PNT Section 1 – Start to Polebridge

PNT Day 1 – An Attempt

Mile 0 to mile 19

“There are bears in your campground” says the ranger.

“We’ll have to move you.”

And move us she does, disregarding our original permit and assigning us a new one 19 miles and 3,100 feet of gain away. It seems far, it seems too far for me. But who can argue with bears and so we take our new permit and hike out.

The first part of the day is easy walking as we bump and bob our way down into a verdant valley beneath soaring craggy peaks. Starman leads our little possy and with Bookworm between us I am left to bring up the rear and ponder my various anxieties. The sudden departure from the carefully planned mileage of our first permit has upset me more than I care to admit and it has my brain tumbling.

What if I’m too slow. What if I get injured. What about my knee or my back. What if I can’t keep up. What if I can’t do this.

As I hike I notice every tweak and tightness, wondering if they’ll be the undoing of this nacient hike. To me, every adventure of this nature is always an attempt, never a guarantee. So many things both large and small could go wrong and take me off the trail and today they are all lining up to make themselves known. The fore of my mind cluttered with what ifs and maybies.

PNT Day 2 – Easy

Mile 19 to mile 26.5

We wake late and are still in camp early. The abbreviated day courtesy of our alerted permit, though one I do not begrudge. Though I feel surprisingly good after my longest day of the season yesterday.

The trail drops from Stony Indian Lake into a brush and bramble paradise. More often than not the trail is so overgrown it’s impossible to see your own feet, and making forward progress is akin to wading into hip deep water. Every couple miles the verdant plant life breaks apart and we are gifted 200 meters or so of clear trail, rejoicing in the sudden ease of moment.

At three we reach Goat Haunt Camp and find Bookworm there to greet us. I spend the afternoon variously snacking and watching the thunderstorms roll pell-mell across the lake. Mosquitos signal that evening is come and the three of us make our way to the designated campsite for the night.

PNT Day 3 – Bullshit

Mile 26.5 to mile 42

The descent from Brown Pass to Bowman Lake is, as I have heard it told, bullshit. And all afternoon I wait for that to be true. I wait for the impenetrable wall of shoulder-high brush and vegetation to arrive, only it never comes. The trail is overgrown, surely, but never to the severity that we have been warned about. And in general this makes me feel good about myself, as well as sorry that the hiker who warned us about this section was having such a hard time. Because as I hike through intermittent rain and sun I realize how dramatically our internal lives shape the experience we have on trail. Today, for me, is a good one and as such the trail feels generous and kind.

PNT Day 4 – Polebridge

Mile 42 to mile 49

I wake early just in time for the rain to start and then proceed to roll back over to blissful sleep until I hear Bookworm packing away their tent and rolling out. They are perpetually faster than us, both on trail and when it comes to getting ready and I wonder vaguely how much longer they’ll tolerate our casual pace. But today there is no reason to hurry as we only have a seven mile day to Bowman Lake before we hitch into Polebridge—the location of our first resupply and town stop. Though, in this case town is being rather generous as Polebridge consists of nothing more than a mercantile, a saloon, and a hiker hostel. Still, it’s where we’ll pick up our first box and get the first food we haven’t had to carry in four days.

The walking this morning is easy as we gain and lose less than 500 feet winding our way around a startlingly blue lake. The bushes here are expectantly overgrown and despite relatively little rain falling in the night, I am soaked within minutes as I follow the trail into a wall of green only to emerge three hours later in a lakeside parking lot filled with tourists frolicking in the waters.