Day 136

Cascade locks to dirt road - 25.2 miles

Total - 2175.5

Elevation gain was 6,700ft with 4,500ft down. wtf

Brutal day. Woke up and basically hit the road since dad had to be at work. Lame. He drove us very kindly and dropped the guys off in cascade locks to mail their resupplies while he dropped me off across the bridge where I left off. Hard goodbye but knew I would see him so soon! The first 6 miles were okay but then we hit the long long up. I’ve said this a couple times on this blog but I actually mean it this time when I say I have never sweat so much in my life. I was dripping consistently for a couple hours. My pants looked like I peed them until they got so soaked that they just looked dark grey. I would’ve worn shorts but there was so much poison oak that my dad warned me about and was right (easily avoidable though) that I didn’t want to risk it. My shirt was damp all day. My hood on the sun shirt was my sweat rag for the entire day. It truly was diabolical and I’ve never felt so incredibly disgusting in my life. I was clean and normally I can’t smell myself until a couple days in but immediately I smelled like a wet dog. I took a break at a water source which was the last one in ten miles which I didn’t know lol. I talked to raccoon who I had met before as well as a new girl named savage. Very nice people as pct hikers usually are. I ate my lunch which was a calzone before heading out and sweating some goddamn more goddamit. I eventually caught up to yeti again who looked just as miserable as me in the wet heat. We talked a lil before heading to the water source which I had stupidly only had a quarter of liter for the last 6 miles. I got there and washed my face and dunked my head to try and cool off. I chugged a liter to make up for the lack of water I had consumed during the previous long climb. I ate a lil to get some salt in me before going in my way for the last 6 miles. Again all uphill. What a brutal day. I grabbed some water at the last water source before camp. Everyone there was going through it. No one wanted to dry camp but we had to. No one wanted to carry extra water but we had to. And everyone was sweating despite not wanting to lol. I passed them and got going as I was going a tad bit farther than them to our camp. At the top of the climb Marc finally caught up with about a mile left in the day. He had been hurting all day basically. His quad is still bothering him and only getting worse despite three days off trail. It’s only on the downhills but eventually it probably will get worse if the flats just like last time. I’m trying to do everything in my power to keep his spirits up and him on trail. He can suffer for three weeks? DUH. He can’t leave me. He obviously wants to stay on trail but if it’s a tear in the muscle or an overuse injury that will take some time to recover he doesn’t want to risk it. I want him to risk it. Jk I don’t want him to get worse but I do want to finish with him. Hopefully it gets better. We eventually got to camp, sweaty, and got straight to setting up and getting dinner going. His was down for dinner and I tried to cheer him up. Right as we finished rocklicker caught up and his ankle is doing good but his body hurts since he’s been off trail for about a week. Always hard to come back on trail after time off. That’s why I only limit it to 3 days max and we haven’t even done that all that much. I’m tired so I got to bed early only to catch up on blogs for about an hour. I’m ready to get some shit eye. I feel disgusting and I can still smelll myself and it ain’t pretty.

There’s a pretty big fire around the bend area in Oregon. The smoke all blew into the area recently so now everything is smoky. Hopefully it gets better as we move north as I want to see some views!!!!!