The Northeast Buttress of Mt. Slesse with Derek

Strava

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I was bruised and battered
I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
Saw my reflection in a window
And didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
                                 - Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen

While I might not yet be too old for big alpine climbs, I do seem to be too clumsy for big alpine descents. 

I bought my first copy of “Fifty Classic Climbs of North America” back when I was in college in the early 80s. This book directed my climbing for the first twenty years. Then for at least a decade, I ignored them. I’d done most of the ones that were in my wheelhouse and turned to other things like doing Longs Peak and the Yellow Spur over and over ad nauseam. But now that I’m older, I took a serious look at my climbing bucket list. There is no time to waste. 

Last year, Derek and I went to Slesse, but we didn’t even attempt the NE Butt, as the weather wasn’t conducive to rock climbing. Perhaps we should have canceled the trip, but I wanted to go see this mountain. With rain expected, we started up the descent route on the west side of the peak and climbed up one of the steepest trails I’d ever been on. It was a 50% grade for thousands of vertical feet. We got within 500 feet of the summit and onto technical ground when the rain started. We turned back.

This year, when the weather looked really good on a weekend, I booked my ticket and Derek picked me up at 5 p.m. at the SeaTac airport on Friday. We drove the three hours to Chilliwack (a pretty chill place but definitely a bit whacky) and then on up the rough road towards the trailhead. At 9:15 p.m. we came across a minivan crosswise and blocking the entire road. They were in the midst of an Austin-Powers-ish 23-point turn. The road ahead was too much for their soccer-mom-mobile. We decided to stop as well, though Derek’s CrossTrek could have certainly made it, we didn’t want any stress and still needed to pack for tomorrow.

The only problem with this decision was that we’d have to put up our tent directly in the middle of the road, as it was the only flat spot. We hoped that no one else would be driving up this road this late or even early in the morning. This was Canada, where a popular climb means it’s done more than once a year. We were wrong about the traffic, though.

The couple in the van was headed to the NE Butt as well but immediately told us that they were planning a 2-day ascent. This is the more common way to do this route because the approach is long and arduous (MP suggests four hours), the route is 24 pitches, and the descent is very long and very complex. I figured I was about the worst climber that could do this route in a day, but doing it onsight would make it even more difficult, as a mistake of any length would probably mean a bivy. We carried two emergency shelters with us and I thought the chances of using them were very good, maybe 80%. If we descended the way we came up the year before, once down we’d still have 20 kilometers of walking to get back to the car. There was another way down, though. 

The usual descent from Slesse was something called the Crossover Descent, but a big landslide took out a section of that route, making it impassable. A couple of years ago, some guides put up a route called the Crack of Noon Club. This climbs up a buttress to Crossover Pass. They equipped the route with 11 bolted-chain, rappel anchors, which makes the Crack of Noon Crossover descent possible. This descent isn’t a gimme, though, and we didn’t know anything about it. At least we knew the west side descent and that it was entirely on a trail, once we descended the top 600 vertical feet. We’d decide later.

We packed our gear, which was mostly a double rack to #2 Camelot, a #3, a #4 (used 3 or 4 times), a full set of stoppers (heavily used), two Micros (used one once), and 13 alpine draws. We took one 60-meter rope, though we knew a 70-meter was handy on some rappels, I couldn’t stomach carrying a rope so long. A 60-meter worked out fine, though we did have to do some down climbing off of a couple of rappels.

Once packed, we set up our single-walled First Ascent BD tent. This isn’t the best choice for the northwest where there is so much moisture in the air even when it hasn’t rained, and the dew point is high. In the morning the inside walls of our tent were damp. It was no big deal but not ideal. 

Before we could even get into the tent, a truck came up the road and we had to pick up the tent and move it to the side. We’d see these two guys the next day and spend most of the day with them. Once they were by, we moved the tent back into the middle of the road and hopped in around 10:15 p.m. with an alarm set for 3:50 a.m. Just after the alarm went off, the tent was completely lit up by headlights. Another truck was trying to get up the road. We hurriedly pulled on our shoes and jumped out of the tent to move it out of the way once again. The guys in this truck were headed for another cool mountain: Rexford. They said Slesse was on their list. Being from Chilliwack, they’d have ample opportunity to wait for ideal conditions.

We wolfed down a cold breakfast and were hiking before our goal time of 4:30. I thought we had close to a mile to the trailhead, but we arrived there in only a quarter of a mile. Cool. We started up the narrow, twisting trail, crowded closely by vegetation that was soaked with condensation. I was excited to see two salamanders on the trail. The moist conditions suited them but the cold temperatures made them immobile. 

By the time we got to the Propeller Cairn at the end of the trail, my pants, socks, and shoes were completely soaked. It was only in the 40s at this point and wouldn’t get above 55 degrees all day. I don’t think my approach shoes fully dried until Monday. 

The north face of Slesse loomed above us, split by three buttresses with two glacier-carved cirques between them. We had to cross slick slabs to get to the middle buttress, where we ascended steeply to a notch in the ridge and then down the other side on very slippery 4th-class terrain. It was an introduction to moss/lichen/rock climbing. Vegetation is a feature on this route.

Walking up the smooth granite slabs to the base of the wall, I thought of the upper slabs of Snake Dike, as the angle and rock were quite similar. That’s high praise of rock quality, I know. Alas the route itself has no rock remotely as good as these approach slabs. 

In the middle of this slab was a huge chunk of a glacier. This chunk was the remnants of the Pocket Glacier that fills this cirque in the winter and spring. It seems strange to call something a snowfield that disappears every year a glacier, but I think it is a glacier. It builds up enough ice to flow and crack with crevasses. Climbers wait for the Pocket Glacier to slide down this granite ramp before climbing this route because otherwise, you are crossing directly underneath it and very close to it, meaning if something falls off you will not have time to avoid it. In late September it was long gone. 

Speaking of late September, this isn’t the ideal time to climb such a long route, due to the lack of daylight and colder temperatures (the high was 52 degrees), but much more important is to have a dry forecast. There is so much lichen on this route that I imagine it would be nearly unclimbable when wet. Our forecast was good. We had to make an attempt. I knew I was in for adventure and all that entails which means stress and discomfort. I don’t yearn for challenges like this as much as I once did and I felt that uneasy. Once we got up reasonably high, we’d be committed. There isn’t an easy way off this mountain. There are no fixed belay stations anywhere on this route and hardly any tat. If we got high on the route, we’d have to top out, but there is no walk-off on this mountain. Every route to the summit is a technical route.

As we headed up the slabs to the ByPass Ledge, which avoids the first six pitches of the Direct NE Butt (10c), we heard and then saw a pair of climbers. They were roped up and simul-climbing along the ledge. We quickly gained the ledge and seeing that it was really just 3rd and 4th class, continued unroped in our approach shoes. The exposure grew significantly with upward movement as we gained the buttress itself. We could already look down on a thousand feet of vertical. 

We caught up to the follower just as we started heading up the buttress proper. His name was Cory and he was a rock guide from Squamish. His partner was also a guide and his name was, and this is his true name on his birth certificate, Tigger. I couldn’t resist asking Cory if his partner’s head was made of rubber and his bottom of spring. But he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I had to sing it to him:

The wonderful thing about triggers
Is tiggers are wonderful things!
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs!
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about tiggers is
I'm the only one

Cory and Tigger were the guys that drove by our tent the night before. 

We moved up to the right of these guys to a small perch in trees and dirt with hardly any level ground. I found a sling anchor here. We geared up, being careful not to drop anything. I asked Derek if he’d like to lead first or me. He said I should start leading “just in case any passing was necessary.”

I climbed up steep ground, but most of it was dirt and trees with some rock. We were still really working our way up to the cleaner rock. I ran out all the rope and decided to belay Derek up rather than simul-climb because of the drag of 60 meters of rope. If we were to simul-climb we’d need to shorten the rope, which we really never did. Instead, I did long pitches and by then I needed more gear anyway.

The climbing on the lower half of the buttress is low angle, broken, and rich in vegetation, meaning lichen covered the rocks and moss filled the cracks. Some cracks were clean and others had gardened-out spots for placements. The climbing was probably 5.6 or easier but insecure because of the greenery and a bit freaky because protection was sparse. 

I stayed in the lead and we followed Cory and Tigger up the route. We were both using the MountainProject written description, but I didn’t need to refer to mine, as I just followed these guys. They were both really friendly and we got along great. Tigger was leading everything on the first half of the route so I got to know just Cory. They had a 70-meter rope (for the descent) but were climbing on just 35 meters of rope and simul-climbing with Micros. This simul-climbing seems to be catching on. Pretty soon people will be doing it in Eldo!

Despite not simul-climbing, we kept up with them and sometimes even had to wait on them a bit. But they were doing all the route finding, so we didn’t mind at all. I was worried about the descent and secretly hoping we could join forces to figure it out. Or that they could come to pick us up if we went down the other descent.

From the moment we left the car, we’d been moving nearly continuously. I didn’t even sit down to belay but once or twice. Derek and I are very efficient at the belays. Once he arrives, we re-rack gear, get him anchored, take him off belay, put me on belay, and I’m off. Rarely does this take more than a minute and never more than two. I liken our partnership to a band that is “tight”, meaning all working together in the exact same rhythm.

The crux of the lower half of the route is a 5.9 pitch just below the halfway bivy ledge. It was by far the steepest pitch yet, but it went nicely on some big holds and good gear. It was by far the best pitch yet. Derek liked it because “it was mostly rock.” That’s a strange comment to make for a rock climb, but it was appropriate for this route.

At the halfway bivy ledge, which is huge, we’d done 12 pitches with 12 to go. It was just 11 a.m. The route above steepened and the climbing got harder. Above us were three more pitches of 5.9. I asked Derek if he wanted to take the top block and he hesitated. He said he wasn’t feeling that great about the climbing. I got that completely because I was a bit put off by it as well. In Italy, Derek was keen to be in the lead for all hard climbing. He asked how I was feeling. I told him I was happy to keep leading. I like leading and I was already used to climbing and had my lead head going. He said that he wanted to lead some but maybe a bit further up.

I ended up leading the rest of the route and we never talked about switching leaders. Just like our change-over coordination, we know each other so well that there was no need for discussion. I knew Derek would speak up if he wanted to lead. Frankly, this climbing is my specialty: semi-runout, moderate, tricky-gear-placement, alpine climbing. I’d have included ‘difficult route finding’, but the guides were doing that all for me. If the climbing was harder and cleaner with more solid gear, Derek would have been in front, placing all the gear for me to grab and pull on. He’s done that before. Still, it was good to know that I can still be useful and a valid partner to my much younger, much stronger, much fitter son.

The 5.9 pitches above were steep and interesting. One had a few precariously jammed flakes that were necessary to use. It was freaky to pull on them, but they didn’t move. Another pitch was runout and devious. The last real pitch was rated 5.7, but this passed by some rock that was just barely attached and too big to trundle for fear of hitting Derek or chopping my rope. I felt this was the crux pitch, mentally. 

There is a 4th class escape at the top and I took that. I got incredible rope drag going hard to the left, down, and then up again and Derek had to simul-climb below me to free up the rope. But it got me to the summit and soon Derek had joined me. It was just before 4 p.m. Cory and Tigger were nearby, packing up their gear. Derek and I ate, drank, changed shoes, stowed the rack, coiled the rope, and were soon headed down, following Cory and Tigger.

We scrambled down some scree and then across exposed ledges, up to a notch, and steeply down the other side to some rappel slings. The guides went down first on their rope. They moved surprisingly slowly on rappels, as each set up a prussik backup each time. They weren’t that slow. I’m just used to guides that move ultra-efficiently. They pulled their rope and we rapped down next. We had to do an extra short rappel due to our 60-meter rope.

More scrambling and more exposed climbing led us to another rappel. Then we traversed further around and decided to rappel what the guides were down climbing. We did two more rappels here with some short, fifth class, heads-up down climbing to get to the next anchor. Then it was hiking and scrambling in loose gullies, over notches, and along the ridge. Up, down, up, down. At one point, I slipped off the narrow trail and fell to my knees. Then my hands slipped and I literally planted my face into the rocks. Thankfully, I bashed my face into my cheekbone, which seemed way better than knocking my teeth out or breaking my nose. It really rang my bell though. Derek was right there and knew I was hurt. I laid there for a while just trying to get my wits about me. After less than a minute I stood up and moved on. We had a long way to go and little daylight left.

We kept traveling the ridge, up and down. We topped out the highest mini-summit and had to do two more rappels to get down into another loose gully. In general, I was always last here, as I’d pull the rope, coil it, and put it in my pack. I always encouraged Derek to just keep moving once he was off the line so that he could either follow Cory and Tigger or lead the way and find the route down. Derek did a great job of this all the way down.

Eventually, we got to Crossover Pass and the first rappel anchors of the Crack of Noon Club route. From here it would be 11 single-rope rappels down to the talus, all on 2-bolt, chain anchors. In this last section, I caught and passed Tigger who seemed to be fading a bit. This set Derek and me up to go first down the rappels. Cory asked if it would be a good idea to have the first guy down bring the second rope and set up a rappel below, but I nixed that idea. It didn’t make any sense for this many rappels, as you’d then have to pull the top rope, coil it, and transport it down to the third rappel. It made much more sense for us to descend as two teams of two and just pull the rope through the next anchors when we pulled it down. Plus, Derek and I would simul-rappel the entire thing. We’d known from the earlier rappels that we were faster than the guides.

This shows the descent we took, with the dotted yellow line being added to this photo by me.

Derek and I both got our Grigris on the rope and started down together, but not before getting our headlamps out and getting Cory’s phone number, as we suspected this might be goodbye. Our descent went super smooth. We have a lot of experience simul-rappelling. We count down weighting and unweighting the ropes. We knot the ends. We clip into the anchors…mostly. After maybe the second rappel we had to turn on the headlamps. Here simul-rappelling really helped us, as we could scan a much wider area on the descent in search of the rap anchors. Sometimes Derek would spot the anchor and sometimes I would. Each time we predicted where the descent would go and tossed our ropes in that direction. We always made the right decision. A descent this long, sight unseen, in the dark would normally be quite stressful for me, but here the angle wasn’t very steep and ledges were plentiful at each anchor. We counted down the 11 raps and were soon on talus.

Here, we finally took an extended break, though by extended I mean 15 minutes. We got to finally strip off our harnesses and helmets. We ate a ton and drank even more. We’d carried three liters from the car and still had plenty left due to the cool temperatures of the day. We had one crux left: finding the trail. In the Pacific Northwest, you cannot descend through the forest without a trail. Something that would take two hours on a trail would take two days without one. 

Derek led the way down and left across the talus, searching for pink or yellow tape or a cairn that would mark the way. We found nothing but continued on in the same general direction. Derek was faster here and he’d get out ahead, always searching. Sometimes he’d wait for me to catch up and turn on my powerful headlamp so that we could scan further. After 30 minutes or so, Derek said, “I may have found something.” When I caught up, he pointed at a cairn. Sweet. We made our way from cairn to cairn and lost them at one point, but found them again. Then we hit the forest and a very faint trail. We followed it across and up and down and then hit a T-junction. Derek followed it uphill because he spotted some tape, but after a while we turned around, figuring this must be the old route up to the pass. Back at the T-junction, we followed it down and soon it became obvious that it was the trail. At that point, Derek stopped, turned around, and gave me a big hug. This has traditionally been my move and it touched me deeply to have Derek initiate it.

It was all over now but for the marching. We couldn't do much damage to ourselves from here on it…or so we thought. We still had to drop 3600 feet.

Cory caught up to us a bit further along but Tigger never did. We chatted with Cory a bit before he dropped back to be with Tigger and that was the last we saw of him. It was fun sharing the climb and descent with these guys. They were both very solid alpine climbers and basically guided me up the route.

Derek and I continued to the only stream crossing. We walked across a one-foot-diameter log that didn’t quite reach across and the end of the log was covered in moss. Fearful of that moss at the end, we both didn’t pay as much attention to a trio of smaller logs that we stepped onto with our right foot. These logs were as slippery as anything I’ve ever stood on. Or rather, tried to stand on. They couldn’t have been more slippery if they were coated in verglas. Derek immediately slipped, but he didn’t fall. He did plunge one foot into the creek though. Warned by his slip, I inched across carefully but didn’t know the three smaller logs were the problem. As soon as I put my foot on those logs, I was down. But I landed on the logs. Trying to get up, which was impossible due to the slickness, my left hamstring cramped. I had to scoot along with my hands and feet to the other side to stand up. 

We descended on and on, our satisfaction with a great adventure increasing with every step. But fatigue was also increasing and I fell back a bit from Derek’s pace. Not much, but some and I tried to close the gap. I stumbled and not wanting to do another face plant, ran forwards in an attempt to get my feet underneath me. As I did so, something, a branch of something, stabbed me in the eye. It was excruciating pain and I cried out but kept moving. Derek stopped and turned back and I told him I got stuck in the eye. Less than a minute later I had Derek check my eye since it seemed like something was still in there.

He shined his headlamp on my eye and gasped. “Oh, Pops,” he said, “that doesn’t look good.” He immediately whipped out his phone to take a photo of my eye. I had a rapidly growing blood blister in my eye. It was big enough that had it been anywhere else besides my eye, we’d have punctured it and tried to drain the blood out. Sticking something sharp into my eye, even to drain blood, didn’t seem like a wise decision to us, so we moved on. I moved a bit slower now. I could still see out of the eye, but a bit diminished and I was gun shy about another possible stumble. It was uncomfortable to blink because my eye was so swollen that I had increased friction between my eyelid and my cornea. This would actually scratch my cornea. 

The rest of the way to the car went without incident. We got there 18h36m after leaving it. It was after 11 p.m. We hopped into the car and headed towards Chilliwack and possibly to a hospital. While the adventure ended a bit, unfortunately, the day was hugely successful. I loved that we were still a well-balanced team. We look out for and took care of each other. We had the skills and fitness to pull off this one-day ascent safely. My clumsiness cost me a bit of pain and some recovery time. It’s a price I’d rather not pay, but if I had to pay it for this climb, it was worth it to me. I don’t know how many more adventures like this I’ll have with Derek. I cherish each one.

I’ve now done 36 50CCs. Amazingly, Fred Beckey did the first ascent of seven of these classics. I still haven’t done three of these Beckey routes, but the Price Glacier on Mt. Shuksan will likely be the next one I try. The 50CCs I’ve done are, in no particular order:

• Ellingwood Arete on Crestone Needle (x3)
• Durrance Route on Devil’s Tower (x3)
• Kor-Ingalls on Castleton Tower 
• East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock (x3)
• Royal Arches (x5)
• East Face of Mt. Whitney
• South Face of Charolette Dome
• The Southeast Face of the Clyde Minaret
• The Northwest Face of Half Dome (x2)
• The Nose on El Capitan (x3)
• 
  
• 
  
• The Salathe Wall on El Capitan (x2)
• The Regular Route on Fairview Dome (x2)
• The Lost Arrow Spire
• Northcutt-Carter on the North Face of Hallet’s Peak
• The Petit Grepon (x5)
• D1 on the Diamond of Longs Peak
• Direct Exum Ridge on the Grand Teton
• The North Ridge of the Grand Teton
• The North Face of the Grand Teton
• Northeast Face of Pingora
• 
  
• 
  
• East Ridge of Wolf’s Head
• The Direct South Buttress of Mt. Moran
• The Finger of Fate on the Titan
• The Japanese Route on Mt. Alberta
• The East Ridge of Mt. Temple
• The North Face of Mt. Edith Cavell
• The West Ridge of Forbidden Peak
• Liberty Crack on Liberty Bell Mountain
• The East Ridge of Bugaboo Spire (x2)
• The Northwest Arete of Mt. Sir Donald
• 
  
• 
  
• Shiprock
• Steck-Salathe on Sentinel Rock (x2)
• The North Ridge of Mt. Stuart 
• Becky-Chouinard on South Howser Tower
• Northeast Buttress of Mt. Slesse
• Traveler Buttress on Lover’s Leap

Postscript:

We drove from the trailhead to the hospital in Chilliwack to have my eye checked out. We figured, “Healthcare is free in Canada, right?” Well, that’s just for Canadians. Unlike healthcare in Argentina, which is free to everyone. And, yes, it’s upsetting that I know these things from personal experience. Don’t worry, I also go to hospitals in the US. I’m apparently doing my own personal survey of healthcare across the globe. After the attendant found out I wasn’t Canadian, she asked for $1250 before she would proceed. I was shocked. Being within an hour of the US border where my health insurance would help me out, I opted not to pay this fee.

We were both pretty tired now, but Derek was extremely sleepy. I gave him an Advil PM after we got off the rappels and it had affected him more than expected. Either that or it was being up for 21 hours straight and working very hard for 18.5 of those hours. I had to drive and we first went to a hotel that was locked up and they didn’t answer the doorbell. I called another hotel but it was going to be $300 for the night and we’d be checking in a 1:30 a.m. Instead I drove around looking for a place to sleep and found a parking lot in the town of Cultus Lake, a short distance south of Chilliwack. We threw down the ground cloth, our pads, and bags. Derek was asleep less than 3 minutes after getting horizontal. I was so jealous. 

I slept some for sure, but my shoulder was hurting fiercely. It’s been a problem for a year or so, but much worse since my bike crash. I know I have a torn rotator cuff. I need to get (another) MRI to assess how bad it is now. I probably need to fix it and I’m not looking forward to that.

We got up around 6:30. I’d been awake since 5:30 but busied myself doing puzzles on my phone. We packed up our gear under the watchful eyes of…a security guard? I wasn’t sure, but he was giving us the stink eye that’s for sure. We headed to a Denny’s and ate like there was no tomorrow. With our belly full and our third cup of coffee empty, we headed south, back to the US, towards my sister Brook’s house, where Derek was staying. We figured we should make a quick stop by the hospital to see if we should be concerned about my eye, which was now completely red. I looked positively…satanic. How appropriate.

I figured my eye would just have to get better on its own, but I wanted to be on the safe side, especially with a terrible record of self-diagnosis. The hospital had me in a room quickly and a doctor saw me shortly afterward and did an impressive job of examining my eye for an ER doctor. Derek had mentioned earlier that one of his goals for the day was to get a doctor to say that this was the worse subconjunctival hemorrhage they'd ever seen. Derek had done some internet research on my eye issue and seen photos of my condition, but my eye looked way worse than the photos he found. The doctor did admit that it was amongst the worst she’d seen before. She took a photo of it and sent it to an on-call ophthalmologist, who recommended a CT scan to make sure no foreign debris was still in the eye. That led to a tetanus shot, an IV in my arm to inject a tracer into my blood during the CT scan, and various eye drops and antibiotics. I stayed five hours in this hospital and then had to travel to Seattle (with the I-90 bridges closed in that direction) to see the ophthalmologist that day. It made me think back to my pulmonary edema incident, where I thought the hospital was just running up the bill on a torn chest muscle. 

One happy note was that the doctor that took over for my original doctor was a climber and had done the NE Buttress of Slesse. The other doctor told him that I had “hiked” Slesse and he knew there was no hiking path to the summit. He came by to see if I had just been hiking near it or had actually climbed it. We talked about the Crossover descent, which he did before it fell away. He told me I was being discharged and said goodbye. Then ten minutes later, he came back and asked, “Are you the Bill Wright of speed climbing records?” Then we chatted more about stuff like scrambling up Flatirons and timing it. So, that was cool. 

The worst part was that my mother-in-law Marilyn passed away just as I was being wheeled into the CT room. We had just seen her last month for several days. Though she had dementia she knew who we were and her physical health seemed fine. We expected her to live a lot longer, even though that would have been tough on her and us, especially Sheri’s brother Mike. He has been in charge of her health for the past 16 months. He moved her out of Texas to an assisted living center near his home in Portland. She was relatively fine then, but it started a steady and rapid decline which ended this day. 

Sheri and I cried together on the phone and she made plans to get to Portland immediately. Not for Marilyn, of course, but for Mike and for herself. I was so frustrated that I wasn't with her to hold her. I drove to Portland in my sister's car the next morning to join her and Mike.

That night, I went to the Harbor View hospital in Seattle and it was depressing. Homeless people, a guy dripping blood from a leg wound as he wandered around the waiting area, people hurting, everybody using their phones in speaker mode, and hours of waiting. I was told it might be a three-hour wait. Derek had enough and left for home. I didn’t blame him one bit. He’s been through this before with me and it is almost as bad for him as it is for me. I’d take an Uber to Brook’s house when and if I get medical attention. It’s a horrible place to be and reminded me of the horrible hospital in Buenos Aires where Derek and I waited for hours to get medical attention. Just like then, I’m tempted to just leave and go see an eye doctor back home. Except that I don’t know when I’ll be back home. I waited for over three hours and then left, taking an Uber back to my sister's house. I'd see a doctor in Portland the next day and find out that my eye would be fine and recover in a number of weeks. I just need to keep it lubricated.

Things are tough now, but I will cherish this adventure with Derek for the rest of my days. We are already planning our next one.