Campsite at mile 1566 to Statue Creek (mile 1591)
The afternoon finds us repeatedly climbing along high ridgelines just as the sky curdles over and thunder rumbles overhead. Exposed ridges with thunder, possibly my least favorite combo. If clear skies and sunny mountain tops are peanut butter and jelly, then exposed ridges and thunder is a pickle juice and vanilla ice cream shake. Ever since an especially wet llama-packing trip with my family on the Colorado Trail found us huddling under trees while the skies turned white with lightning, I have been uncommonly nervous during thunderstorms. But I’ve also never been struck by lightning, so maybe I’m doing something right.
As we hike towards evening a frustrating pattern emerges. We scramble up and over a ridge just as the skies turn grey and ominous, I’m pushing the pace faster and faster in my nervousness to get back into the trees, back to where I’ll be relatively safe. As we crest the ridge it starts to sprinkle, or rain, or hail on us. Once we even stop to put on our rain gear, huddling under the eves of a scrawny pine tree working our damp arms into damp rain jackets while slushy hail turns the ground white around us. However, within ten minutes the sun is pushing through the clouds, the temperature and humidity shooting up along with it and we’re shedding layers as we begin to sweat. Then it starts to rain again and I completely give up. It’s not that cold, I’ll just be wet. Fine, it’s fine.
The sun is edging towards the horizon as we make our way up the last climb of the day. Far below and away until forever stretch tree filled valleys and tree covered ridges, row upon row. The rain clouds have finally ceded their efforts to the sun, with it’s humidity and haze, which dumps its warm syrupy yellow light across the world and all the way down into the deep valleys with their little ink black lakes. I always wonder what is down in those valleys, or over the next ridge—what special things are hidden behind those trees. I always have wondered what is just beyond what I can see, even if I know I’ll probably never go there, I want to know. I always want to know. The PCT takes one to a lot of different places, but only in its unique ever-moving way. The trail doesn’t always lend itself to exploration, or rather it is a very specific sort of exploration. Not the meandering sort of curiosity wandering, but rather the way in which you can see new vistas from the passengers seat during a road trip. An ever moving bubble of new sights, but you won’t get to see what’s beyond that ridge. We can look, but not touch. In this way NorCal feels vast and endless, the hazy sky smearing the edges of everything until maybe that distant ridge really is the end of the world.