry bushes to make room enough. i had to strip down to my partly dry clothes, and dry out the inside of the tent. luke stayed outside the tent and made dinner for the both of us since he was soaking wet. we laid in the tent that night under heavy rain, partly listening for bears, partly strategizing our options, partly studying the maps. we decided our options were to:

a. swim the river with a rope and pull the bags over after we had crossed one at a time.
b. cross the river at the beach at low tide.
c. wait it out and cross when the creek had lowered. though this could take days.
d. hike inland to a logging road that we saw on the map.

a. no one else was out here.
b. we were trapped between goodman creek and the hoh river.
c. we were quickly running out of dry clothes, food, fuel, and batteries for our headlamps.

in the morning we woke to a river that had both risen another foot and increased in speed. we decided swimming across was impossible at this point. we hiked back to the beach a quarter mile at high tide, some sections of the trail washed out from mud slides. from a high peak on the trail that jutted out we could see in the distance that the river came out between two peaks, and ran straight into a menacing wall of ocean waves. the banks of the river were steep and not really climbable at the mouth, plus the points aren't passable on the beach, even at low tide, so it was pointless. even if we got across we couldn't scramble around the points or climb the far bank. we decided to turn back to the tent. in the time that we were gone, the river had risen farther. it was now running over the trail in parts. we decided to get a better look at the river bank between our camp and the mouth, so we hiked a quarter mile in toward the ocean following the steep bank to look and see if we could cross anywhere else. there was suppose to be a large sand bar according to the map, and even though it would be underwater, it might be wider and slow enough for us to swim. we never found anything resembling a sand bar or a slow part to the river, so we hiked back. we packed up an ever heavier tent, it seemed to gain five pounds of water weight each day, and decided our only option was to hike due east for an unnamed logging road two miles through national forest, once we hit the road, there was suppose to be a bridge across goodman creek. it was 10 am by this time, we'd already hiked two miles just scouting out our options.

we decided that if we hiked an eighth of a mile south to a ridge line, away from the river, and headed on a bearing of 81 degrees east, we should in theory hit the logging road in about two miles. we set luke's timer on his watch for one and a half hours. if we hiked an average of two miles per hour, (and most hikers do), then we should hit the road in an hour, and if we don't hit it by one and a half hours then we know we have missed it, or something had gone wrong. we didn't however account for a few things, for this was no ordinary forest. trees grow in the forest. they grow tall and large and we marvel at how mighty and majestic they are. as it turns out, every single one of those trees will, in due time, fall. since this was protected land we literally ran into every single fallen tree that had once lived there. in drier areas of the united states, the trail is just an idea of where to go. leave the trail, and the ground is still very clear. in washington, here, it’s a different story. if you've ever read “the hobbit” and read about mirkwood forest, where the trees grow so thick and tangley that once you leave the trail you can never find it again, you can use that as a mental template for the forest we were in. there were downed trees ten feet in diameter in every direction that you hiked. you had to climb over or under these trees, or around them if you had the patience. brush so thick in places you had to just close your eyes and barrel through with all your might, arms instinctively guarding your face. creeks that didn't exist twenty-four hours prior now scored the spongy forest floor every hundred yards, sometimes closer, sometimes it seemed unending. it was an eerie sensation when you'd stop to rest for a moment, only to notice the faint gurgle of a creek below the ground at your feet. trees dotted the landscape so large you could drive whole cars through the trunks of them. you had to crawl over or under or through something with each step, every bit of progress that you made was a small victory. i recall crawling on my belly with full pack, to get under a tree that you couldn't get over or around on more than one occasion. it was rough going. we hiked and hiked and hiked, up and down hillsides, crossing unnamed creeks, teetering across spongy logs, but always heading 81 degrees east. i lead the way most of the time, because i had the compass. i crossed a creek and climbed up a steep bank. i looked to my left and there a small ancient metal sign the size of a motorcycle license plate tacked to a large ancient tree, the sign folding in the middle from the growth of the tree. it read, "olympic national forest boundary." i yelled out to luke that we'd made it to the border. high-fives would have been exchanged if we weren't so exhausted, and i suspect if we weren't so conscious of any action that could possibly be perceived as slightly gay.

once on top of the bank and just past the border we took a short break to eat, we'd only had a packet of instant oatmeal that morning, because we were running short on time and fuel and food. we shared a few small snacks, dividing amongst us what little we had left, namely a few pieces of fruit leather and some pecans. we took a look at the map, the boundary was only a mile from the trail that we left earlier. we looked at the timer... we'd been gone for three hours already! one mile and three hours. all of that toil only amounted to a lousy mile! we were both appalled. we knew we had to find the logging road before night fall or we'd have little chance of getting out that night. we didn't want to stay another night because we knew people would get worried and send help, and we wanted to avoid that if at all possible. so we figured, if the first mile took us three hours, then the next will also take us three hours. luckily we had four hours of daylight left, so we still had a good chance of finding the road and hiking out to the highway on the logging road by that night. plus as a bonus we figured that if we are in a logging forest, the trees will be small and it'll be recently cleared and easy to walk through. nothing could have been further from the truth. after a few minutes of hiking we decided to hike north to goodman creek to see if we had been hiking in the right direction, or if we were hopelessly lost. the good news was after fifteen minutes or so, we hit goodman, so we weren't off course. the bad news, it was still too big to cross. we followed the creek side for a while, until we found an area where most of the creek ran underground. this was our chance. so we hiked down the steep bank and crossed. finally. surprisingly, a few hundred yards farther, goodman was wide and deep again... we just happened to run across the narrow underground portion at the right time. a little luck was on our side.

we didn't know a few things:

a. the maps we had were last updated in 1982, so who knew if the logging roads are even there any more, or if they'd been changed.
b. our maps only covered about three quarters of the logging area, so the last three miles of winding unnamed roads were just missing. our link to the highway was a complete mystery.

we checked the maps again. it was just getting dark at this point. we truly made it out of the forest just in time. by the look of the map we had to follow this road north for a little way until it ran into another road which in a mile or so would hit an actual logging road. we hiked in an almost blissful mood, because the ground was solid, and the trees were easy to get around. ironically this is the crappiest trail you could ever imagine, but to us it's gold. we hiked on and hit a gravel road some time later. we were wet, exhausted, hungry, but not without hope.

the gravel logging road that we ran across looked like it had been used from time to time, a boon to our spirits. we checked our maps which were water proof, but at this point pretty beat up from all of the wear and tear of hiking with them in hand. in about a quarter mile we came across a five way intersection with unmarked gravel roads leading off in every direction. we consulted the map again and found where we thought we were, though after six hours in a dense dark forest had left us a little uncertain of where we actually were. while browsing the maps we both heard a growl in the distance. we looked at each other and asked simultaneously, "was that a truck?" it was silent for a few seconds, and dark everywhere. i kept scanning the woods and roads for headlights, but never saw any. we opted to walk toward the sound to investigate, even though it was in the opposite direction that we needed to hike. we both decided that it would be worth it if we ran across a logger and got out of there alive. we headed south for a few hundred yards passing on the map what was labeled as a gravel field, though we had to just assume because really we couldn't see much farther than the five feet ahead of us that my rapidly dying headlamp would light. the rain and the mist added an extra layer of darkness to everything.

we heard the growl again, this time we are by the south east corner of the gravel pit huddled in a ditch. luke brought MRE's with self heating pads to heat the food for our first two nights. the MRE's came with extra heating pads, think large hand warmers the width and length of a novel that you add a small amount of water to start a chemical reaction. the warmers heat to a temperature that could burn skin if you aren't careful. we were both wet, but i was still relatively warm, in part, i was guessing, because i'm from washington and i've never minded the rain or cold, and partly because i had different layers of polyester clothing on, and hugely thick gortex mountaineering boots, it didn't really matter if i got wet, i'd stay warm as long as i kept moving. luke on the other hand was shivering and numb in the hands and feet. he's not one to complain, so when he started to tell me how cold he was i knew it was serious. we huddled down in the ditch, cut the top off of the heater, scooped it partially full of water, and stuffed it in his jacket. the heater made an immediate difference, but they only last for an hour or so. as we were huddled in the ditch the once hopeful sound of a truck sounded more and more like a large animal. we again looked at each other, this time a lot less hopeful, and decide maybe it was best if we got out of there.

we hiked on in the dark between dense forested roads, on ridge lines, through valleys, up hillsides that never seemed to end, across clear cut sections of forest, passing mile markers on occasion, 13.5, 13, 12.5. the rain and wind had picked up considerably at this point, and we'd been hiking for hours, each turn inspecting the map, checking the compass, and hiking onward, only ever seventy-five percent confident that we were headed in the right direction. the number of turns, the darkness, the fact that we didn't really know where we were for certain made everything more difficult, but when you came across a mile marker that got smaller and not bigger, you knew you were headed in the right direction. it was mile marker twelve where we rounded a bend in the road down a short hill to hit an intersection, in front of us a large flat bed trailer, to the right a huge hitachi front end loader. we ran across little signs of life all throughout the day. in the national forest we saw the metal boundary signs, a small triumph, past the national forest border we ran across a bottle of bleach, a sunny-d bottle, a small steak knife, some buckets, even a long-since-decayed bouquet of flowers wrapped in wired ribbon (which begged the question, which gay logging couple left this behind?) each item that we ran across was an incremental boost of hope that we weren't too far from civilization after all. it's funny what you'll cling to when you have nothing else. so when we ran across the front end loader it was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. we kept hiking, crossing a large river on an old wooden bridge, about half mile past the hitachi. i jokingly, but somewhat seriously said, "we should've checked if that front end loader had keys, we could've driven that out of here." we both kind of chuckled and then actually considered it, but then the thought of backtracking, and not being sure if it even ran or had keys was just too much to make us turn around.

i kept asking luke every five minutes or so how he was doing. we hadn't eaten since breakfast, and he hadn't had anything to drink other than what i gave him of my water. sometimes things like eating and drinking are foregone in order to make progress, stopping to eat or filter water takes time and day light, it's just easier to soldier onward. we stopped to activate a second MRE heater, because luke was getting colder, and the first heater was wearing off. i gave him the rest of my water to drink while i rummaged through my bag for anything edible, to get some calories into his system. all i had were calorie-free crystal light packets and hot chocolate packets. we opted for the hot chocolate packets. after the hot chocolate powder and water were consumed, the heater stuffed into his jacket, he was feeling marginally better. we hiked onward. about a mile and a half later we came to an intersection that didn't match up with anything on the map. i studied it for minutes trying to make sense of it, and we finally decided, mostly out of desperation to keep going straight. within a few hundred yards i stopped because it didn't feel right. the road had more leaves on it, it was narrower, "i think we're going the wrong way" i said. so we turned back and headed for the other turn. immediately it felt better, the road was wider, no leaves, and i even saw a tire track in the muddy gravel. we hiked onward for another mile up a steep hillside. luke is stopping to rest every 500 yards now, and i'm talking to him pretty well constantly to make sure he's ok. i'm tired, but i'm confident that i can hike out tonight which had always been my plan. luke stopped and said apologetically, "i don't think i can go any farther... i don't think i'm going to make it out of here tonight." i think for a second and then suggest that we should setup the tent, dry off our best and sleep the night. it was after all our only option. before we left in the morning we made special precautions to dry-bag our sleeping bags, we knew that we wouldn't survive the night if we didn't have a dry sleeping bag to sleep in, that proved to be our one good idea... we hiked a bit farther scanning the road side for a place to setup the tent, and something that resembled flat ground. a few hundred yards farther we found a small turn out on top of the ridge, it was mostly flat, hard packed gravel, small puddles of water and alder saplings dotted the space, but it would do.

luke is largely motionless at this point, just standing there while i frantically unstrapped the tent from my bag, i was amazed at how heavy the tent had become with water. i dumped the contents of the tent stuff sack on the road, grabbed the footprint and spread it out. almost simultaneously the wind picks up to a feverish pitch, you can hear trees cracking in the distance. luke stands on the footprint to keep it from blowing away. i irksomely assemble the poles and shove them through wet pockets of fabric that insist on clinging to the poles. after some time and what would be described best as a laborious tedium, we got the tent upright and set. we attached the heavy rain fly, strap it down and insert the vestibule poles. this tent is built to withstand hurricanes, or storms on mount everest. if you're going anywhere with extreme weather, this is the tent you want with you. i'm silently praising my tent choice as we are about to get inside to dry out and hopefully survive the night when luke said to me, "not to alarm you, but i think i'm dying..." this just hung in the air, because i didn't really know how to respond. luke has been holding down the tent the entire time and he suggests wisely that, "it might be a good idea to stake it." so i get out his hatchet, because pounding stakes into packed gravel is pretty well impossible without a hammer of sorts. i staked the tent from all 4 of it's 4 point guy-lines. the wind is getting worse, it's whipping trees around, and luke is now holding the tent with the full weight of his body, still stepping on the footprint of the tent to anchor it. i grabbed the last stake to stake out the vestibule, grasping the strap to stake through, a gust of wind stronger than anything i've ever experienced blasted us from behind. luke made a full body lunge on top of the tent, but it was too late. in disbelief i watched the tent blow thirty feet up into the air and off the side of a steep hill. i looked down at my hands, one is bloody still clinched tightly to the anchor strap of the tent, ripped clean from the tent body, the other hand holding the hatchet. luke is laying in the gravel, still in the position of holding down the tent, the footprint of the tent pulled from under his feet. we looked at each other, and i chuckled audibly but to myself, knowing that our last chance for survival just blew off the side of the ridge. "what are we going to do now?" i asked. luke just sort of shrugged and got to his feet. i decided we should pray, because things really look hopeless. after a short but sincere pray i decided to skirt down the ridge line and look for the tent. it's nowhere, just darkness and forest and wind and rain. i hiked back up to the road and luke said, "we need to hike back to the hitachi, if it's unlocked we can stay inside the cab tonight, at least it will be dry..." "that's actually a really good idea" i said. so we turned back, and hiked, this time with purpose, we had to get to the hitachi. luke is warming up but is hiking slowly. he keeps stopping every hundred yards. i kept asking him how he was doing, because honestly, i didn't know what i'd do if he just fell dead on me in the middle of nowhere. he kept saying that he was pretty warm, but really tired. at one point he told me that he felt like he was going to fall asleep while hiking. i kept telling him that we were close and that we just needed to keep hiking. he told me that if he died, it's not my fault. i replied, "yeah, but don't die, i couldn't live with that..." at some point, in between asking him how he was feeling, i said, "i'm sorry." just a general statement. he replied, "it's not your fault," and then i replied half frustratedly, half sympathetically, "i know, but it's just such a mess... you know?" i realized this was kind of my way of making peace with the situation and the mess we had made of things. we hiked in silence for some time after that, hitting mile markers, each bringing us half a mile closer than before. at several points during the night we'd nearly walk into downed trees on the road way, because you couldn't see beyond the beams of the headlamp, it was the same situation with the front end loader. we kind of ran into it before we knew we were there. the front end loader was tucked behind big piles of dirt, probably to keep people like us from stealing it. i tried the door, it was locked. i rooted around in luke's bag a bit and found his hatchet. the side of the front end loader had a sign on it that read, "cascade something something resources phone number: (360) something something" i can't remember it now, but it was clear that it was a rented machine. i scouted around the hitachi, searching for a key, maybe a magnet key-holder underneath the body of the cab, i even searched the trailer across the road, nothing. i walked back to the door of the front end loader and said out loud but mostly to myself, "i'm sorry cascade resources, i would never do this unless i really needed to" and then i smashed the lock with the hatchet repeatedly. bits of plastic from around the lock smashed and fell to the ground. i smashed and smashed the lock, prying on it to pop it loose. this wasn't working... i pulled out my pathetically wimpy pocket knife at luke's suggestion and pushed it into the key hole in the lock, i hit the end of the knife with the hatchet until it was lodged tight, i gave a test turn of the knife and the door popped open. we would survive yet.

the cab was at my shoulders, you had to grasp handles on the door edge and climb on the tracks to get inside. the cab was metal and glass, but once you stepped inside it was noticeably warmer. getting out of the wind, the rain, and i'm sure just mentally, made all of the difference. luke climbed into the cab to strip down and i began to hand him new clothes. i gathered what dry clothes i had left, a pair of underwear, and two pairs of socks. i handed them to him in the cab and turned off my headlamp, because we were in dire circumstances, but not so dire that i wanted to see naked wet guy in a tractor cab... i pulled his sleeping bag and pad out of his backpack and shoved it in the cab, miraculously both were still dry. he was taking clothes off, and throwing them out the door, i kept grabbing the clothes and throwing them under the cab, because who knew what morning would bring. there was hydraulic fluid on the cab floor so we laid down his sleeping pad first because it was old and worn and then my sleeping pad next. he got into his sleeping bag. i cleaned up the contents of his backpack and mine, laying everything under the cab so it stayed as dry as possible for the next morning. i pulled food wrappers out of pockets and put them into the bear canister, because at this point that was the last thing we needed, a bear attack, and knowing our luck it wouldn't be too far out of the realm of possibility. minutes later with everything under the cab i stepped gingerly into the cab trying not to get anything wet. luke was already feeling better, much to my relief. i stripped down to damp underwear, flinging wet clothes out the door and under the cab and shimmied into my sleeping bag. we were both surprised that our sleeping bags were still dry. i repeat, 'our one good idea.'

we would alternate shifts of sitting on the seat, which thankfully reclined slightly, and sitting scrunched up fetal position between the door of the cab and the side wall, it was a tight squeeze for us both, but for me especially. you'd find comfort for a few minutes before your legs went numb and finally after twenty minutes you'd have to stand, back bent over, but legs straight to let the blood flow back into your legs. you would do this once or twice before you earned a ticket to switch to the seat. ironically, this being the lousiest place to sleep over the entire hike, we found ourselves immensely grateful for the amenities that it provided. we found two bottles of generic bottled water, drank one that night and saved the other for morning. out of exhaustion i'd doze off for a few minutes here and there, waking to flashes of lightening, or torrents of rain, or sporadic bouts of hail, or just from my legs going numb. i sat most of the night thinking about cat, and you guys, and hoping that i'd see you all again somehow. at some point luke chimed in, "i didn't want to alarm you earlier. hypothermia has 3 stages, i just taught this to my scout group so i'm pretty familiar with the stages. it's funny how you can go through each stage and mentally check them off a list... first you are cold and you shiver, then you are cold and stop shivering, and then finally you become really warm, and sleepy, your body gives up and you just lay down and die..." after thinking about this for a moment, i replied, "well i'm glad you're not dead." i couldn't have meant it more...

at first light we studied the maps and sorted through other maps that looked like they'd been designed in microsoft word that we had found in the cab. nothing matched or made sense. compass readings which we had to take with my arm extended out of the window of the cab, because an all metal cab doesn't work well with a compass, didn't match up with road directions. it was at this point that i began to curse the crappy maps that hadn't been updated since 1982. how can they even sell them, they aren't even accurate? (note: never buy REI national geographic maps, incredibly waterproof but worthless.) after an hour or so of pouring over unnamed logging roads and comparing what we found in the cab, reading through permit plans trying to gleam any sort of information that'd tell us where we were luke heard a faint sound out of the open window of the cab. "it's a chain saw" he said. minutes passed, no more chain saw. we sort of sat in silence for several minutes trying to weigh our options. it was then that a big shiny black ford truck drove slowly around the corner. salvation! i flashed my light at the truck while luke waved his arms out the cab window. he stopped the truck short of us in confusion and then we waved him closer. he drove up to the side of the cab but could only get so close because of the big piles of dirt surrounding us. he was young, maybe twenty-one, and clearly a hunter. he said, "looks awfully cramped in there," chuckling to himself. luke downplayed our situation and replied, "yeah, we're lost..." and then goes on to explain the flooded river and how we stayed the night in the hitachi. the driver just sort of shook his head in disbelief. then he said, "well if you hike out on this road that will get you out of here..." long pause... "or if you want a ride i can give you a ride..." as cooly as possibly we accept his offer without betraying too much excitement. a little awkwardly we got out of our sleeping bags, cursing ourselves for throwing our only pants underneath the cab the night before. we clearly didn't plan that far in advance. we made small talk with him while we put on layer after layer of wet and muddy clothing and started to gather up all of our stuff. his name is jeremy and honestly, he just seemed happy to talk to anyone. he had been up here for the past ten days hunting elk. he told us that they're all over the place up here. out of morbid curiosity i asked him if he'd ever seen bear up here. "oh yeah, they're all over the place too, kind of spooky being up here without a rifle" he confesses. "i wouldn't worry too much about the bear though, just black bear, they usually spook and run in the other direction... it's the cougar that i'd worry about" short pause, "they'll track you." cougar?! i didn't even know cougars existed out here! i felt both immediately grateful that we were not eaten the night before and that we were getting out of there in a big truck and not walking the next fourteen miles on foot.

in the truck jeremy was decked out in camo and elk scent (read: elk urine), binoculars, night vision, in-dash GPS, a hand gun in the door and a rifle at his side, chew in his lip and an old pepsi bottle to spit into. he offered us food and beverage, but again we didn't want to sound too desperate. his entire cab was full of cushy dry bedding and the bed of the truck was full of huge blue coolers each i assumed filled to capacity with all sorts of food. suddenly it seemed that this guy had the right idea. why would you ever want to hike with stuff on your back when you could just drive around in a big truck? it was immediately clear after a few minutes that without a truck and without GPS we would have never found our way out. the maps we had were hopelessly outdated. in the daylight you could see the immensity of our surroundings, mountains and forest in every direction. we would have been out there for days hiking in circles had he not found us... and here is the real kicker, "i've never been out this way," he said, "i just got the feeling all the sudden that i needed to come down this road." god works in mysterious ways...

a few miles down a road that we'd never hiked on in a valley on the edge of the tree line, luke asked, already knowing the answer, "isn't that your tent, hans?" we stopped and hiked down to it. the footprint was torn, poles mildly bent, one was broken, but everything was essentially there, save the stakes that i'd thrown in the bushes the night before in frustration after it blew away... we quickly broke it down and wrapped it up as tightly as possible then returned to the truck. jeremy all the while patiently whacked alder saplings on the road with his machete. the ride back to the highway was filled with mixed emotions, it all felt surreal already, but i also couldn't believe how quickly our world could turn around. one minute we're in the middle of nowhere, the next we're on our way back to civilization. it was stunningly beautiful countryside. i sat in silence for much of the trip, just taking it all in. we couldn't see any of this in the dark the night prior. before we knew it we were back to the car shaking hands with jeremy, thanking him for his good deed, offering him lunch or money or anything really, but he wouldn't except, he was just eager to get back to hunting elk, which is all the better, because we didn't have any money anyway and the closest restaurant was in forks, some miles away.

we stuffed wet equipment into the trunk and threw away luke's sleeping pad right there at the trail head, it was stained in hydraulic fluid. we got into the car, it started, amazingly, part of me felt that we would never get home, but sure enough, there we were, alive and well and on our way.