Day 133
24 miles
Fifth Day of rain on trail
It rained off and on all night. We had gone to bed knowing it would probably rain on us. I had hoped it would be done by the time our alarm went off at 6am. Instead the pitter patter on the tent became more consistent. With the little bit of service I had, I looked up the weather which said it was around 40 degrees and would rain most of the morning. Both these things proved true. It was quite chilly and rained most of the morning and never really got sunny so we could never stop to dry things out. The longest break we took was maybe 45 minutes. It was too cold to stop! We also saw about eight hunters today.
Today was an existential crisis kind of day. We both questioned why we are down here hiking in the rain and cold when most hikers just ended at Steven’s pass or snoqualomine when the fires popped up. Most didn’t feel the need to finish out the newly opened section of trail. Everyone has their own journey and we sure questioned ours today. We wondered how on earth we handled the AT where we would have rain for days and days on end. I think the cold makes it a bit different. But it is supposed to be nice and sunny tomorrow. We adhere to the adage “never quit on a bad day”. And at this point we only have about five days left. So here’s to the last week!
Today we hiked through Marble Mountain wilderness. It was a beautiful remote area.
Our first glimpse of it was as we created our first hill today. The clouds hung low over the valley in front of us. Then we hiked directly under Marble Mountain which was pure white and stood out against the dark red and brown mountains next to it. Throughout the day we could see marble mountain grow farther away from us and before we descended our final ridge, I was so impressed with how far we had come. It was really neat to have a visual point of reference to remind us of the progress we are making and also to have such beautiful views.
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