Manifest Part 5 (Hoh River)
Chapter 14: Park Entrance
As you'll recall from the last post, we had about 3-4 hours of wait time until we could enter the park. I initially got out of the car and checked out the line, but after walking for half mile and still seeing cars, I went back and told Jeff that I could switch drivers with him if he wanted to check it out. The drive in was pretty interesting because the river banks were filled with dolo timbers, these larger looking concrete anchors to prevent erosion.
Roughly three hours elapsed. Out of boredom and being only 20 more cars away from the ranger entrance station, Jeff decided that he wanted to push the car. I shifted the car into neutral and gave Jeff a thumbs up out the window. Unfortunately for him, he chose the uphill segment. The car did gain some decent speed, a whopping 2 mph. I told Jeff to stop pushing to which Sam and Nick yelled at me to hit the brakes. We were about to crash into the next car because Jeff pushed us so fast (we were going 2 mph).
Finally at long last, we were on the trailhead. All of our gear had been packed. I had on my backpack and strapped on my camera bag to the waist and chest band. We were ready to go. Before leaving, we had someone take a before photo for us on the polaroid. We started the hike just before 2PM.
Chapter 15: Journey to Lewis Meadows
We had a 10.5 mile hike ahead of us. About a mile into the hike, Sam notified us that his backpack waist strap wasn't working so well. He would simply have to thug it out for the rest of the trip. Jeff carried the massive bear canister, Nick the trail mix, Sam the other food supplies, and I had the tent and saucepan. Along the way, we would stop a good number of times to enjoy the surrounding scenery.
The first day was rough. We covered ground slowly, and the although the terrain was flat, we mainly just hiked through the rainforests with a few occasional stream crossings. To kill the time, we did traditional backpacking things like play "Contact" and listen to Sam Kumar give a rundown on his upbringing. We'd get to Olympus Guard Station which was nine miles from the trailhead at around 7:30 PM, and we would make it to Lewis Meadows at around 8:30 PM.
Lewis Meadows proved to be a nice campsite. We started the hike on the 3rd of July which meant there were a lot of Fourth of July vacationers also enjoying the campsite. We found a place in the sand along the stream and set up camp.
Earlier in Forks, we had planned our total meal preparation for the duration of the backpacking trip. We allocated two cans of chicken and six servings of Kraft Mac N Cheese each night. Yes, we willingly agreed to eat this for three nights in a row. Breakfast was always the staple oatmeal and peanut butter, and lunch was a mixture of trail mix, PB&J tortillas, and granola bars.
For some reason on the first night, we thought it would be a bright idea to conserve fuel and boil the water via a campfire instead of using the stove with ample fuel. The water took both forever to boil and the heat of the flame was difficult to manage. I had to bellow the flame consistently in order for the fire to actually be hot enough to get the water to boil. In addition, the temperature of a campfire out in the open was not very concentrated, and we had to reposition the pan several of times to ensure that the handle did not melt off (we are not very bright). Eventually, the water did boil and we started cooking the Mac N Cheese. I never enjoyed Kraft Mac N Cheese that much, but in those moments it was delicious. I didn't bring a bowl on the trip, so I ate it directly out of the pot. The Manifest team sat around the pitiful fire that had already turned to embers and enjoyed our dinner before getting ready to go to sleep for the night.
As I mentioned earlier, we had a bear canister, but we only had ONE bear canister for the four of us (shout out to Nick Wu for being clutch and packing a bear canister). In backpacking, if you're in bear country, you either need a bear canister, bear wire, or electric fence for all of your items that has odors: food, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, deodorant, etc. We read that Lewis Meadows had wires, but they all happened to be taken, or too far from our campsite, which meant that we had to make our own bear sack. We set up our tent, and then used the tent bag as a bear sack. Using my sailing knowledge from many years ago, I tied a Bowline through the cord of the tent bag. I coiled the other end and unsuccessfully threw it over a tree branch. Nick Wu tried after me and was slightly more successful. Nick attempted to pull the other end of the rope which would cause the bear bag to rise up towards the branch, but we had so much stuff in there that the rope wouldn't budge. In a last ditch effort to get our janky bear bag to work, I hoisted the tent bag into the air, and we coordinated a jump and a tug motion to get the bag into the air. Finally, the bag was successfully suspended. Unfortunately, we had too much spare rope in the paracord which made securing the rope a bit difficult, so we had Sam Kumar lift a heavy rock while Jeff wrapped the paracord around the rock. This truly was peak Manifest teamwork.
Chapter 16: Change of Plans
The next morning would be a slow one. We once again cooked our signature breakfast. Today was July 4th, but there wasn't too much going on the trails, so it didn't feel like Independence Day. The original plan we had in terms of backpacking was to stay at Lewis Meadows Night 1 (10.5 miles from trailhead), Glacier Meadows Night 2(17.5 miles from trailhead), and Olympus Guard Station Night 3 (9 miles from trailhead). This trail was an out-and-back.
But after some consideration, we decided it might be worth it to cut out night 3 entirely to see if we could check out more of the Olympic Coast. This would mean that we would have to hike from Lewis Meadows to Blue Glacier and then back to Glacier Meadows. The distance itself for day 2 was less than day 1, but day 2 would amount to about 3,500 feet of altitude gain. Also, this would mean that day 3 would be a 17.5 mile hike from Glacier Meadows all the way to the trailhead.
We attempted to get started early, but Sam Kumar vanished into the woods for about a hour trying to find a place to use the restroom. We would start hiking at 11AM. Jeff set pace for us and we would make good time and distance. We didn't take too many breaks until around the 13 mile mark where the incline started ramping up. At this point, I had been lugging my camera bag and the 4-man tent around for some time. There was a nice stream at Martin Creek where the rest of the Manifest team washed off for a bit. I got there and immediately started napping on a fallen log in the shade.
We rested for about 30 minutes before we got started again. After 15 long miles in the Hoh River Rainforest, the terrain rapidly began changing. The mountains and the treeline bloomed into our view, and the suffocating rainforests vanished out of sight.
Chapter 17: The Rope Ladder
This part of the hike was the most fun I had in the first 17 miles of hiking. Essentially, there is a landslide area that aris present in a section of the Hoh River Trail, and to finish the trail, you have traverse down the ladder, cut across horizontally, and then hike back up. A few hikers who passed us earlier decided to turn around because they thought the climb was too sketchy.
Because we didn't have helmets, we couldn't have multiple people on the ladder at once. One by one, we carefully treaded down the 100+ feet rope ladder. It took us roughly 45 minutes to get everyone down there.
Chapter 18: Blue Glacier
We got to Glacier Meadows at around 7:30. I initially thought that Blue Glacier was an additional 2 miles away, but I talked to some of the other backpackers, and they said it was only .7 miles away. Still trying to stick with our plan of being out of the park by night 3, we set up our tent, and brought just our water bottles to start hiking towards Blue Glacier.
The incline was steep, but the views made it alright. After spending most of the last 30 hours in the rainforest, I was happy to be above the treeline for once. There were snowy peaks and cliffs all around me. We looked around for a bit, but we still couldn't find the "Blue Glacier." The trail eventually tapered off until it was just a massive rock scramble. We continued trekking up with breaks in-between for about 10 minutes until Jeff said, "yo come check this out." The rest of the Manifest team scrambled up the last few rocks and it was . . .
I just remember hyperventilating and laughing. We had finally done it. I know 18 miles doesn't seem that long, but it certainly was tough as hell for us with those heavy packs on. My waist had some cuts from the waistband of the backpack. My traps hurt like hell, and my feet just ached. Jeff told me to snap some photos, but I had to wait and enjoy the moment before I could start doing that.
We enjoyed the sunset and scrambled down back to Glacier Meadows with just a bit of natural light left. We cooked dinner (chicken mac n cheese). Actually that night, I had brought some parmesan cheese packets from Costco and that made the mac n cheese slightly more tasty. We additionally carbo loaded on some bars, trail mix, and oatmeal. The idea was to eat so much food that it was not feasible for us to stay another night. We had a long day ahead of us.
I just have to talk about the bear wire. Once again, there were no available carabiners on the bear wire for us, but there was still room on the bear wire. We rigged up our contraption from last time and wrapped the other end of the cord around a rock. The problem this time was that there was a rope in the middle of a communal bear wire, and if you knocked the rock over, a tent bag with food, deodorant, toothpaste, and a pot would knock you over the head. We accidentally constructed a booby trap.
Chapter 19: All the Way Down
I was up slightly earlier than the rest of the Manifest team, so I got a jump on getting things ready. I checked the bear bag to make sure no one got booby trapped, and boiled the water for the oatmeal. As the rest of the team woke up, we went to the stream to purify water when we ran into an issue: we only had three iodine tablets left for water purification (two tablets purifies 32 oz of water). This issue wasn't super threatening considering we did have a stove and could always boil more water, but it made our objective of getting out by the night time more difficult.
Jeff decided that we would be out of the park by 8PM. We got caught up on the rope ladder due to the line of people going up and down but aside from that, Jeff's pace ensured that we would be on time. Nick willingly swapped the tent for the trail mix today which made my life infinitely easier. We booked it down the side of the mountain, and our knees and feet felt every step of the way. We got to the guard station (9 miles out) at around 4PM and had decided that we were just going to do a short break. However, everyone was exhausted out of their minds, so we took a much longer break than anticipated. The bottles we filled had just ran out, and we had to use the last three purification tablets. For safety and good measure, I boiled two batches of water to drink. Given that I was the only one with a metal bottle that could store boiling water, I would drink scalding hot water for the last 9 miles.
The team struggled to get going, but we managed. Once again, everything hurt. Even though my pack was relatively lighter, my traps hurt so bad I could barely lift my arms above my head. I couldn't tell whether or not my feet were callussing or blistering, but all I knew was that it hurt. Every step was painful and every step was through that humid Hoh Rainforest.
My conditioning wasn't an issue. My legs weren't that sore, and I wasn't even out of breath. The mental was the real problem. Thinking I had nine miles left was cataclysmic in my mind, I had to keep myself occupied. For the course of the next three hours, I can't even tell you where my mind was. I would sing a C-130 cadence in my head, space out, try counting down from 100 a few times only to lose focus, and have extended internal monologues.
I really enjoyed the internal monologues with myself. There'd be this endless stream of thoughts that entered my mind, and one by one the voice in my head would narrate how I truly perceived these thoughts in my mind. I had no control over the thoughts or the narration. It felt as if a portion of my impenetrable subconscious was at the forefront of my perception.
For the last two miles, Nick was feeling fresh and swapped with Jeff. We were lagging behind pace and were unsure that we were going to make it back to the trailhead before 8PM. As we got closer to the trailhead, we started seeing more and more day hikers casually exploring the area. When we got to the last mile, Nick ramped up to a 18min/mile pace.
19:53 is what my watch read when I saw the cars in the parking lot. We were so dehydrated and everything absolutely ached, but I started hyperventilating and laughing again like I did at blue glacier. The manifest team crashed on the benches by the visitor center and guzzled down that lukewarm fountain water. Nick laughed at Jeff for limping across the parking lot to fill his water, only to limp 30 seconds later. I limped across the parking lot and yelled "SIUUUUUU" like Ronaldo. I definitely looked like an idiot, but it didn't matter. The Manifest team had did it.
