After the dramatic rescue of the day before, we had paused before the following creek and waited for morning to continue. The water crossings are easier in the morning because they’re snowmelt streams. Overnight, the flow of melting snow gets slower as it freezes again and the level of the streams goes down a bit. So we didn’t have any trouble as we made our way towards Pinchot Pass. This one was a little easier than Glen, but I did have my first whole-leg posthole experience! At the top of the pass, we actually met the guy who’d been rescued the day before. He was luckily uninjured by the experience and was continuing his hike.

Down the mountain wasn’t too difficult, but we had a few water crossings that were a little nerve wracking. One was the site of a hiker’s death last year. That, along with the rescue from the day before made me extra cautious. We made it through that water crossing and a few more afterwards. We ended the day a little early and watched a movie that Daisy had downloaded on his phone, all packed inside his tent. We had some candy and it was a fun little slice of normalcy. I went to bed that night with my wet shoes outside of my tent. This was a mistake.

In the morning, my shoes were rock solid and crunchy and there was ice coating the inside and outside of my tent. We left camp for Mather Pass. The climb up was relatively easy, but the way down was steep on the snowy parts. We put on our microspikes for the first time. It gave me a feeling of security on the snow, if not an actual advantage. The spikes are meant for ice or harder snow. They were definitely not made for the sun-warmed stuff we walked on. I also saw a channel in the snow for a glissade, or a slide through the snow. I had wanted to try it after seeing videos of people doing it on the trail last year. This was my first and last glissade. As I slid down, I saw a rock jutting up into the channel and used my spikes to slow down and leaned to avoid it. I got over safely, but my pack felt strangely heavy when I stood up. After a few steps, I noticed something definitely was not the same. I took off my pack and saw that the bottom stay had snapped. As this stay held the hip belt to the main body, this was a very bad thing. All the weight was resting on my shoulders. I tried to duct tape it in place as I stood on a patch of rocks in the snow, but it didn’t hold and I gave up. Frustrated, I made my way down into the valley, where we took lunch. Luckily, my pack has three stays that are exactly the same, so we were able to remove the top stay and use it to reattach the hip belt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would work until I could get a replacement. We’d gone only seven miles and had planned to approach the next pass, twenty miles ahead. We had to decide whether to wake up very, very early to approach the summit and even then, not summit until the afternoon anyway. The pass descents were harrowing on my nerves as it was and the later the descent, the trickier they were. We decided to take an extra day to approach the pass. It was the safest option, but felt like a failure. I’d been hearing of other hikers doing twenty mile days, doing two passes in a day, or that their start dates were weeks after mine.

I needed to get out of that funk. The rest of that day was beautiful as we passed boulders with flowers growing in the cracks, lush green undergrowth, and tall trees overhead. We had time that night to watch Netflix again and slept in the next morning, a luxury we couldn’t afford ourselves on days we climbed passes. I didn’t realize how stressful it was to feel rushed to basically summit a mountain every day. We could walk slower, pay more attention to the surroundings. I saw a buck for the first time and stopped to watch huge tadpoles in a lake. We got to camp early and sat over the valley we’d just climbed out of, wondering at the beauty of it all. Taking it slow made me check my attitude. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to do this. Every day, I’m surrounded by stunning wilderness. Any comparison or competition needed to leave the equation. I’m doing what I’m doing because I love it.