DAY ONE-SEVENTEEN, September 3, 22.3 Miles
At mile 2554.7
And then the water came from the sky. All night and all morning. Perfect. Slippery, washed out and overgrown trail, dodgy river crossings and loads of blowdowns. Add rain, rainy rain. Down to Milk Creek, where the Forest Service are currently rebuilding the trail that was completely annihilated in 2003 (it will likely be washed out again within a few years, that fighting a losing battle thing). The former bridge is in many pieces, one of which saved me from having to ford, that would have been fun. The climb out was long, switchbacky, wet, slow and cold. I gave up, and decided I would camp at the next flat spot I came to that wasn't a giant puddle (current time: 10am). Luckily the next site was 2.5 miles down into the next valley and by then the rain had all but stopped. The blowdowns weren't bad enough to slow me down too much, but the Suiattle River, wow. It's also currently bridgeless, making it most definitely the biggest ford on the trail. Luckily there is a tree over it, two actually. One upstream, nice and wide, walkable, over a narrow bit of the river. And another, quarter mile slog downstream, narrow and springy and awkward and where the river is fairly wide. Guess which one I took because I couldn't see the other one. No fun at the beaches this summer. Took me half an hour to cross and get back to the trail, that I then couldn't find. So I went straight up the hill, hoping to find a switchback, and almost didn't. Finally through the hard stuff. Everything is moist.
When I woke up this morning, the first thought that entered my mind was "I'm going to fall over today", and yes. Yes I did.
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