Another Long Walk: fire lookout

July 27: The morning started warm. Weather forecasts called for a high of 85 degrees in Eureka--a bit cooler than yesterday but still uncomfortably warm. But at least I'd be going up in elevation so most of the day I figured it would probably be in the 70s. Still quite warm, though!

Immediately after leaving camp, the trail headed up a steep slope quickly rising 3000 feet up Webb Mountain. It was an east-facing slope so even though it was early in the morning, I sweat bullets with the sun pounding down. There were quite a few trees which provided shade at times, but other areas were opened from old forest fires and provided very little shade and my pack was excruciatingly heavy filled with a week of food. It was a tough mountain for me to get up and I had to rest several times along the way.

At the top was an old fire lookout tower. This one was locked up tight and it appeared to be occupied. Inside, I could see food, toys for kids, sleeping bags hanging, etc. People can rent it for the night and apparently, it's quite a popular rental. I had asked the rangers in Eureka about it and they said it was booked full for months.

The views from the top were expansive but a haze had settling along the horizon. I wondered if a fire was burning nearby causing the haze. These hot temperatures and dry air could have easily resulted in a fire near the trail.

Mount Webb fire lookout tower

After a short rest at the lookout tower, I continued onward. The trail bounced up and down throughout the day rising and falling regularly between 500 and 1000 feet. Up and down, up and down, down and up, up and down....

It felt endless and wore me down.

I stopped for a 1.5 hour lunch during the hottest part of the day and took the time to cook dinner. Once again, I did not expect to have any good, quality water to camp near so I cooked dinner and cleaned up my dishes for lunch instead. I also took a short nap. The trail was really wearing me down today!

I filled up with an excruciating 5.5 liters of water to get through the dry spell and questionable water sources.

It was also a lonely day of hiking where I didn't see a single person the entire day. No hikers, no bikers and not even any drivers along the road walks. Not a lot of views to enjoy either since most of the day was in the trees.

I had hoped to reach the Mount Henry lookout tower and spend the night there, but I couldn't make it. The trail kicked my ass. I made it 18.0 miles according to my GPS, but I couldn't quite make it the last couple of miles to the lookout tower--although I was able to see it from a distance. My GPS also said I had climbed 6,700 feet in elevation throughout the day, but it felt like a lot more than that!

Storm clouds roll in over Mount Henry. At the very top, you can see the fire lookout tower that I had hoped to reach by the end of the day but no, the trail was too tough for me. I just couldn't make it!

Shortly after arriving in camp, I heard thunder in the distance and hoped and prayed it wouldn't rain. There wasn't any rain in the forecast and I was set up for cowboy camping! But a short while later, it did start raining. Given the lack of rain in the forecast and the fact that most clouds didn't look like they had rain, I decided that it was a small storm cell passing through and I could wait it out. I threw out my tarp like a blanket and hid under it for about 20 minutes. The storm passed by, the rain stopped, and I threw the tarp off again.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. I read my Kindle and watched Netflix shows that I downloaded to kill the time before heading to sleep. I hoped tomorrow would be a bit easier!

Lots of rabbits on the trail! This one was particularly photogenic letting me get especially close!

View of Koocanusa Lake while climbing up Webb Mountain. The air is a lot hazier today than previous days--a fire nearby, perhaps?

Inside the Mount Webb fire lookout tower. It looked like a family had already occupied the space for the night, but they were nowhere to be seen.

View from the lookout tower

Filling up with water! This fresh spring water was so wonderfully cold to drink!

July 22: I got my earliest start yet on the trail--6:30am! The bugs in the morning were absolutely horrid which helped spur me along. Just moving down the trail helped keep them at bay. Also, I was low on water and wanted to reach the next water source ASAP. The earlier in the morning I hiked, the cooler it would be and the less water I'd need until I reached a creek another 4 or 5 miles away.

I hadn't traveled more than a mile or so when I reached the Gibraltar Ridge Fire--or rather, the ashes it left behind. It was a 13,000 acre fire from two years earlier and left a wake of destruction in its path including the trail I was hiking on. The trail was badly eroded in places and countless blowdowns blocked the trail. My fast pace slowed to a crawl and despite the early morning, the sun pounded down on the barren terrain.

Despite the lack of trees, the bugs still seemed to thrive. I lost the trail several times in the ashes and grew increasingly thirsty but rationed my meager water supplies. The terrain was absolutely brutal and I struggled the next few miles while cursing the trail gods.

The Gibraltar Ridge Fire left countless blowdowns across the trail severely slowing down my progress.

Hours later, I made it out of the burn area but the trail veered wildly off what both my map and GPS showed, and I started having doubts if I was heading in the correct direction. It's not like this place was covered with countless trails, though, and as long as I headed downhill into the valley with Blue Sky Creek, I knew I'd be fine. I continued on, down a steep slope when the trail veered back toward the creek and once again agreed with both my map and GPS. I wondered how they made these maps because it seemed clear to me that nobody had actually walked this route with a GPS when they made them. It seemed like they looked at an empty topo map, picked two points where they knew the trail was located and drew a straight line between them.

And then finally, I heard it--a trickling of water ahead. The creek was near! It wasn't the creek, but it was a tiny stream flowing toward the creek on a tributary, but that didn't matter. It was water! It looked good! It was refreshingly cold!

I dropped my pack and immediately drank an entire liter of water. So good! So good!

I filled up with water. I'd be near water throughout the rest of the day so I didn't have to carry more than a liter at a time now.

The trail soon crossed Blue Sky Creek at which point it followed an old, abandoned road for several wonderfully flat and easy miles with a gentle downhill slope. I made good time along this stretch.

I took a nice, long break at a trailhead where the trail intersected with a forest service road just before beginning a 4-mile road walk on the moderately busy gravel road. In the hour or two I walked along the road, 12 vehicles passed me. One stopped to offer me a ride but I turned him down. I wasn't going to miss any of the trail. Not even a stupid road walk. This would be the only person I'd talk to the entire day. I didn't see a single hiker (or bicyclist) the entire day.

I didn't see any other hikers on the trail, but I did see this deer during the road walk!

Near the end of the road walk, a light sprinkle started. Argh! It wasn't so hard that I pulled out my umbrella, but my pants and shoes got completely soaked from the overgrown trail conditions once I got back on real trail. The light sprinkle was enough to get the vegetation sufficiently wet to soak me as I brushed through it.

My goal now was to reach Foundation Lake, which I knew had campsites nearby and plenty of water. The trail climbed steadily upwards but except for the overgrown conditions, it didn't slow me down much.

When I reached the lake, the bugs were awful and the lake looked stagnant and I reconsidered stopping here for the night. If I picked up plenty of water, I could hike another mile or two to the summit of Mount Wam which had a fire lookout tower. At the very least, it would likely have fewer bugs and a better breeze. Ideally, it would be unlocked and I could camp inside of it. And if I made it there, I would officially complete my first 20-mile day. I had had a 19.7-mile day and a 19.5-mile day, but technically hadn't completed a 20-mile day yet. The summit of Mount Wam would put me at 20.3 miles.

Foundation Lake was buggy and stagnant.

My guide book did say that the lookout tower was available for rent but I hadn't made any reservations because I wasn't even sure when I would get here when I started hiking a week before. The door was locked, though, and people who rented the tower to sleep overnight would get a key or combination or something. That was the impression I had. Maybe if people were camped inside, they'd let me join them?

I decided to make a go for it. If I couldn't camp inside the lookout tower, I'd camp somewhere nearby.

I filled up with the stagnant lake water which did not excite me at all, but as the trail rounded the lake, I passed a small stream flowing toward the lake--fresh, cold water. I dumped out the awful lake water and replaced it with the stream water. I felt much better about my water supply now!

The lookout tower was located maybe a ten-minute walk off the main Pacific Northwest Trail, and I crossed my fingers that I could camp inside. Please let it be available!

When I arrived... nobody was there. If someone had rented it for tonight, they hadn't arrived yet and it was already fairly late in the day. The trail came up at the back of the tower so I walked around it to the door and there was no lock on it at all. "Yes!" I shouted into the air. Instead of a lock, a screwdriver had been threaded through the holes where a padlock would normally be used. I pulled out the screwdriver and entered the hut.

Mount Wam fire lookout tower

The place was packed with construction supplies. It looked like the fire lookout might be getting a renovation soon. It was a bit run down and a few bugs buzzed around, but it was definitely a lot more tolerable than the bugs at Foundation Lake and the views from here were far, far better! It seemed like I could see a hundred miles in every direction! Looking north, I knew the mountains were in Canada. I was only a few miles from the Canadian border and looked for the deforested line through the trees, but that I couldn't find.

There was a register inside which I flipped through looking for fellow PNT thru-hikers. There was a fellow named Recon 2.5 days ahead of me. Maybe I could catch up to him if he wasn't hiking fast. I had no idea who he was or how fast he was hiking, but at the very least, I had definite confirmation that I wasn't the only person on this trail and he wasn't especially far ahead of me.

I also learned that the fire lookout tower was haunted by a pika named Carl. Apparently, he's quite the character, takes running jumps off the top of the tower and gets into people's food.

I cooked dinner outside not wanting to accidentally set fire to the old, wooden structure. It probably would have been fine to cook inside, but why take the extra unnecessary risk?

The structure trapped heat like a greenhouse and it was comfortably warm as the outside temperatures fell, so I walked around the structure with little more than a short-sleeved shirt and some underwear. =)

I stayed up fairly late reading my Kindle when I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. And... was that lightning? I was located in the middle of nowhere, but off in the distance, I saw another flash of light on the horizon. Yep, definitely lightning. I hoped being at the top of a mountain in a lightning storm wasn't a problem. I had to assume that the fire tower was lightning-proof. It had been on this mountain top for the better part of a century and had probably seen its fair share of lightning storms, but it wasn't something I started thinking about until now. These fire lookout towers are safe in lightning storms? Right? Right?! Well, I'd find out....

The sky overhead was still clear of clouds and the stars twinkled overhead. It was absolutely beautiful outside so I grabbed my fancy camera and tried to get photos of both the stars and the distant lightning storm.

Which turned out nice. Not as great as I had hoped, but nice. The lightning lit up the distant clouds so those pictures mostly looked like there was light pollution from a distant city. I really wanted to capture an actual lightning bolt streaking through the sky, but that was not meant to be.

I watched the storm for a half hour or so but it seemed like it was moving across the horizon rather than toward me and I finally gave up and went to sleep.

Hours later, the storm did pass by much closer. Rain hit the lookout tower and thunder rumbled through, but I still couldn't see the actual lightning bolts through the clouds. How frustrating!

Then eventually the storm moved off and I faded back to sleep....

The lightning storm looked like light pollution from a distant town in my photos. And none of my photos turned out particularly sharp either. All-in-all, my night photos turned out be a big disappointment.

More blowdowns through the burn area

The wildflowers bloomed like crazy through the opened canopy, though!

More evidence that there are PNT hikers ahead of me... somewhere. They created a 100-mile marker to celebrate! One hundred miles down, just 1,100 miles to go...