This Is Not a Postcard

According to hiker comments on Guthooks, the navigation app I use, the glacier-fed Kennedy Creek used to have a bridge. It does not have a bridge anymore.

I’d run into Abe Lincoln – the trail name of another hiker, not a zombie president – just the day before, and he’d declared with conviction, “This is the worst maintained trail I’ve ever seen.” (I do not believe he has ever seen the CDT, but I digress.)

There wasn’t any of the usual trail maintenance last year as far as I’m aware, which has meant that 2021 hikers get to experience two winters worth of weather and growth and surprises. I mentioned the numerous blowdowns in a previous post, but I’ve also been surprised at how many landslides and avalanches have completely wiped out sections of the trail, leaving hikers to navigate wide swaths of downed trees or search for where the trail picks up again after the devastation. And in many places, undergrowth has completely overtaken the trail.

Anyone familiar with the Pacific Northwest mountains knows how quickly plants will reclaim whatever space you dare to take from them, and this trail is no different. Lush ferns taller than my 5’8″ height, spiny salmonberry vines, and tangles of blueberry bushes often obscure the trail completely. On steep inclines, I’m forced to walk slowly, pushing aside the green with each step to make sure I’m stepping on trail, and not off into the air.

Here I am helpfully pushing away the salmonberry plants to point at the trail. Miles of the trail are like this.

But back to Kennedy Creek. No bridge.

I’d unknowingly camped right before it, and so it was early morning still when I emerged from the trees onto an expansive river bank. The bank was full of the tumbled rocks and carved silt I associate with flooded areas. Kennedy Creek itself was a rushing milky brown. No way to see how deep it was save by the way the water poured over the rocks in its path.

I should mention here that the creek wasn’t big enough to set off warning bells. I’ve forded enough rivers to generally know my limits, and Kennedy Creek was definitely crossable, just…not right where the trail used to cross it. I set off upriver, following tracks of prior hikers, in search of a section of water either wide enough to wade through without ending up waist deep in the tumbling current, or for an arrangement of rocks I could hopscotch.

It took me nearly 30 minutes. I think some hikers probably just forged across, but I tested the depth in a few places and wanted to be extra cautious. Eventually I found a combo of rocks and a fallen, half-submerged tree trunk that I could use to cross the deepest part, and within seconds I was standing on the other side. I emptied my shoes of sandy silt, rung out my socks, and finally started hiking again.

I didn’t think to get a photo of where I crossed because I was very busy keeping my balance, but here is the view from the far side.

But aside from the minor trail inconveniences the PCT throws at us hikers to remind us that it’s not a tame trail, it has continued to be worlds easier to hike and navigate than the CDT. And every day I’m treated to some of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen.

On trail I’ve been listening to a podcast called The Anthropocene Reviewed (which I cannot recommend highly enough). In one episode about sunsets, it talks about being vulnerable, about looking at beautiful things head on instead of comparing them to a created version of themselves. So while I hike, I have been reminding myself. This does not look like a postcard. It’s not like being in a painting. These are mountains, real mountains, and you are standing among them. And they are stunningly, indescribably beautiful.

I’ll leave you with with a collection of photos, which isn’t the real thing at all, but is the only way I’m able to share these mountains.