Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [12]
After they located their gear, Zak climbed onto a stump, where he found an expansive view of the valley and the road they’d just climbed. The stump, an ancient cedar, was nine feet across and had stubby trees and brush growing out of it. According to Stephens, they were about a third of the way up the first of several mountains they would scale.
Except for the barely discernible outlines of the tallest buildings in Bellevue and Seattle thirty miles away and a single puffy white contrail high over Puget Sound, there were no traces of civilization beyond the remains of the logging operations behind them.
In August the pitiful waterfall was all that remained of Panther Creek, but it would provide fresh water and a cold shower. Morse, who’d overheated badly on the climb, stepped under the waterfall in his cycling clothes, taking off only his shoes. Giancarlo followed, grinning until his dimples showed. “That is really cold.”
“Feels good,” said Morse. “But it’s giving me a headache.” He peeled his wet and now heavy clothing off and stood nude.
The original plan had been to explore some of the rolling terrain on the valley floor for a couple of hours before making camp, but after the Jeeps passed them they didn’t want to remain on the valley floor.
Zak and Muldaur, after ascertaining that their gear had been cached properly, pedaled back to the road and continued climbing, anxious to log more miles. The other three, knowing there would be impromptu climbing contests in the coming days and having had a difficult time already following Zak and Muldaur up the first switchback slopes, seemed content to lollygag back at the waterfall and let the two wear themselves out.
After climbing for another hour, Zak and Muldaur stopped at a narrow perch on one of the upper road systems. As soon as they quit pedaling, the draft they’d been creating for themselves ceased, and they were both immediately painted in sweat. The afternoon sun stood fairly high in the western sky, and as they walked out to a small landing away from the side of the mountain, a breeze kicked up. They couldn’t see the camping spot below, but they could see just about everything else, including the last half mile of road they’d pedaled up. “I wonder what our elevation is,” Zak said.
“We passed Lake Hancock twenty-five minutes ago. It’s at twenty-two hundred, and I’m guessing we climbed at least another thousand feet. Probably closer to two.”
They could see a carpet of low, rolling hills stretching out thirty miles to Lake Washington, which they glimpsed just a sliver of, and then beyond the water Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains. Seattle sat in a basin between the Olympic and Cascade Ranges, so it was more or less shielded from storms off the Pacific. The basin also subjected the area to periods of air stagnation, one of which they were going through now—the sky over Seattle was brown and purple.
They were situated on the side of a mountain—or technically a foothill—and the valley floor below looked just as it had several million years ago when the last glaciers moved through and scraped the earth raw, except now it was carpeted in Douglas fir and the large scabby patches that had been clear-cut. They could see the Snoqualmie River at the base of the mountain and several small lakes dotting the landscape, a couple of which they’d passed on their way in but hadn’t actually seen until now.
Zak noted his heart rate monitor, which had been registering in the high 160s while they were climbing, now registered 52. If his heart hadn’t been working to cool his body, the rate would have been even lower. He was in the best condition he’d been in all year.
“What’s that?” Muldaur asked.