One does not just get up off the couch and walk 50 miles in a day.

When I was a kid I was tested for hypoglycemia and as a result of that I believed for a long time that I physically couldn't do hard things that would take a lot of exertion. After I got married I disdained exercise, I recall often thinking to myself, how can exerting energy make you feel better?

I was always a skinny kid. Then I hit my mid 30s and I started getting puffy. So I decided to take up exercise, but I was not a fan of gyms.  I bought myself a mountain bike and I started riding on the paved trail that ran by our house in Pleasant Hill. The first time I went out riding I ended up barfing over the handlebars.  I eventually figured out how to not over exert myself and I started riding up into Briones Park behind my house.  Around the same time I got introduced to hiking in Briones by some folks that lived in my neighborhood and went to our local church.  One of the guys I hiked with, Curg Johnson, was 74 years old at the time and he could hike circles around me.  

Upon our move to Washington in 2004 I kept up with the hiking and I've gotten a lot of miles under my feet and my legs are used to my usual Saturday Dawn Patrols along the I-90 corridor.  Eventually I even took up trail running.  During the first several years here I bought a Day Hike Olympic Peninsula.  The last chapter ended with a 50 mile hike up the North Fork of the Quinault across the Low Divide to the Elhwah, that the author claimed could be done in a day.  Over the years as I’ve gone through various hiking goals (like 1000 miles a year, which I did for 5 years) and there were days in December where to make up for being behind I’d walk for 20 miles. I even walked several times to work in the pre-dawn days.  I kept thinking about hiking 50 miles in one day. I had even talked about planning the trip a couple of times.  As I approached my 50th birthday I decided this would be a great year to make an attempt. 

I often forget how much context and capability I have built up around the outdoors and mountains.  What I take for granted as easy can be for someone just starting out quite challenging.  I think nothing of 2000 vertical feet in a mile but if your not used to hiking and that kind of up it can be very taxing.  So there is a lot I have forgotten about how I've gotten here.   Sure I get winded and I huff and puff to get air in my lungs and my legs can feel the burn but I've been at this hiking thing for such a long time that take a lot for granted.  Let me try to call out some of things to be aware of before setting out to hike 50 miles.

You should know what long days feel like outside exerting yourself.  Those long days will need to have been spent hiking on the trail not just on treadmill or running on the road.  Even having done a marathon won’t adequately prepare you.  There is no machine that will prepare you for the impact of a steep descent on your legs.  Trails also have lots of variability in their surface and there are a whole set of muscles around your knees that get built up hiking and running on trails.  You should know what steep ups feel like on your legs. How your legs feel the day after. How long it takes you to recover.  You should know how your stamina is, do you feel weak or sick with exertion?  You should know how your feet feel after a long day on the trail. How do they feel after you have pounded down for miles and hours.  Do they tingle? Do they hurt? How do you toes feel as your feet swell.  Do you get blisters?  How about friction chafes between your legs? How do you prevent the chafe blisters? How do you treat them after they happen? You should understand how nutrition works on the trail; do you get sick if you don’t eat? Do you know when you bonk?  

In many ways I’ve been preparing for this 50 mile hike for over 15 years.  I’ve got miles and miles and hours and hours of hiking under my feet.  And I'll say though in contrast to all these questions that this is a feat that anyone can undertake and complete successfully you don't have to be a iron man.  You just need some preperation.

When you hike 50 miles in a day its going to be a long day on the trail; you want to maximize the number of day light and go when the days are longest.  (Unless of course you want to spend a lot of hours walking in the dark) I picked the first full week of June.  

As I started planning a couple of months before June, the problem was that this past winter we had got 10 times the amount of snow.  Three weeks before the hike I still was getting reports of lots of snow on the Low Divide and so I started looking around for some alternatives.  I hit up Stuke Sowle  who had been putting up impressive numbers and long days for the past couple of years.  He suggested Mission Ridge out near Wenatchee; over the passes and east of the Cascade crest the snow melts sooner. My only worry was that it would be too hot and so I had another route from Snoqualmie Pass through the Hyak tunnel down the Iron Horse Trail over Rattlesnake, Tiger and to my home on Squak.  

On May 20th I decided to do a shake down hike to see how I’d do and gauge some of the needs.  I opted to redo the Issaquah Traverse by hiking up and over the local Issaquah Mountains.  I started at Cougar Mountain at Red Town trailhead and hiked up and over Cougar, exiting on the Squak Mountain Connector, a short jaunt down Route 900 to Squak, and then up and over and down the East Ridge out the Sycamore subdivision and then walked over to the High School trail and up and over West Tiger and out the Preston trail to Kasey Self’s house where I begged a ride off him back to my car.  The route was 21.84 miles and took me from 5 am to 12:11 pm with 6500 ft of vertical gain. I averaged about a 2.9 mph pace.  My fastest mile was 4 mph and my slowest was 2 mph.

On my shakedown hike I learned the following :
  • Food: I ended up missing my estimate on how much food to carry. On the top of West Tiger 2 I was out of food and was starting to bonk. Lucky for me there was a guy taking a break. I asked him if he had any extra food and he was gracious enough to offer me an extra vanilla bean Gu. Another couple that I passed going down on their way up gave me another bar and on those two I made it down and out fine.
  • Pack : I took the REI Flash pack, lightweight and minimal, I did find though that over the course of 20+ miles that it did cause some sores from seams rubbing, so I'd need a different pack.

Otherwise I felt great. legs were fine, they didn’t really even hurt the next day.  And I so enjoyed the nice steak for lunch that date and waited for the weather to decide which way to be. 

As the time grew nearer I started planning in more earnest and a week before the hike the forecast shifted again and with rain coming to Snoqualmie Pass I opted to head east for Mission Ridge. Once you cross over the cascade crest the sunnier weather abides.   A friend from work who was to join me had to drop out due to lacrosse commitments and so I was to be solo.  Work and life had been extremely busy over the past several weeks and I felt behind. My preparation for trips usually comes together at the last moment and this trip was trending to be the same.   Though I had ordered food and a new pack, things were a bit more hectic than usual, as an example of how behind things felt : I am usually always on top of processing and posting photos and I was a couple of weeks behind.   

The week prior was busy with work and home life, but I had made a list and over a couple of days I worked on putting together my pack by piling stuff on the kitchen table :

I got off of work early on Thursday. I threw everything from the table into a big blue ikea bag and stuffed it in the truck, I also grabbed a sleeping bag and a pad and then went to dinner with the family before heading out for Wenatchee.  

My rough plan for the route was to cache food at one end of the Mission Ridge loop.  Either at the lower Devils Gulch trail head outside of Cashmere or at the upper Devils Gulch trail head.  I decided to head first for the upper Devils Gulch trail head and cache food there, Google Maps on my phone told me that instead of heading to Wenatche over XX pass, there was an alternate route on 97 heading south towards Ellensberg and then up Wilson Creek road and then a long winding drive up logging roads around the east side to upper Devils Gulch.  The problem was that after after 30 minutes of driving I came to a gated road when the gravel started. There was no passing through. Now my 2.5 hour drive had suddenly become 3.5.  The sun was starting to set as I exited onto 2 towards Wenatche.  By this time I decided to just head for lowers Devils Gulch and cache food there and then try to drive to upper Devils Gulch to sleep and start.  I turned south at Cashmere and drive up the forest road to the lower Devils Gulch trail head.   I put together a cache of bars and Gu and got me an apple and a big bottle of water and I crossed the bridge and carried my off the trail near the river and hung it from a tree.  Then I got back into my truck and headed up the logging road past lowers Devils Gulch toward what I thought was a logging road that would to take me to the upper trail head. 

The road began to narrow and to climb and I no longer had cell service and I didn’t have maps cached on my phone. It was now around 10 pm, darkness was thick and I was unsure if the road went through. So about 3 miles up the road I decided to turn around and head back to lower Devils Gulch.  Logging roads are by their nature generally pretty narrow and so it wasn't easy to find a wide enough spot to turn around.  Finally I came to a bend and I pulled forward into the bushes and then backed up and thunk my back tire fell into a ditch. Given it was only two wheel drive I couldn't get out of the ditch.  I gathered sticks and stuffed them under the tire but there was no getting out.  The front wheels of the truck were about 90% off the road and the angle of the truck bed was pretty flat. Since there was nothing for me to do that night I decided I would spend the night here. And I would start the hike from that position and I'd have to figure out how to get unstuck at the end of my hike.  I turned on my Delorme and sent Stac a note about my stuck condition (she thought I was joking) and then I blew up my pad and crawled into the back of the truck to go to sleep.  

I woke at 4:05 am when my alarm went off. I climbed back into the cab and started getting my pack ready. I made my self a peanut and butter sandwhich (part of the fixin's I'd laid out on the kitchen table) and I stuffed it into one of my front pouches. I stuffed a honey crisp apple into the back pouch and I filled up the two front water bottles and filled up the extra two and placed them in a cross cross fashion in the large back pouch.  I filled up a 1 liter collapseable water bottle (Hydrapak) with water electrolyte gu. The morning was cold, and I put on my OR sleeves and my Montbell jacked, locked the truck and started walking down the logging road to the lower Devils Gulch trail head.   The time was 4:45 and the sky was just starting to lighten.

I reached the trail head and after crossing the river and a bit up the Devils Gulch trail,  the Mission Ridge trail splits off to the left and I started up. The trail makes a fairly gradual climb up the spine of the ridge.  The trail was dry and snow free but the melt had been recent enough that green grass lined the trails with purple lupine and bright yellow balsamroot.  Big ponderosa pines, with their deep rich carmal brown bark rose high above my head and and the sun crested the far ridge the light streamed through the trees and cast long morning shadows.  A beautiful morning as I steadily hiked up the trail at brisk pace.

While Devils Gulch Creek rushed brightly deep in the canyon below me, there were no streams along the trail.   The trail was easy and the miles licked past and before I knew it I was 10 miles in and 7 miles up the Mission Ridge trail and about 1/2 way to the upper Devils Gulch trail head.  By this time I was finished with the water in my Hydrapak collapsible bottle.  As I stowed the collapsed bottle in my back pouch I noticed that one of the extra water bottles had fallen out.  I became a bit more worried about water. I had opted not to carry the Sawyer water filter with me due mostly to the "bulk" of the water pouch that I carried with it.  So the next time I came to puddles on the trail that were full from recent rain fall I took the opportunity to save the water in my soft flasks and instead several times I got down on my knees to suck water from the puddle.  The water wasn't crystal clear but it was cold and wet and it slaked my thirst. I wasn’t really too worried about the consequences. I’d had giardia before, at the worst it involved some barfing, at best a fair bit of diarrhea and the parasite was treatable with medicine and no long lasting impact.

I rounded the top of the upper Devils Gulch trailhead and here I transitioned to walking on some logging roads. I was very disciplined about my nutrition. I set my alarm on my watch and I alternated every 15 or 30 minutes with consuming some food.  Sometimes a full gel, sometimes 1/2 a bar.   Around 11:30 am I was approaching the 20 mile mark and I was hungry and so I stopped to have lunch at a small clearing. I sat on a rock outcropping that overlooked miles and miles of forest with big puffy clouds rolling across the sky.  I had yet to see a single soul and I sat in silence and eagerly and gleefully munched on the most delicious gooey peanut butter and honey sandwhich I’d ever had.  

As I started back up walking again my left foot started hurting. Every step the forefront of the foot from just behind the big toe and all the small bones in the front portion of my foot hurt.  That would pose a big problem if I ended up having that much pain for the next 30 miles.  I stopped and loosened my shoe laces.  As the miles wore on my feet hard started swelling and my laces were tied now tied to tight.  This helped and I was able to adjust my gait (shifting to hit on my heel on the up and on the ball of my foot on the way down) and eventually my feet stopped hurting and I was able to walk normally.

The logging road followed the ridge spine and I came upon several small snow fields.  These offered me something cool to suck on and the run off gave me another opportunity to suck down water from the small trickle stream.  There was a mud slide and bramble of broken trees that I had to cross at one point and there were several downed trees across the road.  Eventually the you leave the logging road for the Mt. Lillian Trail (about 25 miles from lower Devils Gulch) which traverses across the top of Mt. Lillian, the high point on the trail at 6100 feet above sea level. After 2.5 miles you transition to the Tronson Ridge trail and after another 3.5 miles you come to the junction with the Red Hill Trail. From here you turn right or north east and wind back and forth along the ridge, over Red Hill for 8 miles until you drop back down to the lower Devil’s Gulch trail head.  

As I made my way along Red Hill Trail I noted that my iPhone was no longer charging.  Even though I had a light weight batter, the charger cable I had with me (a short bendy one) had shorted out.  I got worried about my battery remaining. So I put away my headphones and was left to just my thoughts as I plodded along.  From Mt. Lillian the trail gradually descends 4000 vertical feet so I even felt like jogging for several stretches, helping to pick up some extra miles per minute as I made my way back down to Devils Gulch.   When I arrived at the bridge over the creek I’d hiked 38 miles and I was ready for another break. I grabbed my food cache and sat at the trail head and repacked my water bottles and my food. I guzzled water from the bottle and then I stashed the rest of the food and water in some grass beside the trail head. The mosquitos were so thick and aggressive I could hardly do a single thing between swatting them as they bit my legs and arms.  

Along the Mission Ridge trail I was able to get cell service and I called Stacey to check on getting my truck un-stuck.  Some good friends, Morgan and Jeremy were from Wenatchee and were headed there on Friday night.  They were going to try to swing by Devils Gulch with a tow chain and get my truck out.  As I left the lowers Devils Gulch there was no cell service so I sent a text to Stacey via my Delorme and let her know that I would be back to the lower Devils Gulch trail head by 9pm.  I had 12 miles to do and the safest sure bet was to hike up the Devils Gulch for 6 miles and then hike back down.   The time was 5:30 pm as I set out and I would have to make average 3.42 miles an hour pace.  I kept watching the time and watching the miles. On the slowest up miles I was making around 2.6 miles an hour and on the fastest up miles I was doing about 3 miles an hour.  I was breathing hard and I crossed the creek at least 3 times.  At the 6th mile of consistent hiking up the trail, I had climbed 2000 vertical feet and I turned around. I was 44 miles in; I had 6 miles left and I was going to have to run those last 6 miles to make my meeting time at 9pm. I started running down the trail. I wasn’t moving super fast but I averaged a 4.75 miles pace as I jogged down the trail.  It wasn’t flow running but it still felt pretty great to be running the last miles of my 50. 

At 9:05 pm, breathing heavy, I ran across the bridge and up the SUV where Jeremy and Morgan were waiting.  As I leaned agains the car door, panting. The world leaned left a bit as I was a little light headed.  I could feel the world spinning slightly.  I got my excess food and threw it in the back of their SUV and Morgan gave me the front seat while we drove up the logging road to find my truck. I was anxious that someone would have broken in but was relieved to find the doors locked, the windows intact and the key still stuck under the bumper.  We hooked a chain to to the two vehicles and it was an easy pull to get my turks out of the ditch.  We drove up the road a bit and to find a proper turn around spot and then back down to Cashmere and toward Wenatchee. I called Stacey to let her know I was down and out safe and while Morgan and Jeremy offered me to stay at her parents place I opted instead to grab a burger at Sonic and rent a room at a local hotel. I could barely walk as I exited the truck. My feet and hip flexors hurt and even though I had applied anti-chafing cream I was swollen and sore between my legs form the thousands of steps that I had taken.  

I gingerly took a hot shower and then climbed into bed and promptly fell into a very deep sleep.  

Several weeks later as I look back on my experience I am a little amazed how relatively “easy” it was.  The pace was efficient but moderate. The amount of gear carried never felt like a burden. My feet had hurt some but had adjusted fine and I had felt great. My energy levels never felt low.  I had plenty of food with me and I spaced the food about right.  The water was of some concern but I never really ran out or was dehydrated.

And I’ve already started planning my next adventure.  I’d love to try a 100 miler some time in the future and am looking at hiking from Snoqualmie to Stevens Pass over the course of two days.

Video of the journey