The adventures of yesterday are small compared to the great adventure I am on now. The mountains are still calling my name but so is a little one at home. I’m embarking on a new journey, and like hiking, it will be a grand daily adventure of highs and lows, of love and frustration but one that will last longer than just a day. And so I set out on my last solo backpacking trip for awhile.
The wind compressed my single person tent to within inches of me, like a throng of black Friday shoppers pressed in against a door unrelentingly. Small creatures outside shrieked against the onslaught of nature’s forces. Every time I peeked out from my mummy-like status in my sleeping bag, the nippy air repulsed my head back under. But wait, this is towards the end, let’s start at the beginning.
The sun may still be out but the summer and all its nostalgia are gone. Fall is here and winter is approaching at breakneck speed. A chill is in the air, one that reminds you of perfect snow-capped peaks and white dusted valleys. It seemed on this journey that I would get a dose of both worlds.
As I flew down the empty forest road surrounded by trees on one side and deep valleys on the other, anticipation grew. I kept thinking to myself, this is my last backpacking trip for a long time, it had better be epic. My tires stopped in the disk-shaped parking area and a layer of dust trailed behind me.
There are two unnamed trailheads, as if saying to those who approach- “you better know where you’re going.” After a crossing a small creek, the trail oblates for while through new growth trees before advancing upwards, sending your thighs into muscle shock for a mile and a half.
The lucid sun gleamed its light into the forest. Scattered shadows, patches of yellow and gray streamed onto the earthen floor. The faint sounds of birds echoed down from the canopy above. Pine needles and leaves were crushed under the weight of my body. The trail ascended and so did I, reluctantly at times.
The lush green hues of the forest slowly changed to yellows and oranges as the trail leveled out and opened up. Scabrous alpine ridges, one you might see Gollum skulking up, lead the wanderer to sharp-visaged peaks in one direction and a naked landscape full of disseminated trees in another.
Weather, my temperamental and bipolar friend, followed me out of the trees and up the ridgeline to False Baldy. Unsure of how it wanted to act today, liquid sunshine started off the series followed by some sleet and finishing with heavy snow. By the time I started up to Baldy the snow had tapered off along with the temperature, leaving a sodden blanket of moisture on the mountainous terrain.
The firmament was still thick, gray and dense like a woolpack, leaving me wondering how far the summit was. Camp robbers flew around spying for food they would never get. The valley below was beset by fleeting sun and shadows, leaving an unsettling look on it.
After a taxing hike up, I was relieved to be on the summit. A thick buttermilk sky moved in and out constantly revealing a peak here and there – always a tease. The area which was devastated by a fire in the 1900s lives up to its name. Scattered rocks and exiguous vegetation are all that’s left at 6,800′ leaving little cover from the elements for man or beast.
The sun, which seemed closer than ever up here, drifted behind a veil of clouds just out of reach. A warm sensation would occasionally race across my skin about the same time as my shadow appeared, only to dissipate with a chill in the bones. My low-ankle boots dragged up loose shale as I descended down to a neighboring peak. What looked like a crumbling monument or altar to the gods sits on a small hump amidst a flat gray sky near the peak.
Greywolf mountain held an eerie, luminous and mysterious veil about her as I lulled around camp. I half expected an army of orcs to come charging down its spine towards my camp. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the shroud of clouds and fog were pulled closer to the base of the mountain, becoming like a misty waterfall flowing over the ridgeline. Backlit by the sun the waterfall’s golden light dropped off into an unending blackness of the valley below.
The mellowness of light and bitter cold set in against a backdrop of almost monochrome colors leading to a horizon of orange. Jane Austen summed up pretty well how I felt watching this sunset:
“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.” (Mansfield Park)
The civil twilight faded into a sky full of Lite Brite pegs, each one perfectly placed by the father of lights to draw a picture for those of us below. Greywolf mountain was now atramentous and lonely, a dim silhouette against an endless vista of blacked-out peaks. The city lights of Victoria and Sequim flickered on in the distance subduing the once bright sky above them.
The night passed slowly. The stars moved across the sky while the weather of the previous day moved in again and asserted control of the area. I peeked outside only to see what it must feel like to be in the eye of a hurricane. Swirling cinereal clouds in a ring-like fashion around Baldy and my little tent in the middle of all of it. A pale glowing orb slowly rose and faded in and out of the clouds leaving a dull sheen of light in the sky.
The wind picked up, a slow flap on my tent at first and before long the nylon was being hit so hard it was deafening. The sunrise couldn’t come soon enough and with it some warmth. A quick look outside, however, something averse to being in a warm sleeping bag, revealed a landscape coated in soft rime. Crystals of ice hanging off blades off grass horizontally and rocks transformed into ice sculptures.
The wind was still pounding the summit but the weather was moving quick. The wind subsided and the sun calmly and nonchalantly burned off the remainder of the night’s curtain of gray. The Strait of Juan De Fuca was bathed in a blonde light as freighters inched along the algid waters.
So was it an epic trip? I sure think so. A sudden snow storm, a beautiful sunset and sunrise, 30 mph winds, who could want more?
Be sure to check out the video of the trip below.
Till the next adventure…
-V/L
All Photos © 2016 Jefferson Morriss
Visuals & Literals 
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