[Day 89] Borderline

Sleep last night was horrific. It’s no wonder I am in and out of town. A combination of I-15 highway traffic, trains passing through the night, campground light pollution, and itchy legs kept me tossing and turning. I rubbed my legs down with Cortisone cream and popped a Benadryl to help with any reactions. A couple loud trains brought me back to camping on a beach along the Feather River in Belden on the PCT. It was a hot, humid night in Belden, and I decided to sleep without a mat in the sand. When I finally did fall asleep, I awoke multiple times to the horn of passing trains — the tracks were maybe a tenth of mile away. In my dreams, I had convinced myself that I pitched my tent in the middle of the train tracks. I hurriedly exited my tent and ripped my tent up from its stake points. I remember doing this at least twice. Luckily, Lima did not a replicate my frantic night in Belden, but my sleep was as broken and muddled as it might get.

I ate a double serving of breakfast at the local cafe, finished up a couple errands, and was back to trail before noon. The hiking started dry and flat, leaving the I-15 dip in the Centennial Mountains. On the dirt road walk out, a sheepdog ran me down at the fence line. I had been wanting to see one.

Eight miles in, the dirt road turned to a undulating ridge walk on top of the divide and Montana-Idaho border. I thought the walk was similar in style to the Argentine Spine near Grays Peak in Colorado, except drier and slightly less aggressive. It was a neat walk! Except, I forgot to water up for this fifteen mile ridge walk. I managed the dry, windy, exposed ridge walk on a liter I downed prior to getting to trail. Luckily, a spring a little bit down a hill quenched my thirst after fourteen miles without water. The wind was insane. I estimate a constant 30mph wind out of the south with gusts up to 50 or 60mph. It’s the type of wind where you lean into it while you walk, and the gusts still throw you three or four feet when they hit. The ridge occasionally had barbed wire fence atop the crest, and I was nearly tangled in it a few times with those gnarly gusts.

At the end of the ridge walk, I dropped off the divide and immediately the wind killed — dead silent. After a minute of walking the fingerling of a mountain in a grassy meadow, I got some serious vertigo. The world rotate in my vision for a good minute and my ears rang. I suspect the change in pressure detected by my eardrums resulted in my dizziness — mainly, the loss of the dynamic pressure from the wind, which my sensors had become accustomed to over four hours of the side bombardment. It was surreal brushing the grass, hearing the crunch of my footsteps, and feeling even again at static pressure with no wind.

I enjoyed the walk out of Lima today. I was dead on the divide and border of Idaho and Montana for much of the day. I found a serene forest campsite and called it quits after some 21 miles.

Signing off,

Zeppelin / fReaK (ON a leash)