August 4
Miles: 16.4
Mile Markers: 2000.5 – 2016.9
Miles to Canada: 638.9
The day started by collecting some water at the pond that I camped at. I packed up my stuff and then went to collect the water before heading back to the trail. As soon as I stepped back on the trail, a man came up behind me and said Oh. Are you enjoying the huckleberries? Over the last day, I had started seeing more bushes with blue berries on them and I wasn’t sure if they were the huckleberries that Funky Flames had pointed out, actual blueberries or something else that might kill me, so I didn’t want to eat them because I wasn’t really that confident in my foraging skills, but the man stopped to explain that they were, in fact, huckleberries and I could eat them. So I did. I bought a book about Pacific Northwest foraging last year, but I have no confidence in my foraging or plant identification skills, and I could very easily Christopher McCandless myself into oblivion.
I kept on walking, and was cloudy. It looked like it could either completely clear up or it could downpour – you never really know in the Pacific Northwest – it could be both. The ascent up was basically climbing up a gradual climb walking on volcanic sand, which is a little hard to do, and I couldn’t really even see the top of where I was climbing because it was in the clouds.
Not too far into the hike, I came across a hiker I had met a few times. I forgot his name, even though he reminded me of it again, and a woman he was hiking with, and they were sitting in the middle of the trail. The woman said that her ankle was bothering her and I asked if they needed any leukotape since I now have two full rolls, but they said that they had some. We were just talking about ankle issues, and I offered to tape her ankle if she wanted, but when she took off her shoes and socks, her ankle was extremely swollen and I told them that she should really go get it looked at by a doctor because that didn’t look very good – and it could be nothing, but it could be something more serious and if that’s the case, she didn’t want to keep hiking on it. She didn’t want to get off the trail, but the man she was with started looking at the map on his phone and I said you know it’s only 2 miles back to the highway and there’s a trailhead and you’d be much more likely to get a ride from there into Bend to see a doctor than continuing on for 20 plus more miles to some little dirt road in the middle of nowhere and possibly not getting a hitch. She still didn’t want to get off the trail and didn’t want to see a doctor but I really urged them to get it looked at. She wasn’t from the US so it’s possible she just didn’t want to get stuck with thousands of dollars of medical bills. Having no health insurance in this country can mean financial ruin.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of international hikers forgoing medical care because it’s too expensive here.
I wonder how many search and rescue missions have happened because people felt like they couldn’t see a doctor, and so they just kept hiking with wounds or injuries that they really should have gotten medical care for sooner, and then subsequently endangered their own lives, the people that were hiking with, and the search and rescue mission volunteers.
It will be really interesting moving to Canada and being able to access healthcare through a system like theirs because as of right now I pay a fuck ton of money for my health insurance 100% out of pocket, and it is actually pretty good for the US, but it’s so expensive and the only reason I can pay for it is because of my severance package and COBRA. But that expires in a few months, and I likely won’t have health insurance for a couple months before school starts, which is a pretty terrifying thought.
One thing I’ve noticed with my own providers over the last maybe 10 years is how savvy they’ve even had to become in order to get things approved by insurance companies. Insurance companies don’t want to cover anything, and so it’s not just the patients getting screwed over. It’s the doctors as well, and even the pharmaceutical companies. One of my friends works for a consulting company of sorts that works with healthcare systems, hospitals, doctors, offices to help the admins be able to submit paperwork correctly so that insurance claims will get approved and then patients can get their medications, and the pharmaceutical companies can get paid. These companies I believe are sponsored by the pharma companies because it’s in their best interest to help patients be able to get medication prescriptions approved and paid for by the insurance companies.
Patients also get hurt when doctor’s offices completely stop accepting certain insurances because of all the admin issues. The office where I used to go to physical therapy stopped accepting United healthcare even before the CEO was killed because they just denied too many rightful claims, and it resulted in tons of extra admin work and appeals and on top of that, United wouldn’t cover the true cost of care, and it just became not even worth it for them to accept that insurance, which is really unfortunate for people who have United through their employers or even on the open healthcare market. They get punished for something that’s not their fault.
It’s been so fascinating meeting all of these people from all over the world and seeing their reactions to things in the United States. They all came here to see the amazing land and incredible mountains and landscapes that we have in this country, and then seeing how appalled they are at the complete lack of societal infrastructure. It’s embarrassing.
I only hiked about 2 miles yesterday and I wore my new ankle brace and that seemed to be pretty good on flat surfaces without tape. But while climbing up in ascent in sand which is pretty unstable, I decided to stop and tape my foot for added stability.
It ended up being really hot and most of the day was spent walking through burn areas, completely exposed. My foot started to hurt a lot. Each step became painful until I felt a popping sensation inside my ankle, and then it felt like some kind of pressure was released and then it didn’t hurt as badly after that. Popping doesn’t usually mean something got better, so I’m not sure what that was. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly worried about my ankle though.
The burn areas were not recent, and there were wildflowers, tiny pine trees and lots of huckleberry bushes growing.
Almost everyone I encountered today annoyed me for different reasons. After I talked to the man about the huckleberries, I let him go in front of me, because I assumed he’d be faster since basically everyone is faster than me, but he ended up walking really slowly. His wife caught up and she passed us and walked ahead. I was stuck behind this guy now. Once we got to a road, I took off in front of them, but then ended up leapfrogging them a bunch of times. The wife was a tiny bit faster than me, and the husband was slower than me, and I started getting annoyed when he would want go ahead and then walked super slow, or she’d let me go ahead and then be on my ass. At one point, I got stuck behind the husband and he kept farting. Not only is he walking slow, now he’s making me walk through his farts! Nope!!!
At 10:30, I stopped for lunch to lose them, and because I was hungry already. I didn’t see them again the rest of the day, thankfully.
I stopped for lunch on a ridge with an amazing view of the valley below. As I was sitting there, I kept hearing rocks falling from the rock cascade on the side of the mountain behind me. I saw little white dots and I swore they were moving. I zoomed in on my camera and I spotted a group of mountain goats! That’s a new animal I have not seen before on the trail.
At the end of the day right before getting to the lake I had planned to camp at, another guy snuck up behind me and then asked to let him pass on the trail. I had just stopped to look at FarOut and he very quietly creeped up on me and then loudly asked to be let by. Like at least cough, bang your trekking poles, kick a rock, as you approach someone to make some noise to inform them of your presence so they get the hell out of your way without you having to ask. Don’t just weirdly come up behind someone and scare them.
A bunch of SOBOs passed me and even though I was hiking uphill most of the day, with a sun umbrella and an ankle brace on, they didn’t stop to let me pass – instead squeezing me off the side of the trail while barreling past. The rule of trail etiquette is generally that whoever is walking uphill has the right of way and you should step aside to let them pass.
Two SOBOs inquired about my sun umbrella, asking if I liked it. I said that I did, and joked that I wouldn’t have made it out of the desert without it, although that wasn’t really a joke. One of them said they had never seen someone actually using one. I sensed some undertone of.. something. Whatever. You’ve been on the trail for maybe one month in the coldest and darkest part of the trail? Talk to me after you’ve walked through the aqueduct during the daytime. Stupid SOBOs.
It’s entirely possible that of all these annoying people, I am just the common denominator in this equation. I definitely have PMS again. At least that means my period is coming on time, and a little rest off trail was enough to stop my cycle from staying so irregular. Hopefully this means my body is happy.
I was completely dragging today, my water tasted gross to me, I just felt really tired and kind of crappy, but I’m still completely on track with my planned miles and stops. I’m doing great, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.
I finally made it to the lake where I was planning on camping, and there were already a lot of people set up camp there. It was kind of a water spot in the middle of a lot of blowdowns and not too many water sources, so it made sense that a lot of people would stop there. The annoying guy who snuck up on me decided to camp there and he took one of the spots that I was eyeing from across the lake. Rude.
I set up my tent and the wind started picking up. I was too tired to move somewhere else and just hoped the wind would die down after sunset. The natural rhythms of nature taking course.
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