July 10th

Honeymoon Creek- 7:35pm
Weather: sunny, and starting to cool off a bit (was triply digits again today)

Today was the hardest day I have ever had in my life. Tom and I got a slow, late start this morning and were really feeling each mile. About 3 miles in, Tom collapsed and we took a long break before I coaxed him to continue. A combination of calorie deficiency, heat, bugs, dehydration and altitude was really beating us down. But we pushed on to the Snow Lakes Trail, where we took a short detour for lunch by a lake. That's when I just started to fall apart, though. I cried for a while out of frustration at being unable to eat and general physical pain and mental exhaustion. But we pulled ourselves together and after lunch we started our constant climb up to Devils Peak. I actually felt great physically, although I could feel the effects of altitude on my breathing. Once we reached 6500 feet, however, the snow really started. We lost the trail a number of times, but thankfully (luckily) Dennis was a few hours ahead of us and we could rely on his footprints to lead the way. At times his footprints were very faint though, and the PCT is often little more than a sparse footpath, so it took quite a bit of navigating and guessing to get us along. Eventually we got into some snowy, open bowls, so we grabbed our microspikes and ice axes. The snow was very soft, though, and I lost my footing twice, sliding 50 feet down the mountain and having to self-arrest myself. I got stuck in a rocky hole, and had lost my trekking pole part of the way down. Thankfully Tom was there to help gather my gear, and talk me through climbing back up. That's when I got really scared, because I realized the actual danger of it all. I had read about self-arresting and snow fields, and all of the dangers we would encounter on the trail, but now they were real- and imminent.

We were out of the deep snow for a few miles, constantly gaining elevation and traversing the ridge of the mountain, but then we turned a corner and were confronted with 10+ feet of snow, as far as we could see, entirely covering where the trail should have been. We put on our gear, and took our time (I was terrified, but I put on a brave face- I wasn't about to yield to Tom's suggestion of returning to HW140). We spent the next hour traversing the very steep slopes of Lucifer's Peak, making our way towards the summit of (aptly named) Devils Peak. Below us was thousands of feet of open, snowy slopes- and nothing to catch us if we fell. The trail was entirely covered, but we followed Dennis' faint footprints along the snowfield, double checking each of our steps for safety. Finally we reached a snow-free saddle between the two peaks, and crossed over to the north side of Devils Peak, where we were once again confronted with feet and feet of unending snow. Our guidebook advised us to glissade down (slide down on our butts, using our ice axes to control our speed and direction) and then find the trail in the woods at the base of the bowl. So we spotted Dennis' footprints and kept them in our site as we slid down the mountain. At this point though, even a partly controlled butt slide was terrifying to me, and gravity wanted me to follow the fall line (and go super fast) instead of Dennis' tracks. I ended up in a few tree wells, righted myself, and slid again (Tom, meanwhile, was loving this part...). We made it pretty far down the mountain, then realized we hadn't seen any tracks in a while. We spent a good 30 minutes tromping around a snowy bowl, looking for the faintest sign that somebody had been there before us. Eventually we located the trail again, but by this time I was in such pain- I had rolled my ankles countless times in the snow, we had been postholing for hours, my knuckles were raw from gripping my ice ax against the snow, and I had shooting pains in my left foot. The next 4 miles into camped dragged on and on. By the time we got to Honeymoon Creek, our destination for the night, we were so thoroughly whooped- mentally and physically. It had taken us 10 hours to log 12 miles. Our feet were soaked through, our guidebook and maps were soggy, and our feet hurt more than we thought was possible.

I am really proud of us- because we made it through today- but I just cant get over how terrifying it was. I said I only wanted to do this until it wasn't fun anymore, and I reached (well, surpassed) that point today.   When I saw those 10 foot tall snowbanks on the ridge of Lucifer's Peak, I decided I had had enough. I cant imagine reliving this day over and over again, and that's exactly what this trip would be. It really scares me when I think about where we would be without Dennis' tracks- we never would have made it over the pass without his guiding footprints- and that terrifies me. And to think there are so many more passes ahead- higher elevation and further north. No thank you. Watching Tom fall, and falling myself, was so scary...just knowing we are way out here and so many things can go wrong.

But today I did earn my trail name: Tracker.