Or I had died on SFJ and this was purgatory, forever hiking a forest trail that looks the same for ever and ever. I swear I had been hiking the flat section only for 2+ hours when I decided that it had somehow extended to 7 miles. The Leroy Basin trail went by quickly, but the 3mi of flat trail. The slog back to the car was going to feel long. ![]() I was jealous they had another day there and also sad to leave such hilarious company behind. well I’ve broken it twice before so I think I’d know if it was broken.” “Ok, scratch here, deeper scratch there, got a band aid for this one… man, my elbow hurts.” “How bad? How’s your range of motion?” “Motion is okay and. We waited a few minutes for adrenaline to subside. I shouted something like “Stephen! Holy shit! All in one piece? Sit down and take inventory” though he had already found a place to sit and was almost doing the Atlas Thinking pose. His fall concluded and he jumped up right away. My brain froze, paused at the first step of the “do I panic” flow chart. At once point he said “I’m playing that game of -” but his thought was cut short by the sound of falling talus and crumbling rocks and I turned around to see Stephen tumble head over toe, a literal full somersault like something out of a cartoon. I was losing my mind going down the endless talus again. Fortunately we both had downloaded GPX tracks, because I swear every gully looked the same to me on the way down and I would have been in for a lot of trial and error without them. We finally curved to the right again to gain “a ridge” (not a ridge, despite what the topo map says) and made it up the final (also extremely loose) gulley to the summit, where we texted sappy things to our SOs back in town and I crushed a second PB&J sandwich. I occasionally turned around to see him poke his head above the rocks and then disappear again. He went high in search of 3rd-4th class scrambling on more secure rocks, I stayed low taking my changes surfing uphill on scree. Stephen and I continued, choosing our own paths up through the rocks. From there it’s a long time sidehilling on talus or kitty litter on sloped rock. I couldn’t blame him at all, and it didn’t get better from there. Alejandro turned around after getting sick of the loose shit at the top of that narrow talus fan. But the views just got better and better. ![]() Part of me is still up there side slipping around wobbly rocks. Put on a helmet, this is where it gets loose. One time Stephen replied to a message at like 8:30am on a Saturday and I wondered if I should be worried.įrom the rocky basin, you take a talus fan up to your left that traverses below some sheer rock walls. ![]() “By the way Eve, you should probably just do Maude while we sleep.” “I figured.” My circadian rhythms are offset from Alejandro and Stephen’s by like 6 hours. Stephen… well he left West Seattle Island at a reasonable time, got lost in the Bellevue REI for an unreasonable time, and then went through a space time warp while we wondered if we should order him a milkshake at the 59er diner or not. Alejandro, Stephen, and I texted sporadically when we passed bits of cell service. Highway 2 had multiple accidents that had shut down both directions of travel. It took almost 6 hours to get from Seattle to the trailhead, despite leaving at 12:30.
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