Braids like Ropes: Hair and Hygiene

I wear my hair in braids, especially when I'm adventuring. Last summer, I look liked twins with the most iconic braid boss ever--Anne of Green Gables. 

Jess and Anne of Green Gables, PEI, Canada photo from SpokeandStories

On the Wonderland, a solo female hiker stopped in her boots to tell me, "Wow, you have braids like rope. That's some hair." Truth. It's typically a mess of curls and tangles. So I tie my hair in knots on purpose. I took those braids out only once during the entire trip, only to re-braid them on the banks of Mystic Lake, loosing strands of curls in the wind enough to make a nest! 

Showing off those braids and the mountain. Skyscraper Mountain. Photo by Jaal Mann.

Hygiene in general is a concern for folks looking to do a longer journey. Folks are fine for a few days, but without a shower for two weeks? What do you bring? How do you do it? I thought I might weave more tips than braiding my hair in this vignette. 


Tea for two:
One of the desires for this trip was to sit around in camp with a warm drink, to sip tea in the morning, and a whiskey hot chocolate before bed. While the weather made it too hot for after dinner warm drinks, I never gave up on tea. It's tea for two purposes. First and foremost, it's the warm drink, the caffeine, and the goodness of tea outdoors. The second purpose, is a wilderness secret I've been using for more than 20 years, maybe longer. I think I can thank Sandy for this trick. She was my Outdoor Adventure Camp counselor in the great summer of 1989. I still use other outdoor education tricks from her and Bear. The second purpose of a tea bag is the teabag face wash. The tannin in black tea are a wonderful astringent. The bag is warm, and feels great in the mountain mornings. The face wash removes last night's sleep in the eyes, and the cake of dirt, sunblock and bug spray before you layer more on for today. After I squeeze out some of the water, I gently apply the tea bag to my eyes, then wipe my face, behind my ears, and the back of my neck. If I'm feeling really dirty, I may even tuck a tea bag under my armpit while cleaning up breakfast. 

Deodorant?
On shorter trips I leave that at home. On this trip, I brought a travel size tea tree deodorant. I'm only bothering to write about deodorant at all for Jaal's trick. Being ultralight, and crafty, he melted down some deodorant and put it in an empty chap-stick container. Careful not to confuse the two!

Dip and Rinse:
Despite the record heat, and ungodly sweat fest, I managed to stay fairly clean for these two weeks. How? Water! The Wonderland Trail offers water regularly. While rivers tend to flow full of glacial till, there is no love loess there. Plenty of clear streams offer clean drinking water (still need to filter or treat!) and a refreshing cleanse. I frequently dipped my hat, and rang out my buff, did a quick scrub, and soaked it to keep cool as I kept hiking. Streams and creeks made for great foot soaks, too. I was also able to rinse clothes. Remember no soap at the source. 

Rinsing and drying my undies at Indian Bar

The real treat was swimming in nearly every alpine lake we encountered. I swam at Louise Lake, Mowich Lake, Golden Lake, St. Andrews Lake, and Mirror Lakes. 

A swim in Louise Lake

Gaiter Girl: 
There are many things I adopted from my NOLS outdoor educator course in the Olympics. One of them is gaiters. Even my most consistent mountain buddy Erik said, "NOLS was religious about gaiters. It's the best way to keep your socks clean. Clean socks means less foot issues. Less foot issues means more easy hiking." I wear them on almost every hike, and was especially glad to have them on this long hike. I only had one change of socks--and a new pair in each cache. Yet, with my gaiters, rinsing socks, and taking my socks off in the sun at bug-less long breaks, I was able to keep my feet in great shape. I trusted this method of foot care so much, and loved my "newish" Solomon 4D GTX boots so much, that I didn't even bring camp shoes. I could also stand on my gaiters when I needed a boot-off rest in camp.

Pee rag:
I'm not only a Leave No Trace practitioner, I was once a LNT educator for scouts. I've been leaving no trace with a pee rag since the OAC days, decades. I just use a bandanna. The UV sunlight disinfects, and I can leave no trace, other than the temporary puddle. When I returned home from The Wonderland I joined a Women of Wonderland FB group and found a few new purpose-built products for this.

• WeeRag: a soft spongy natural viscose shammy towel to use by itself or in combination with colorful fabrics and artistic designs. The WeeRag pee rag was developed through the partnership of a physician and life-long adventure athlete, and an engineer with a passion for creating eco-friendly solutions. 
• https://kulacloth.com/

I since purchased a Kula cloth and absolutely love it. The snaps are so convenient and it's truly waterproof so that my hand is never damp. I'm a huge fan of this essential piece of gear and never leave home without it. 

6 D's of Doing the Do:

• Go the Distance--200 yards from water
• Dig for Depth--6 inches down. Make sure your trowel is strong enough, and the blade is marked for depth.
• Dig for Diameter--Wide enough to do your business--4-6'' diameter.
• Drop it--do the do--You might hand on a nearby tree, or lean back on a log, if your legs need a little support.
• Decompose and Disguise --using a nearby stick or rock, break up the feces, and stir them in with the soil to help decomposition. Dispose of the decomposition aid tool (the rock/stick) in the hole and cover the entire thing up with the soil you dug out. Adding a bigger rock or stick pile may also help disguise your dump.
• Disinfect--You've stored your TP in a Ziploc bag, so seal it up, tuck it into the toilet paper tube, and grab your hand sanitizer. Then zip up, button up, and head back on your way.

TP and Hand sanitizer:
Bring enough, put some in the cache, and 2 oz of Hand Sani was perfect for the entire two weeks. Don't just use the hand sani after pooing. Also use it before meals, and yes, after the bear pole. It's the back country germ equivalent of a door knob in the front country.

Stay clean, stay healthy. Keep conserving our natural wonderlands. Keep hiking!

Goats in the Gap: Wildlife

We'd heard that there were goats in the gap. I recall when skiing on the Frying Pan glacier, decades ago, a whole herd of goats crossed the gap and played in our tracks. I was eager to see them there again, white on white, sure-footed friends. However, I saw no goats in Ohanapecosh Park, Panhandle Gap, nor Summerland. Perhaps it was because we went through that area on a lovely Saturday, where hundreds of day hikers and tourists were making their way up the Summerland trail as we descended the gap to Summerland camp. Goats, overall on this Wonderland journey, for me, stayed rather elusive. I saw hoof prints in the mud at Aurora Lake. I saw signs of them on a scramble above Mystic Lake, fluffs of white fur on the edges of evergreens, stuck to the pitch and the bristles of needles. While admiring the alpine glow from Aurora Lake, a fellow camper pointed out a lone big billy goat ambling on the flanks of Aurora Peak. We alternated watching the goat and the glow. So the next morning, when I went scrambling up Aurora Peak with Jaal, seeing fur on nearly every veggie belay, I started singing. "Billy! Billy don't you loose my number! Cause you're not anywhere, that I can find you." It was silly, but I really didn't want to see an angry old billy goat come around the corner. 

At Sunrise, everyone asked if we'd seen any wildlife. My response was, "Of course! Birds, butterflies, insects, frogs!" I smiled. There were so many creatures to catch my eye. A ranger with a butterfly net caught my eye too, and I stopped her to ask her some questions. I had photographed a few and wanted to know more. 

Me: "What is the blue butterfly?" 

Ranger: "Well, the very technical scientific name for them is Blues! Although there are a few species." (later I looked up the genus: Lycaeides)

Me: "The yellow one, here?" I showed her a photo. 

Ranger: "Likely a sulphur" (Colias occidentalis)

I showed her photos of the orange checkerspot, and a heart shaped black and white moth, whose name I've forgotten. As we parted she said, "Someone today asked if there were any butterflies out here, noting they hadn't seen any." "They are EVERYWHERE!," we smiled in unison. 

Orange Checkerspot

unknown (to me) Black and White Moth

A bevy of blue butterflies (say that ten times fast!)

Mayflies were magic like fairies. They danced in the wet meadows, back-lit by morning sunlight. They sparkled in the mist of the Spray Falls. They delighted me. 

But not all insects were pretty; some were downright persistent pests. The flies were likely the worse, deer flies pestering more than biting black, as they were slow and could be swatted if you had your hands free. I think bugs in general were the worst uphill from Nickel Creek. In a desperate move, to keep moving, I pulled my bug jacket out of the top of my pack and threw it on. I'm advocating for the invention of an over-the-pack-bug-poncho. But I like to say it isn't summer, unless there are few summer scars. Even if they are from bug bites, itched raw to bleeding. Buggers. 

Mama and cubs, Carbon River, photo by Jimmy Williams, NC

We heard there were bears at this camp, and that camp. Ten days in, I still hadn't seen any sign of them. I met a ten year old girl along Moraine Creek and the Carbon River glacier, who practically jumped out of her backpack to tell me a story of the mama bear and cubs she just witnessed crossing the suspension bridge. Fellow hiker Jimmy Williams was there too, and captured this photo. Later he wrote, "I wish I would have gotten her running across the suspension bridge, but grabbing my pack and getting off the trail was first priority."

Then, sure enough, day ten, I'm hauling up a steep climb from South Mowich River, keeping a good pace and crushing my time goal. I was feeling great. I reached the ridge and was rewarded with rustling in the berry bushes. I froze as she stood on her hind legs, looked me straight in the eye, and then settled back down. I had raised my poles above my head and told her loudly "I see you. I won't harm you. You won't harm me!". Then, I grabbed my camera and watched. I could see her big collar, and then her cubs. They crossed the trail, checking me out. A fellow hiker watching from the other direction, and he thought my pole raising was a signal to him. When I did catch his eye, I made other gestures, that in retelling to Jaal at camp, seemed silly and moose like. Regardless, we were all safe and I had my bear sighting. 

Mama Bear

Cub on the trail

Curious Cub

Mighty mammals make for fine wildlife stories. I think that's what all those Sunrise tourists were asking me about. Then, leaving Sunrise parking lot, we watched a deer and fawn. I heard the peep of pikas, mostly in the scree fields while hiking or at the pit toilet of Cataract Valley camp. They were hard to photograph, so small, and gray, round like rocks. A Douglas Squirrel practically posed for me leaving Cataract. Marmots seem to do the same, perched on rocks in alpine meadows. At Summerland I watched a few nibbling wildflowers in lovely light. 

Oh Deer! 

This Douglas Squirrel is a fungi.

Mmmm. mmm. mmm. Marmot

Finally, I'm a fan of frogs. Alpine lakes were teaming with tadpoles. The tarn at 6000' above Mystic Lake had moving moss--I've never seen so many tiny frogs in my life, the ground was hoping! I was grateful these amphibians shared their swimming holes. 

teeny tiny frog

Jaal and the frog

Frog in Golden Lake. 

The Wonderland Trail--14 days and a dozen vingettes

In an effort to challenge my writing, in addition to my hiking, I plan to write about the two weeks on the Wonderland Trail, not as a day by day play by play, but as thematic vignettes. I created the following few working titles for each upcoming vignette. Click on the bold title to read more. 

Goats in the Gap: Wildlife

Blurry on Purpose: Photography

Out of the Mystic into the Mist: Weather

Funky with the Mist on: Wildflowers

Braids like Ropes: Hair and Hygiene

Cairns and Crossings: Trail conditions

Moss Grows on the North Side of our Bones: Being here

That Tree has a Beard: Fellow Hikers and the game of Telephone

The Vaccinium debate: Trail food and nomenclature

On the Up and Up: Elevation

Intense: Shelter

Stay tuned for photos and snippets, wisdom and wit from The Wonderland.  

Permit, rations, and bicycles--A prologue

If being at the ranger station 2 hours early was good for friend, Jaal insisted that being there 3 hours early was even better. We left Tacoma at 3 a.m. Jaal drove in the dark and by 4:30 I pulled my sleeping bag to the bench and front of the Rangers station for two more hours of sleep, having driven to Tacoma at 9pm, and only returned to Seattle the night before, at midnight, mind you, from a trip East.

Mount Rainier National Park Longmire Wilderness Information Center

The pre-dawn light was beautiful and at 6:30 our first fellow hiker joined us on the stone stairs. Diane was from Chicago, and had stayed the night with her mom in the Longmire Inn, walking over with her full pack, ready to go.
I noticed she had Red Fraggle strapped to her pack and asked her about it. "Family rule", she said, "Never hike alone. So I always bring a buddy." She is a pre-K teacher and this would be her second attempt at circumnavigating Rainier. Her mom would help her drive around rations, while day hiking for a few days.

When the doors opened at 7:30 on Thursday morning, we were first in line. Ranger Rachel helped us with our permit, 20 minutes of problem solving and clicking drop-down menus from a clunky 90's computer program. Finally, we had something. She smiled. Our dream plan, the one we had submitted in March, was to start at Mowich and go clockwise for 14 days. Ranger Rachel switched the trail head start, and our direction, to give us nearly all of our camp choices, and help us meet our goal: to hike around the mountain, to go slow, to enjoy The Wonderland Trail. Plus, our permit would start Friday. That gave us the whole day to mellow into things, drive our rations around, and communicate our logistics to others at home. In planning more, we headed back into the ranger station to look at the relief map and trace our route up and over bumps and blue river lines. I also noticed a night skies program for Friday night at Cougar Rock Camp where we'd be staying. Opportunities await!

We left Longmire for Carbon River. It didn't take long to start noticing the cyclists climbing up hill to Longmire. After a huge peloton, I realized today was RAMROD. 155 mile bike tour around the mountain. Closer to Eatonville, I noticed 4 women cycle -touring in our direction. I rolled down the window and cheered them on as we passed them. Then not too long after, they walked into the Eatonville bakery, where we were having second break fast. These gal friends from Texas and Georgia were on a week long tour from Spokane to Seattle. This was their fourth annual trip of the kind, traveling domestically and riding for a week together. Of course, we talked and talked about touring and warm showers, and my transition from tarmac last summer to dirt and wildflowers this summer. Being from the south, they didn't find the heat to unbearable today. The hottest part of the day was yet to come.

Me and the gaggle of gals riding from Spokane to Seattle.

The volunteer ranger at White River Ranger Station taking our cache.

Cashing are food at the Carbon River Ranger station and the White River Ranger station was pretty easy. We were happy to learn this morning that park rangers would actually be driving them up to are pick up location (Sunrise, and Mowich Lake) due to limited space. We had thought would camp Thursday night at the White River campground, but by the time we had stopped in Enumclaw at Taco Time and for huckleberry ice cream at Wapato Woolies in Greenwater, all the first come first serve car camping sites were full. So we looked at the map. We found a very small campground just 0.4 miles off of the road halfway between white River and Stevens Canyon. We walked back into the Ranger station and ask for a permit, got it and headed back down the road.

As we packed up to head into our overnight camp, we caught the tail end riders for RAMROD. I cheered them on with Allez allez!, and high fives while running along side them through the car pull-out. One rider said her Garmin was reading 99 degrees Fahrenheit. I knew exactly how she felt, having been there a year ago, crossing the Canadian Rockies with the tarmac reading 42 degrees Celsius. I've been there knowing that just a little encouragement from a stranger can go a long way for motivation. I was motivated by these riders for my own dirt and wildflowers adventure.

And just like that, after months of planning, and a day of logistics, and a 15 minute hike, by quarter to five pm I was sitting along Chinook Creek resting in the shade and enjoying the nature, the stillness, and the beauty of Mount Rainier National Park. From my mossy seat, in a rock carved just for me, I really couldn't help but think it ironic that I ran into four cycling women and a plethora of RAMROD riders today of all days. As if I was being reminded to take all the lessons from the spokeandstories adventure into this one.

Deer Creek Falls

Two Parks: Two Decades

Richard Haag, University of Washington Professor of Landscape Architecture, once told me that humans are rootless weeds. He said it in a class I took from him nearly 25 years ago, and I remember it often, especially as I wander. Yet, I frequently wander close to home, to better know the place I'm in. After all, I consider myself a place-based educator and since his class, I've made the Pacific Northwest my home. His quote, serving almost as a challenge, came to mind again as my boots walked the trail past, not weeds, but wildflowers on my recent adventure on The Wonderland Trail.

I've been wandering further away from the PNW for the last few summers, and thus, committed this summer, to stick around, and explore more here. After last summer along the tarmac of Canada, cycling from Seattle to Halifax, I longed specifically for more dirt and wildflowers. I planned to take the expedition style of my cross county adventure to the mountains, to a long trail near home. The Wonderland Trail was a nature choice.

While hiking, a fellow hikers asked if I'd done any other long trips. It didn't take me long to remember an amazing experience, exactly 20 years ago where I traversed Olympic National Park as part of my NOLS Outdoor Educator Course in August 1998 for 18 days from Deer Park, into the Bailey Range, up and over Mt. Olympus from the Humes Glacier and out the Hoh.

Back then, I walked out of the Washington NOLS branch the only person at 50% of body weight. That was a 60 pound pack! Day one, we hiked 7.5 miles to from Deer Park to Grand Lake nearly 2000 feet down to Grand Creek and back up 700 feet to the lake again. I have all these details recorded in a journal/field notebook that also includes sketches of tadpoles and copepods, illustrations of an anatomy of a glacier, notes about hazard management and Leave No Trace, and my own lesson plans for instructing about belaying and climbing.

Two weeks on The Wonderland Trail, twenty years later, my pack was a twenty pounds lighter, my notes confined to a small pen and paper notebook plus a phone app. It's the lessons about being home, and being rooted in place, that seem wiser than ever.

A return to this blog

It's been a while, nearly two years, since I've written on this blog, about my travels and adventures, both here and abroad. Last year's hiatus was due to the unique journey of a cross Canada bike trip with my friend Irena. Check out our dedicated blog: www.spokeandstories.com. 

I want to pick it back up, as this summer I dedicated to #dirtandwildflowers. I devoted time and energy to backpacking and exploring the PNW, my home.

Join me over the next few posts to look back at some roots and beginnings, some traverses, and this summer's wanderings, including the 100+ mile long trail: The Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier National Park.

ride on, write on, right on,
jcl