Pacific Crest Trail - Day 168 - Goat Rocks Wilderness

Start: Mile 2247.5 - Killen Creek
End: Mile 2272.6 - Sheep Lake

Mt. Rainier became an island in a sea of clouds. All too often the trail will turn a corner and take your breath away.

Misty Washington forests. This stretch was beautiful but felt largely like a connector to sights ahead.

This bridge is doing its best.

Lichen apparently managed to eject this bark from its tree to devour it.

Fresh wild huckleberries on a PB&Banana tortilla wrap. Not pictured: mayonnaise.

Right about here we talked to a young woman with pink accented camo out hunting Elk with a bow (pretty badass) and also heard a gun shot from the valley below, which she attributed to it also being bear season.

Not far down the trail we came across another bow hunter hunting for Elk with four pannier and bear bell wearing goats in tow. Ridiculous.

At the next water source a bit down into the valley we found a handful of familiar European hikers - one of which was responsible for the gun shot we heard earlier as the goat guy let him pop a round off with his huge caliber hand cannon.

We passed a couple of irate bow hunters soon after asking whether we saw a guy with goats scaring off all the Elk, and told them that not only had we seen him, but that he let a European shoot his side arm for fun. LMAO.

I definitely pass the vibe check for hunters. It’s probably the whole tall, scruffy, white, blue eyed combination but it’s almost unbelievable what people say off the cuff when they think you’re part of the club for lack of a better phrase.

Elk hunting through Goats Rocks consisted of dozens of bow hunters stepping over each other with dozens of PCT hikers streaming through and each of them absolutely lamenting the fact that any other person had the gall to be in their section of wilderness.

There were zero elk hunting success stories, and I wiped out a number of elk prints we saw on trail through this stretch. Apparently Washington doesn’t issue tags, they grant licenses as requested by anyone who is a resident of the state. It’s all a farce and I’m happy to have witnessed it, for better or worse, if only to understand that Elk season consists of a bunch of guys putting on expensive matching outfits, musky scents, and making masculine mating noises … and also apparently hunting Elk at some point.

Mt. Adams in the distance behind. I think it’s my favorite mountain of the PCT so far.

We camped at Sheep Lake - a popular weekend backpacking destination in Goats Rocks. The first campers we came across mentioned how they met a German backpacker who was averaging 30 miles a day on the PCT! I suppose distance and speed are metrics you can sort of glom on to for context or relatability but we are so far away from running a race or optimizing anything but the quality of our experience in nature that conversations that begin with a comparison to someone else’s physically impressive mileage per day are met with a finding a way to quickly move on from the conversation.