I rode to trail days at cascade locks with 007, jester, hardcore, and hot tub from Bend, which I didn’t journal about at all. It’s a festival with a lot of gear vendors and some music. Everyone camps on an island in the middle of the Columbia river. It was fun, it was fine, but not exceptional - cascade locks itself is not that interesting.

I also wrote nothing about the 24-hour challenge, which I might make a separate post about, but the tl;dr is that I fell asleep after 44 miles, and managed to do another 3.5 after i woke up before the 24-hours expired for a mediocre total of 47.5 miles.

Washington was possibly the most beautiful part of trail and the least flat part of trail. Highlights include Mt. Adams, Goat Rocks, Mt. Rainier (or its indigenous name Tahoma), and many others i must be forgetting the names of. I slowed down for most of the state, trying not to night hike as much, with a lot of days in the low 20s or high teens even. Then, realizing I was behind, I ended up walking 200 miles in my final week on trail to catch up and finish with my friends on September 15th.

I didn’t have time to write much in that final week, so I wrote a (very long) narrative of it after I made it to Seattle.

Having finished, I don’t have too much in the way of reflections. In the trail log at the northern terminus i wrote in part: “I loved almost every minute of it.” And occasionally I remember like “wow i really did that. i walked from mexico to canada.” living outside is great. sleeping on the ground is great. CDT 2027 BABY!!!!

Oregon Photos 8/3 - 8/6

day 115:

hiked 8:35am-9:40pm and went 30.0 miles. (first 30 mile day) about time.

camped at mile 1812. that’s 1 mile for every year between the birth of jesus and the war of 1812.

day 116:

crater lake!

day 117:

only went 20.3 miles on trail today. side-quested nearly vertically up mt. theilsen - 1,800 ft in 0.9 miles, up to 9,100ft. couldn’t get all the way up to the peak. the last 100ft were what another hiker described as, “grade 3 and grade 4.” i don’t know what that means, but to me it looked like a vertical exposed rock face. the only route i sized up was not something i was gonna free solo. as i was going down, i saw someone else made it up. i wish i’d seen how they did it.

Oregon Photos 8/7 - 8/10

(first 2 photos of mt. thielsen at the bottom, third from (almost) the top)

day 118:

mosquitos very bad! jester passed me on a break in the morning saying simply “it’s grim.”

day 119:

deschutes national forest is in klamath county, not deschutes county.

day 121:

walked 30.5 miles today. new record modestly. tomorrow is planned 31.8.

wisdom from pig pen: after you walk 30 miles it feels like you just walked 30 miles.

day 122:

stopped at 11pm. only walked 27.2 miles. had a great time hiking with 007 this evening.

Oregon Photos 8/10 - 8/14

Trail Days Photos 8/15 - 8/16

Oregon Photos 8/17 - 8/21

Final Day in Oregon Photos 8/22

day 136:

i’ve heard it said time heals all wounds. i think time also cleans all socks. i haven’t done laundry since bend.

Washington Photos 8/23 - 8/27

(first successful use of “tarp without setting up the tent” method for a nap in a light drizzle on the day out of trout lake in photo 7. mercifully cleared blowdowns in photo 8. mt. adams in the evening in photo 9.)

day 137:

imagine if instead of volcanoes, those were giant ant hills. instead of eruptions, giant ants would come out and terrorize the surrounding populations.

i’m feeling melancholy about the trail being nearly over. we have about 400 miles left. can’t even muster much excitement for the things i’ve missed most about regular life.

at least i’ve got some pep pep pepperoni. it turns out to usually be the cheapest meat option that will last on trail.

i was eating dinner with rocksie and score in trout lake. someone brought up reintegrating into normal life and we all burst out laughing (wabol). for me at least it was because the idea is absurd. it’s really too much to comprehend or contend with.

10pm: walked 9:30am-10pm and went 25 miles. took a pretty generous nap at lunch. i’m at what i assume is a beautiful campsite up the ridge from cispus pass. hard to tell getting here when it’s so late. good stars.

day 138:

when i really don’t want to get started hiking in the morning, i’ll clean my toes with a wet wipe. that’s how i know i’m procrastinating for the day. so i was thinking it could become a new idiom.

e.g.

A: “how’s the project going?”

B: “i’ve done everything but clean my toes” (meaning “i haven’t started yet”)

or

A: “why hasn’t george done his part yet?”

B: “he must be cleaning his toes”

i made it 24 miles to white pass before the kracker barrel (a gas station/convenience store not the restaurant) closed at 6pm.

Washington Photos 8/27 - 8/29

day 141:

it’s day 17 by my count without shower or laundry. that’s a record for the shower, just beating the tehachapi to bishop stretch. laundry, the record is 19 days quincy to ashland, that’s counting the trash can laundry me and antman did in quincy. and you should count that. my clothes smelled very good after.

it’s crazy to me that electrolytes aren’t a scam. at the start of the trail i was carrying a bunch of drink packets from walmart that i thought were caffeine and electrolytes but it turns out that they were just caffeine. then i come to discover that actual electrolyte packets are many times more expensive than caffeine packets or just flavor packets. so naturally i assume it’s a scam, but i buy some anyway. turns out when i’m carrying both caffeine and electrolyte packets, i will often gravitate towards the electrolytes. i think it’s because of classical conditioning, as in i’ve subconsciously noticed i feel better when i drink them. which is crazy because that means it’s not a scam. totally the type of thing i’d be naturally cynical of. i’d say “i get tons of sodium in my food. what difference is a 500mg electrolyte packet going to make?” but there must be some difference in bioavailability with drinking it, because it really seems to have an outsized impact.

Washington Photos 8/30 - 9/4

(photos 1 & 2: first views of Rainier/Tahoma. haze in photos 3-9 due to wildfire smoke.)

day 147:

i zeroed in snoqualmie pass a few days ago to celebrate score’s birthday with drippy, tort, and parachute.

heading into snoqualmie we passed the 90% mark. real troubling considering i still don’t want this to end, which is already how i felt at the 10% mark. now i crave everything about towns and normal life much less even.

my new social network - about to be obliterated, my community - about to be shattered into smithereens, my new way of life - cancelled. such is life. the human condition and all that. i’m always melancholy in the mornings, and today anxious too.

it’s been very smoky. they closed the section from white pass to chinook pass due to a fire within a couple days of us passing through. lucked out again. it’s only a 30 mile section, but i think it’s several hours by car to get from one to the other, so a lot of people skipped straight through to snoqualmie from white pass.

i ran into antman in snoqualmie on my zero there. i hadn’t seen him since the oregon border, so it was nice to catch up but he was just passing through.

hardcore, hot tub, jester, and 007 went to zero in seattle at hardcore’s house while i was in snoqualmie. would’ve liked to join, but no space in the car for me. not taking it personally, since they all hike together consistently and i just kind of float around. i had a good time in snoqualmie too anyway.

this section is hard. lots of up and down. very steep. you’re rewarded for it though because it’s incredibly pretty. washington really making oregon and norcal look like filler. lots of time spent ridge-hopping, which is nice even compared to the sierras, where the trail would take us up and over a pass and then back down into the valley right away.

lots of people are complimenting my calves these days. i was gonna write how in my version of the narcissus story, i walk off a cliff because i’m looking straight down admiring my calves. in reality though i think they look kinda freakish.

on the snoqualmie resupply, i picked up a loaf of bread. the cashier, and presumable store owner was like “i really don’t want to sell this to you. it’s past expiration.” i don’t know what came over me but i acted as a person who doesn’t “believe” in expiration dates. i kept insisting it would be fine until he finally gave it to me. he didn’t charge me. anyway, i had to throw 3 slices out because they were super moldy. since then, i usually scan the bread for little flecks of mold and usually find something suspicious. but i’m like 99% sure that such a small amount of mold is totally fine to eat anyway.

huckleberries all over the place, but good perfectly ripe ones sometimes as little as once per day. if i hit i good patch before lunch i can’t help but gorge myself.

the morning i went into trout lake i had an absolute feast of berries for breakfast. i got to camp after dark and woke up surrounded by perfectly ripe bushes.

i have like 4 different bags with like 3oz each of absolutely obliterated cheese-it crumbs each. sometimes i don’t finish my cheese-it’s, then still buy more in town and so there’s an accumulation. it’s a little backup source for when i run out of other salty snacks.

the day i left snoqualmie i tried to eat a pint of ben and jerry’s and a giant dr. pepper for breakfast. much like a toddler overdosing on candy, my tummy hurt after, and i had to rest until it felt better. turns out half a pound of sugar for breakfast might not be the best option. huh. i had the same meal for lunch on my day into town and handled it great though.

i realized i was so dirty from my dusty campsite last night that i had to wash up in the river. when i splashed water on myself, it would turn to mud.

i hiked only 21 miles today to a beautiful campsite next to a lake named glacier. the vertical component of those 21 miles was 5,300 feet up and 3,700 feet down, so not even a lot really. i’m stopping at only 7:30pm. the days are getting shorter as we rapidly approach the autumnal equinox, and washington both is best appreciated during the day and has a lot more things to trip over, so i’ve been trying not to night hike so much.

this leaves a 14 mile day to stevens pass and a hitch to leavenworth tomorrow.

Washington Photos 9/4 - 9/6

day 148:

i got rained on last night. wasn’t expecting it. i was cowboyed. eventually i set my tent up after cowering beneath its tarp for a while repeating the mantra “this too shall pass! this too shall pass! this too shall pass!”

it was pretty terrible. my sleeping bag actually didn’t get that wet but the tent was wet inside and out and my sleeping pad was wet and covered in mud.

anyway i just did the 🍑 dump truck challenge 🍑 this morning. a 700ft climb in 0.7 miles to put your glutes to the test. my time was 14:26, which is pretty middle of the pack. some people who i know are really fast reported about the same, but the fastest reported time i see is 11:46 by Jynx.

Washington Photos 9/6 - 9/7

(photo 2 my beautiful campsite before getting rained on, photo 3 the next morning, photo 4 top of the dumptruck challenge)

day 149:

no one with a car less than 15 years old picks up hitchhikers. not this hitchhiker at least. when i was with hardcore she got us some pretty nice rides. but i just got my fellow bachelors looking out for me.

today picked up by a local in an old chevy sedan - looked like it had been in an accident. passenger door doesn’t work so i rode in the back. guy had replaced the thermostat but said he was still having problems and overheated that morning, but we made it as far as he was going, about halfway back to stevens pass. i got picked up for the rest of the ride pretty quickly by a young guy in a big white work van. i think he said he worked on cell towers.

Washington Photos 9/9 - 9/10

day 152:

just finished the 108 miles between stevens pass and stehekin in less than 72 hours.

25.5 miles tuesday afternoon.

35 miles wednesday.

35 miles thursday.

12.5 miles in friday morning.

wednesday and thursday 7,900 feet of ascent each. lots of blowdowns, and 1 river i had to ford on wednesday. very impressive pace. these calves ain’t just for show.

also having to focus 24/7 on hiking distracts me from how disappointed i am to be finishing. i was even walking in my dreams. and the long days make it seem like hiking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. i won’t be sad to not have to do any more 30s.

Washington Photos 9/10 - 9/13

(photo 5: having an existential crisis with only 100 miles left; wearing a bandana because i lost my sunglasses. photo 7: campsite the night before stehekin.)

Washington Photos 9/13 - 9/14

NORTHERN TERMINUS 9/15!!!!

POST-TRAIL NARRATION OF THE FINAL WEEK

My final week on the PCT was totally insane. I took my time getting from Snoqualmie to Stevens pass, and hitched to Leavenworth on Sunday 9/6. I had gotten soaked the night before. I was cowboyed and it rained unexpectedly. So I decided to zero in Leavenworth on 9/7. It’s also a cute town with a german theme to all the architecture. I didn’t realize quite how far behind everyone else I was. Almost everyone I knew had hiked out on Sunday 9/6, and I heard they were planning to finish on 9/15. This meant that if I didn’t want to finish alone I would have to hike the final 188 miles of the trail in a week. Actually, more like 6 days, since it would take me a while to get back to trail on Tuesday, and I would want to finish pretty early on the 15th.

I got back on trail on Tuesday 9/8 around 12:30pm, and walked 25.5 miles that day. As I was walking I was formulating the rest of my plan in order to finish. I realized that to pick up my package in Stehekin and make it out in a reasonable time, I would have to be on the 12:30pm shuttle to town on Friday. That meant finishing the 108 mile stretch from Steven’s pass to Stehekin in 72 hours total. This section is also notorious for poor maintenance, blowdowns, and overgrowth, and it has an average grade of 440 ft/mile, much higher than most of the trail up to this point.

I decided that to do this I would need to do 35 miles for the next two days. My plan for making this happen was to hike ~8am-10pm both days and keep an average pace of 2.5 mi/hr all day, including all breaks, filtering water, etc.. With this framework, I could “earn” 1 hour of break with 5 hours of walking at 3mi/hr. Walking 3.5mi/hr you get 1 hour of break every 2.5 hours of walking. Less than 3mi/hr and you hardly get anything. So it’s a good system for motivating a fast pace. On the other hand, when you can’t keep 3 mi/hr up the hill, it feels pretty devastating.

The first day I built a 1-2 mile lead early in the day, and just took a few 20 minute breaks here and there to maintain it after I started running into tons of blowdowns. Then around mile 20 I took my shoes off to ford a river, followed by the steep climb to Fire Creek Pass, followed by the overgrown descent, and I ended up getting to camp a little late. But I still made the 35 for the day.

The second day I think I started a little late, and struggled to catch up to the schedule all morning. Finally, at the halfway point, 17.5 miles, I had built up a bit of a lead and was able to take a 20 minute break and set out right on schedule. Then I cooked my way up the 10 mile climb up to Suiattle Pass. The grade was 400-500ft/mile, but I climbed it like it was flat. I was easily going >3.5 miles/hr. I took another solid break close to the top. The last few miles of the day seemed to drag on forever, but I still made it to camp almost an hour early.

These two days both had 7,900 feet of ascent, which is as much as it sounds like.

The next morning Drippy and Tort passed my campsite in the morning before I left - I must have passed them the night before. It was just 12.7 miles into Stehekin, and it was almost all downhill. I made it onto the shuttle, picked my package up in town, and had a long hard think about whether I wanted to keep pushing to catch up with 007, hardcore, jester, and hot tub, and finish on 9/15 or whether I would be happy finishing with drippy, tort, and score on 9/16. I was tired and dehydrated this day, and it was a difficult decision. I think largely it may have been the sunk cost fallacy, which pushed me to continue on. What were those 35 mile days for if not to catch up with the other group? So I got the 5:30pm shuttle out.

This “shuttle” was absurd by the way. It’s marketed as a tour bus of the Stehekin valley, and it’s the longest 10 miles of your life. The driver stopped the bus to point out his “favorite stand of timber in the valley” both going in and going out. He stops at a random trailhead to see if anyone wants to get off, like we don’t have other places to be, and like anyone is going to do this random loop trail with no ride back to anywhere.

When I had packed my box to Stehekin on my 0 in Leavenworth, variety in food had not been top of my mind. And I knew I had to lock in, so it wasn’t the time to be trying new stuff anyway. I had bought what I knew I liked, and stuff I wouldn’t have to cook - since I knew I wouldn’t have time for long lunches. This is to say, that I walked out of Stehekin with over 7,000 calories of cheezits, 7,000 calories of peanut m&ms, and a dream. Beyond that I had around 3,000 calories of rice, 2,200 calories of snickers, probably around 3,000 of goldfish, and a couple thousand calories of chips ahoy crumbs.

That evening I realized I had left my headlamp at camp in the morning, and so I only got another 4 miles in before it got dark, with the sun setting before 7:30pm at this point and the days rapidly getting shorter.

The next morning, I took my time, I wasn’t feeling super motivated. 76 miles from the border, I figured at this point that things would work out one way or another - at least I was ahead of drippy, tort, score, and could finish with them if I didn’t catch the other group. And I would have to stop earlier now, whenever it got dark, not having my headlamp. But at this point I was used to walking the faster pace, so I still managed to do 31 miles that day.

The next day I woke up with an ant bite on my back angry as hell. It was super swollen, and hurt to touch. I had been bitten by this ant in the Sierras, literally like 3 months before, and this bite had been on a whole journey of its own. I had a rash for a while, then I thought it cleared up, but I noticed in leavenworth, “huh, that bump is pretty big still.” But it really hadn’t bothered me on trail at all until now. I lost probably close to an hour that morning trying to figure out how to adjust my pack so it didn’t hurt so much. I got to a point where it was bearable, but barely. The pain was basically all I could think about for the first few miles of the day, until it started raining.

Walking through the cold rain and wind with my back hurting, I had a moment of thinking “I don’t wanna be here,” which was so rare for me on trail. After 15.5 miles, around 2pm I made it to Hart’s pass, the last road the trail crosses in the US, 30 miles from the border, where someone had set up a trail magic tent. I was able to get out of the rain for a bit and have a hot beverage and see that 007, hardcore, hot tub, and jester, had all signed the trail log he had that very morning. My back settled down a bit throughout the day, and I was able to push my total to 31 again a little before it was getting dark. It was also getting cold, and my stuff was wet from getting rained on all day. Otherwise I would have kept going a couple miles, but I needed to lie down.

It kept raining all night, and I thought there was no way I was gonna be up and out of my tent before 9am with the rain and the cold. But in the morning, in my tent, less than 15 miles from Canada, I thought about how much pain I had already endured to make it here, and was able to convince myself, “what’s a little more cold?” So I made it out before 8am.

My assumption was that the 007, hardcore, hot tub, jester group would camp close to the border, that they would be there early, and that they would stay a long time. So the question was just if I could make it there before they left. Given the distance I had, I thought I was looking at being there around 1pm if I pushed, and I wasn’t sure if that would be enough.

It stopped raining within the first hour or two after I started hiking, still windy and cloudy, and my back didn’t feel quite as bad today.

When I had crossed through Chinook pass on labor day, there had been a couple dayhikers blasting Hamilton, “here comes the general” as they went through. Heading down to the border, as a former Hamilton fan, a different lyric was stuck in my head “teach me how to say goodbye” from the song “one last time” where Washington reveals to Hamilton that he won’t be running again after his second term and sings some of his farewell address. With how miserable the previous day had been, I found myself actually excited to be finishing up and getting off trail, returning to civilization.

Around 4 miles from the border, my heart sank as I passed Parachute hiking out. He had been hiking with the 007, hardcore, jester, hot tub bubble for most of Washington, and he’s the fastest hiker in the group, so I was worried that they’d be right behind him, which they weren’t, but I still worried that I would catch them on their way out at any point in the last few miles.

But I got to the border some time 12-12:30pm and there were a ton of people there, including the whole crew. I learned that they had camped 11-12 miles from the border and just gotten there maybe an hour before. The entire clearing next to the terminus filled up. I counted, and at peak there were over 30 people there. We sat on the Canadian side of the border. We celebrated, took pictures at the terminus, read through the trail log where people left heartfelt messages. The clouds broke and the sun started to come out. One hiker performed a poem he had written in the previous couple weeks, and there was not a dry eye in the crowd when he finished.

We hiked out around 4pm, and I went back to camp with 007, hardcore, hot tub, and jester. It was a cold night. My sleeping bag was still wet, and I slept horribly. But I had done it. After hiking 200 miles in the last week, I caught up to the group, I finished the trail, all my hopes and dreams had been achieved.

Mommycore was picking up the group at 2pm the next day, so the group started at 6am in order to hike the 19 miles back to Hart’s pass in time. She only has room for 4 in her car, and as someone who mostly just hiked around the group, I obviously was not getting a seat in the mommybus, but I still hiked out with them out of solidarity, for the first 4 miles - then I found a suitable spot to take a nap as it finally warmed up for the day. I savored my last day on trail, for the first time in a week, not on any particular deadline. Still, since I wanted to eat something other than cheezits for dinner and not sleep in a wet sleeping bag, I would have to finish before the end of the day.

When I was getting close to Hart’s pass, I passed a lady who asked me “Are you done?” I said, “Yup, just finished,” and she said “OK, Hart’s pass is a half mile that way.” I said “yup, yup.” She may as well have said, “No you’re not. Keep walking loser.”

I got to Hart’s pass a little after 4pm and no one was there except the trail magic guy and one other hiker. Incredible, after the crowds I had seen the day before. It didn’t feel very welcoming, so I started walking the road. Within less than a mile, a car came by and picked me up. They were headed to Winthrop and I asked them to drop me there. I changed into my less tattered shirt, ate a burger, and made a reservation at a hotel. I walked over to the hotel, and they said they double-booked, so they didn’t actually have a room, so I walked back across town to the hostel, but it turned out to be really nice, because no one was there either, so I had the whole 6 person dorm to myself for $100 less than the hotel would’ve been.

The next day, I availed myself of the Okanogan county public transit system, grabbing a bus to Twisp, where I got the best Sri Lankan food from a food truck, before catching the bus to Pateros, where I got a cinnamon roll at the bakery, before catching the bus to Chelan, which had perfect timing to connect to the bus to Wenatchee. The first 3 busses were $1 each and the fourth was free. And that part of Washington turns out to be beautiful as well, although much drier than everything we had just hiked through.

There, I got a travelodge for the night and booked the 6:45am amtrak to Seattle for the morning. After which I made my way to the Seattle public library where I’m currently typing this. My first time using a desktop/laptop computer in over 5 months - probably the longest break I’ve taken since I could talk.

the photos are too many to do all at once, but i’ll try to add more sunday morning. substack lost an earlier draft of this post so now i’m paranoid and just want to get it out ASAP.

day 65:

we took a later trolley - i think 10am back to the trailhead (from mammoth). we had planned a slow day to check out the hot springs near red meadows and devil’s postpile, and to camp before the JMT/PCT junction, where we wanted to follow the JMT. Our permits don’t allow us to camp on the JMT so we would have to finish the section until it rejoins the PCT 14 miles later on the same day.

the hot springs here should be called “hot spring” because it’s just one concrete cistern with a few cinder blocks in it for seats. it was extremely hot. rumor was 107 degrees. there was a small creek running my next to it that you could sit in to switch between hot and cold.

day 66:

we had some debate about whether this should be a 27 mile day so we would get to yosemite on thursday instead of friday, thinking we might have a better chance of getting a walk up permit for yosemite. (ok hardcore was in favor and me and jeromi were opposed). thursday is juneteenth, so it could be just as busy since it’s a holiday, and i think we wanted to enjoy the pretty lakes anyway, so we took it pretty slow again and just did the JMT section that we can’t camp on, something like 14 miles. we camped where it rejoined the PCT by Thousand Island Lake. It was very pretty.

i’m thinking about how self righteous the stuff about the ant in my tent must have sounded last post. it’s not really like that. i eat pounds of meat and guzzle milk in town every time. i get immense joy from killing all these mosquitos. i just like the ants. i wanna be homies with the ants. me and the ants are mostly at peace with each other.

day 67:

again we’re restricted on camping. we crossed into yosemite at the top of donahue pass. there’s an 11 mile stretch through the park that you can’t camp in. so we hiked up to the edge of that and set up for the night. this leaves 5.6 to get to the ranger station to get a permit tomorrow.

day 68:

we left camp at 5:15am in order to get to the ranger station at toulumne meadows an hour before they open so we could be first in line for walk-in permits for half dome and hiking into yosemite valley.

we made it to the ranger station right on time at 7. no one else around. jaden and jeromi both have service here but i don’t.

PCT paralleled a road before the station but didn’t cross it. it looks like the PCT did cross a road at 916, but we hiked the JMT for that portion instead. So we have yet to cross a paved road on the PCT since 705.9 just past kennedy meadows. But in 0.4 miles at 943.7 we will cross highway 120. Either way, over 200 miles without one crossing the trail.

we got a permit! they didn’t have any walk ups, but after waiting till 11AM, we were able to claim a no-show.

today was long - 19.5 miles total. but tomorrow we are only doing 8. from our backcountry site near sunrise lakes, over cloud’s rest, and down to the base of half dome, which we will hike the next day. then we can either spend another night at the base of half dome or we can spend a night in the valley. feels like we are on vacation. today was the travel day. we are sleeping in tomorrow.

the three easy days earlier this week also make it feel like vacation, even though today was harder.

none of us had been in yosemite before. and the ranger seemed to think it was pretty special that our first time to the valley would be walking in.

day 69:

vacation! today was one of the greatest days of my life. we left camp at like 8:15, were at the top of cloud’s rest by like 10:30, and then we loitered at the top until a bit after 4pm. we even broke out the sleeping bags and took a nap. we ate and hung out in the sleeping bags because it was cold. permit got checked by rangers twice. first time i’ve seen any on trail.

we joked about what if we get checked by the same rangers while we’re chilling in our sleeping bags on top of half dome tomorrow. because it is strange behavior. no one else was doing it. most people probably stayed at the top 30 minutes, 1 hour tops. i love how we just claimed our space and shamelessly soaked it in. yosemite valley is quite the sight.

things that every single person who walked passed said to us:

-did you guys sleep up here?

-now you guys have got the right idea.

one middle aged indian woman said to me “isn’t your life just the best?” i said, “it absolutely is.”

the high today was apparently 52. it was chilly.

we are calling the chipmunks mountain sharks because of the way they circle around.

day 70:

on top of half dome, loitering again. jaden and i did not bring enough food. there is a $32 breakfast buffet in the valley that runs 7-10. we are going to get there at 7 tomorrow and get our money’s worth.

i have about 2500 calories for the day, after rationing yesterday evening. i found a clementine in my bag this morning so i had some breakfast.

these chipmunks are little freaks. they roll around in the dirt. they chew on little plants. one of em hauled a pickle over here it must have stolen from a hiker. then it didn’t even eat it. the others don’t like it either.

our round trip hike up half done was about 4 miles, and we left a lot of our stuff at the campsite so we had light packs. most people come up 8 miles one way from the valley with something like 4,000ft+ elevation gain. ultimately it’s got to be the easiest possible way to do half dome. still, the cables were steeper than i expected.

day 71:

when we got to the buffet i joked that i was gonna eat all the salmon in the building. they in fact did run out of salmon while we were there.

i did pretty good. ate a pound of strawberrries, a pound of bacon, some sausages, all the salmon they had, some trout which they put out after they ran out of salmon, a couple tiny bagels, cream cheese, a couple pastries, some breakfast potatoes, two glasses of milk, one glass of OJ. we had to lay down outside when we were done to let it all settle. the waiter was super kind and even got some to-go boxes for us to fill up for lunch.

after setting up camp at the backpacker campground and resupplying from the village store, we rented bikes and cycled down to el capitan. which is about 5.5 miles one way. i don’t think the rental company or the trail maintenance crew envision people biking down there - the trail isn’t really maintained for it with roots and rocks sticking out in some sections - but on our way back, we saw a couple in their 40s who had the same idea.

we’re getting a bus up to tuolomne meadows (pronounced too-wall-um-nee by people in the know but i keep saying too-loom-nee).

day 73:

7pm: i’ve gone 16.2 miles today.

9:25pm: finished the last 6.3 miles for the day by 9:10 and just set up camp in record time. that’s 22.5 miles for the day, 5,000 feet ascent, 6,800 feet descent. might be the highest elevation day so far - could definitely beat the high passes.

i didn’t leave camp until after 10am this morning, so i think i made pretty good time.

34.6 miles to kennedy meadows north. goal is 10am day after tomorrow. long day ahead. tomorrow is so extremely flat by comparison though, i think it’s gonna feel great.

made good time in the evening because if i even thought about taking a break i’d be totally swarmed by mosquitos. walked through a few clouds of them today where i didn’t want to breath because i was afraid i would inhale one.

avg grade today: 527 ft/mile

avg grade next 25 miles: 277 ft/mile

day 74:

passed mile 1,000 today!

the mosquitos were very bad. yesterday evening through 2:30pm today were the worst of it. then a little break. this evening was still extremely bad by normal standards - just better than yesterday.

i have finally managed to overpack sweets relative to my own desires. getting into kennedy meadows north, i will have left oreos, chocolate chips, and maybe some peanut butter. but at least i have extra food - not as much extra as i thought. i’m pretty sure i’ve been eating 5,000 calories/day again.

pad of my big toe on my right foot feels numb.

altra claims their shoes last 300 miles. most people say they can get 500. i figured mine would magically last 700-1000. my first ones i did at least 750 in, including my time in tucson. the end of my last shoes’ lives is also when my ankle started hurting the most  and when i was getting blisters. i’m starting to think this may not be a coincidence.

my current pair is already feeling pretty old. i think being wet all the time from the river crossings doesn’t help.

have to leave camp at 5am tomorrow. kennedy meadows north appears to claim they have AYCE soft serve for $5 but that sounds too good to be true.

day 75:

made it to the shuttle pickup around 9:15. 8 people waiting at 9:30. 12 at 9:45.

today was first significant amount of snow since mammoth. beautiful friday morning.

efficient in and out of kmn. ate a 1lb burger, a big bowl of soft serve, a half gallon of milk, resupplied, 2:30pm shuttle back to the trailhead. i am so tired. good news we are only going 6.5 miles more today.

camped at mile 1024.4

day 76:

thinking that the novelty of living a new way of life has worn off. not to say that’s all negative. things are easier now, less uncertain, and i have more confidence. i have gone 1,000 miles and finished the most difficult part of the trail. and there is still novelty of new environments. i’m in a new environment almost every day. we’ll see if the enthusiasm for that lasts. i’ve heard rumors of the NorCal blues. lots of people say it’s the worst part of the trail (dividing it into SoCal/desert, sierras, NorCal, oregon, and washington). i think it will be kind of nice to see more civilization again. like sure pure nature is great, but that’s all i’ve been in for a month.

i came over a pass between the last campsite and the one i’m staying at - well it’s not called a pass, but it was shaped like one. it had great views for sunset even though the sun was already behind the mountain.

comments promised i would have service at the top of the pass and at camp but i have nothing.

lots of frogs by the lake i’m camping by

day 78:

i want soda. i want milk. i want peaches. i want salt and vinegar chips. cookie dough. pineapple.

day 79-80:

our 0 in tahoe was not very restful. everything in town was super far apart and required taking busses that run on 30min frequencies. jeromi and i shipped packages of food ahead to sierra city.

day 81:

we went 7.3 miles then saw a lake that was too pretty not to camp by and stopped for the day. tomorrow is july 4th so we’re taking the holiday early. it was hardcore’s idea and me and antman obviously aren’t going to be any pushback.

beautiful sunset. feeling very sure today there’s nowhere i’d rather be.

we’re gonna make up for it tomorrow because we have to do 26 to have any chance of seeing fireworks, but rumor is fireworks are banned. it might just be fire conditions this year. maybe we have some chance of seeing drones.

day 82:

slept in. ate a lot before i left camp. left sometime 8:30-10:00am. i checked the time a little after i left but i don’t remember what it was. i think it was most likely after 9:00. did the 26.1 and got to camp at 9:45pm.

right around 8:00 i passed a campsite where a woman told me that there had been a bear sighting 0.2 miles away. i asked when and she said 40 minutes ago, and the calmest part of my mind decided it was probably long gone by now, and apparently that was correct.

1 mile before camp today i passed a pit toilet, and i actually could have used it but i looked inside and decided i would rather dig a hole.

i didn’t really eat lunch or dinner. just snacks all day. mainly, i think, because i didn’t have time to take a longer stop.

day 83:

i left camp at 9:50. hardcore and antman left at 7:50.

6pm: i have 6 miles left for the day. i was just thinking about how crazy it will be when i am reunited with my car and let loose in society again. all the cliche’d things, but i really think having grocery stores at my fingertips will be the most incredible thing.

on the other hand, i look out at the mountains and i think “i live here.” and it will be weird not living here - i mean not waking up with a beautiful view of a lake and then walking 20 miles through the mountains.

norcal has been incredibly beautiful so far. i don’t want to speak too soon. at this point i am only 48 miles in, but it is far exceeding my expectations.

we’re approaching 3 months of being out here. we’re approaching the half way point on trail. we’ve been discussing possible end-date targets. and the biggest thing i’ve learned is that it will greatly depend on what fire closures are in our future. norcal, is in fact, already on fire. it’s around mile 1500 but that part will probably be closed. maybe there will be an alternate or road walk. we will see. anyway we’re saying september 14th at the latest.

day 84:

we swung into a ski resort a quarter mile off trail at donner pass for lunch (yes that donner pass). a lady there gave me a fancy looking electrolyte packet. i was pretty excited because what i’ve learned from strangers giving me things is that the fancy stuff usually tastes pretty good. but right before i was about to use it, i saw the flavor was “citrus salt.” i thought “oh no. that sounds terrible.” but as it turns out it’s actually a delicious lemonade flavor. the bougie once again vindicated.

we crossed i-80 today.

day 85:

last night was the first norcal night with bad mosquitoes and it was terrible. i had cowboyed for the few nights before, but had my tent up immediately yesterday.

the thing is that when there aren’t mosquitoes there is an exotic collection of other bugs including the biggest horse flies you’ve ever seen. i will take anything over the mosquitoes though.

norcal is hotter, but not too bad. usually there is a nice breeze and it’s not too exposed most of the time.

having a lot of trouble finding music i’ll like these days.

been meaning to write about it for days, but antman convinced me to pack out powdered milk and cereal. great decision. put some powdered milk in my rice. add some calories, some protein, thicken it up. it’s also funny to me that by adjusting the amount of water you mix in you can potentially have “a strong glass of milk.” or in my case “a strong pot of milk” as i carry no cup. really i only tried drinking it on its own once and i wasn’t a huge fan.

i joked that i am an ingredient household this week. i packed enough cheese and salami and cashews to cover a good amount of calories and nothing to unify these elements, each their own snack. except my big block of sharp cheddar melted on the first day and i haven’t touched it. haven’t finished the cashews either, but i better because there’s another pound in the sierra city box. the only unsalted cashews in lake tahoe came in a 2lb container.

i am days ran out of the sweet snacks though and nearly out of the salty snacks, so it will soon come to that.

our hotel in tahoe was like 0.1 miles from the border with Nevada. i was tempted to walk over, but at the end of the day couldn’t be bothered to walk 0.2 miles to step over an imaginary line. but i will spend my entire life walking the 2,650 mile long imaginary line.

this cheese really isn’t that bad. you should see my water bottles though. i’ve been reusing the same ones since i started. there’s a black film at the bottom of a couple and they taste pretty funny. i will be replacing those soon.

i was finishing up my lunch when a japanese guy came by. he laid out a tarp to sit on and set his stuff on. meanwhile, i, like a gremlin, was eating my one pound block of cheese, straight from the package, sitting in the dirt, items and bags strewn all about me.

day 86:

as i was trying to fall asleep last night, i made eye contact with a mouse close to my face. i was cowboyed again, this time because there was no room to set up my tent, but at least there were barely any mosquitoes out.

we had 4.7 on trail, then we were 1.5 miles by road from sierra city. we started to walk, but we eventually got a ride. it’s a small old gold rush town. the three buildings of concern to us are the general store, the post office, and the public bathrooms.

we picked up our packages. i had mostly forgotten what was in mine and was pleasantly surprised, mostly by the chips ahoy cookies i had sent. i only bought a couple bags of chips from the store to supplement what i sent.

i ate a 1lb burger, a chocolate milkshake, a half gallon of 2% milk, and 2 oranges. i think i accidentally got upsold to the grilled onions on the burger, but it was totally worth it. best burger on trail so far, for real. and the milkshake was good too, thick with real ice cream.

my 3700 calorie bovine meal carried me through the rest of the day. i didn’t eat anything else till getting to camp around 8:30pm, 15 miles further up.

antman and i decided we are going into quincy and staying overnight for our next resupply. hardcore is trying to make more miles and so she is going to the caribou crossroads store which is closer to trail.

day 88:

at mile 1251, middle fork feather river. our first time below 3000 feet since mile 533 on the LA aqueduct.

i think my toes look more muscular.

took a swim in the river. warmest water we’ve passed in a long time. maybe ever. well it’s actually too fast and strong to be comfortable for swimming. i found a rock to sit on waist-deep for a while.

i put sunscreen on my face today. i’ve been burning worse lately.

anyway i couldn’t pass up the river even though now i’ll be lucky to get to camp by 10pm. tough day. we did 26 yesterday and planning on 26 for today. but today has been a burn zone with a bunch of blow downs, and a detour around a section of trail that hasn’t been maintained since the fire and basically doesn’t exist anymore. the worst of that should be behind me but now the rest of the day is all up hill with 3,900 ft of elevation climb (well also 1,500 ft descent).

it’s a thursday!

amazing how much dirt is still on me even after the swim. it’s like it’s really embedded in there: my hands, my toes, the backs of my legs.

i ran out of water 3.5 miles before the river, but i’m feeling revived now.

i pretty much nailed the food situation out of sierra city. i mean i have the perfect amount packed - although a little low on sweets today. i was craving a slushie today - like cherry coke probably.

day 89-90:

had a very lazy 0 in quincy. did laundry by hand in the hotel trash can.

day 91:

left quincy today. final distance: 27.9 miles. 5,600 feet up, 6,200 feet down. smashing the total daily distance record of 27.2 on the day before arriving at kennedy meadows south. it’s also definitely in contention with the highest elevation days. we got an early ride and were back to trail by 7:30am. hiked until nearly 9pm. had decent length lunch and another break at the bottom of the big descent for the day, waiting out the heat for a bit.

while today was a very steep day for norcal, tomorrow will be more gradual.

day 93:

it was so hot yesterday i siesta’d at lunch for 2.5 hours and only made it 19.8 miles.

today is not quite so bad. i left camp early today, so 8am, and now at 2:30 i have been 14 miles today. there is a campsite at 29 which is the goal, although it feels like a waste to not do 30 at that point.

i passed the halfway point this morning.

i feel like this has shifted from a spend time outside enjoy nature endeavor to an athletic endeavor. 30 feels like a serious distance, and regular 25s also feels like a lot. my mindset has gradually adapted to this shift - beginning with climbing a pass every day in the sierras before mammoth.

lots of deer around.

i passed sleeping beauty today where we had 1 unburned mile of trees. i commented on it and she said enjoy it while it lasts because the next 100 miles are all burned.

i get new shoes in burney!!

9:30pm: made it to camp just now. finished the 29 for the day. very happy to be done. there was another 8 mile unburned stretch, but i’m again sleeping in the burn.

i got in at 9:30 yesterday too so i feel like i haven’t lost time. i will be trying to do about the same tomorrow.

the 29 doesn’t include the 0.3 i did each way in the morning down to get water either. my phone says i walked 30.4 miles today.

lots of stars again finally. in the sierras i was always in a tent, and there’s been a lot of tree cover and the moon has been waxing and full, but now that we’re past the full moon and in the burn zone, they are phenomenal once again.

day 95:

i look like a chimney sweep. i went into the bathroom at the cafe in old station and had a lot of dirt on my face again. cowboying doesn’t help.

10:45pm: made it to camp. did 25.8 trail miles today. around 2.5 off trail - 1 into and out of old station and 1.5 exploring the subway caves (as caveman, i am obligated). phone has 30.5 total miles walked for the day somehow though.

just barely passed mile 1400. 1300-1400 will be the first 100 miles i’ve done in under 100 hours. in fact, i have a photo of the 1300 mile mark at 11:30am monday, and i passed 1400 around 10:30pm thursday, so 83 hours. but that’s about the pace i’ll have to do to finish by early september.

day 96:

i had 12.3 miles into burney. i got a hitch pretty quick from a mt. shasta resident who occasionally helps out hikers.

i got new shoes at the post office! they were desperately needed. a wise man would’ve replaced his shoes in tahoe. and to be fair i did check one of the gear stores in tahoe and they didn’t have my size.

i feel like i’m walking on a cloud. i never ever want to go back to how it was before. i forgot how comfortable shoes could be.

day 97-100:

i saw a mountain lion. she took off as soon as i rounded the corner.

i got stung by a bee. i haven’t been stung by one before, but i have been stung by a ground wasp. i’m gonna say that the wasp was 50-100x more painful in intensity and also several hundred times longer in duration. i can’t believe i spent so much time being afraid of bees. good news is i’m definitely not allergic.

day 100 i made it into castella around 7 and resupplied at ammirati’s market.

day 101:

got some meat sticks in castella. the first ingredient, having an unnecessary level of specificity, is pork hearts. yum.

day 102:

hiked 9-9 and did exactly 25 miles. it was flat so i feel like it’s not great distance for all that time and indeed it felt pretty moderate.

thunder and lightning and the lightest sprinkle when i got to camp. i was trying to see if i’d be able to cowboy, but the rain picked up. rough time pitching my tent - pretty rocky ground. but it’s successfully keeping me dry now.

it was nice when the storm rolled in because it wasn’t so hot today with the clouds and wind, and up until now it was just that tiny sprinkle.

no service tonight.

day 103:

hiked 10-10 today and did 26.4. still leaves me with 27.4 to etna. i possibly could get there tomorrow, but not until late, even with determination and an early start. so sunday morning it is i guess.

day 104:

hiked 11-10 and did 23.9 leaving 3.5 to etna tomorrow.

day 105:

i got in and out of etna in pretty good time and did 10.7 miles past it by 9. i’ve got 81.3 miles to the oregon border. lots of deer today.

day 106:

i got a green apple jolly rancher flavored, bright green, caffeinated drink powder at dollar general. it’s really something - as in sickeningly accurate. love this about capitalism, but i will not be drinking the rest of them.

hiked something around 9-9. went 24.2 miles. could’ve pushed a little harder, but no more campsite for 2.8 miles.

21.7 miles to seiad valley, 57.1 to the oregon border.

day 107:

this morning i peed off the edge of my sleeping pad. right after i laid back down a buck came over and started lapping it up 2 feet away from my feet. i’m camped 0.1 miles past a spring. it’s not like we’re in the desert.

today is our first day in a long time below 2,000 feet. in fact, the first time since mile 210.

while i was climbing out of seiad valley at 9:30pm i heard ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. rattlesnake, right on trail. i didn’t even see it. i hopped, skipped, and jumped back and retreated to compose myself. then, i slowly and carefully crept up trail until i saw it again. i stared it down for a couple minutes, but it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere, so i headed back down trail until i found a flatish spot to lie down. it is 9:45 now after all.

from the store in seiad valley i went 4.2 for a total of 25.9 for the day.

day 108:

crossed the border into oregon today! we had a big group little celebration at the border. after 3.5 months, i have finished walking across california.

day 109:

short day into ashland. i got really lucky getting a ride. right as i got to highway 99 the one other hiker there said his wife would be there to pick him up in the next 10 minutes and they could give me a ride into ashland.

they dropped me at albertsons’. i had let my phone die, so i walked over to a chinese restaurant to charge it. their outlets weren’t working, but i got lunch and the waitress tipped me off that i could stay at the local art collective for free. i was able to charge my phone at an outlet i found at the albertsons’ and then wandered my way over there.

i took a bus to walmart to buy resupply, including enough to send packages to a couple forward locations in oregon.

day 47: (contains unvarnished descriptions of illness)

we left kennedy meadows after breakfast. i felt really good for the first part of the day. when we stopped for lunch (at like 3pm) i didn’t really have any appetite but tried to eat anyway. then i started feeling pretty horrible all at once - nauseous and had chills. i told jaden and jeromi to keep going and that i was going to take a nap. i laid there until a bit after 6 and wasn’t really feeling any better.

once i finally got myself to start packing up i saw a full size black bear a little ways back and finished packing up rapidly. I went it to the next water source 1 mile further along and stayed there for the night. i was generally starting to feel better but a little before moonset i had some diarrhea and threw up everything in my stomach.

i’m only at 8,000 feet so i don’t want to say it’s altitude sickness, but it can have pretty wide ranging symptoms so it could be. we’ve been over 8,000 several times before on this trail and i’ve felt fine. even leaving out of wrightwood to summit baden powell i had a pretty heavy pack and felt fine.

day 48:

pretty sure it’s not altitude sickness. i know of heather who was sick before kennedy meadows, compton who was sick there, and ran into a couple today who said they had both been sick. so i think there’s just a bug going around.

the couple said they thought they had giardia and that they were taking antibiotics for it. i’m sure i don’t have giardia, and i think whoever gave them the antibiotics doesn’t think they have it either because giardia is a parasite - not a bacteria.

i took it slow, didn’t start moving until 11am and made it 8.7 miles. camped at 10,100ft.

the upside of not having an appetite is that i’ve eaten so little of my food, i can easily stretch the 7 days i packed into 8 or more. i’ve barely eaten anything. the downside is that eating is the only way my pack gets any lighter.

day 49:

i tried eating rice for breakfast because i thought i was hungry and feeling better. that was a mistake. it upset my stomach for the whole morning. just as i was starting to feel better and was thinking i was ready to start hiking i saw dark clouds in the northeast and heard thunder in the distance, so i set up my tent. i was wondering if i was a wimp for hunkering down at the mere threat of a storm, the thunder started to get closer and more violent.

altogether it’s not as bad as it sounds. it’s been pretty nice to have a lazy day. in many ways it’s more relaxing than the town 0s since there are no chores to do, laundry, rides to work out, planning for the next section and resupply. it’s just been me lying around.

i was going to say that on some of the hard days out here i remember how i used to have an apartment with in-unit laundry where i would eat guacamole and play video games. but this day hasn’t felt too far removed from a lazy day of lounging around and watching tiktoks.

i did get some good food down around noon after the rice. still altogether i’ve probably eaten just over a half a day’s worth of food (and only kept down a portion of that) since leaving kennedy meadows 2 days ago. at the same time, i’ve only travelled a little over 1 day’s worth of distance. in any case, i should have plenty still to make it to kearsarge pass and resupply in bishop as planned, although i will be solo, as hardcore and antman are long gone at this point.

at kennedy meadows i was down 5 pounds from wrightwood. will hate to see what it is at the end of this stretch.

later: the thunder storm ended way quicker than i thought and i think i was being overly cautious because it didn’t even end up raining on me. i got up afterwards and finally left camp at like 4:30pm and did another 8-9 mile day.

day 50:

i’m back baby. knocked out 17.5 miles today. not really quite what i hoped. that still leaves  19.6 to the camp at the base of whitney, where i want to be tomorrow night. a few things i have going for me: less ascent tomorrow, less weight in my bag because i am chowing down tonight, an extra day recovered from whatever illness i had, and today i passed one of the only spots that’s likely to have service for the entire stretch and i got vortexed there trying to download as much entertainment as possible whereas tomorrow will be free of distractions.

music, podcast, audiobook, netflix shows: i have sound in my ear most of the day. now the service wasn’t that good so it took me a while to get much of anything. i can see how some people would say its against the spirit of blah blah blah, but i mean for real you want me to live in the woods for 4 months, much of it alone, walk 20 miles/day, and not have anything to keep myself entertained?

anyway i really have tons of food. back of the envelope this evening before dinner is that i have 4,500 calories/day, which is pretty good, especially when you consider this mission has been extended by a day. still, i think i will eat all of it. my hiker hunger appears to be back in full force.

i’m pretty sure i asked claude (an AI chatbot) how much thruhikers eat before i started and he said like 4,500-6,500 calories/day and i was like “no way, bffr, how is it even possible to carry that much?” but im pretty sure my first few days out of tehachapi i was eating close to 5,500.

tonight i am camped at 10,900ft. tomorrow my highest point will be just over 11,500ft and tomorrow night if i make it to the camp at the base of whitney, will be 10,650ft. whitney summit is 14,505ft.

thank the heavens whitney is out and back meaning you can leave most of your stuff at the bottom, just taking food for the hike, layers of clothing, winter gear, water, etc.

so far there have only been a few patches of snow: more in the last 1.5 miles i did today which are the highest i’ve been so far. definitely haven’t needed any of the gear yet. it’s slightly disappointing because i was kind of looking forward to the new experience of snow hiking, expanding my horizons that way and getting to test out my new toys - not that i want to insinuate that this week has been too easy for me - but i’m pretty sure i will get the chance soon enough.

the way people talk about the sierras are like they are the most beautiful part of the country. don’t get me wrong, the last couple days have been pretty cool, but i’m not sold yet. i assume they say that because it gets better further in. i’m not even in a national park yet. 5.6 miles in tomorrow i will cross into Sequoia National Park.

the (required) bear can is a real drag on my life. i used to take my food bag out regularly during the day but beyond being a whopping 2.2 extra pounds to carry, the can is so cumbersome that i basically have to unpack the entire main compartment if i want to take it out. so during the day i pretty much just have to eat whatever i thought to take out that morning and could fit in a more accessible part of my bag. this was fine when i had no appetite but now it is a big disappointment. i have no doubt it’s effective against bears though, because i myself can barely (bearly) get it open, and i have thumbs and can read the instructions on how to open it.

day 51:

i woke up with like 8/10 anxiety today, the worst i’ve felt by far any day on trail. i guess it’s whitney. everyone does whitney at sunrise. i did a little research which said it’s fine to do it later in the day, and when i asked hardcore and antman why everyone does it at sunrise and it sounded like the answer was mainly convention and because it’s a cool place to watch the sunrise. so i’m not sure how important it really is. i think there is really something where the snow gets slushier later in the day which can make it more difficult. but how much more difficult? everything i’ve come across makes it seem like not a huge deal, but then idk why the sunrise convention is so universal.

anyway, point being that i don’t really think i can make it to camp today early enough to get good rest before leaving for sunrise. hiking through the night also sounds cold and unpleasant to me.

so my plan was just to do it later in the day tomorrow. or if i have to do sunrise it would actually be to just save the last few miles before camping at the base for tomorrow and then do whitney the next day at sunrise. that would add another day. i have the food. start to worry about phone battery though.

i could skip whitney. nothing wrong with saving some adventure for the future.

also i did wake up in the middle of the night thinking i was about to give back my dinner. i managed to keep it down, but maybe i’m not quite back at 100%.

12pm: i was having a lot of fun before the thunder storm became a lightning storm with hail. i have decided to shelter under a tree. i have gone only 3.8 miles today. had a late start. hoping this rolls away quickly. my experience has been it’s pretty dynamic. it’s hailing very hard, just pea sized. perhaps my anxiety earlier was my body subconsciously predicting the weather.

anyway, today has literally felt like walking on an alien planet. that’s how unfamiliar the landscape and environment feel. it’s been beautiful, and very unique. new to me at least. that’s why i was having so much fun.

4pm: got to my first pleasant break spot for the day. i have gone 11.6. i could still reasonably make it to the base of whitney. it would make a late evening. i’m by rock creek, in a dry patch under a tree.

the sleet went away and then came back and then turned to rain, and it’s still sprinkling a bit, but dry under this tree.

the trail was white and slushy from today’s storm so it took me a while to notice when i started walking through a section that would’ve been completely covered anyway, with inches of snow covering the ground on either side too.

from this tree at a measly 9,600ft, i’m next supposed to climb back up to 11,000ft and then continue on floating between 10,000 and 11,000ft until the camp at whitney. i’m imagining all the camp spots up there in the alien landscape, covered in a layer of snow from today’s storm, if not from before. i’m thinking maybe i should stay. i’ve already taken long enough at this break that i can’t make it to the campsite at the base of whitney tonight. i could do a short hike in tomorrow, do it for sunrise thursday morning, maybe hike out a little thursday afternoon, big day friday, and then hitch to bishop on saturday. or i could skip whitney, have a pretty leisurely next 3 days, and hitch out on friday.

a forecast i screenshotted when i had service yesterday showed 2 inches of snow today and 0.4 for tomorrow.

honestly with being sick definitely comes the desire to be alone. or at least the desire to not meet new people. seeing familiar faces is pretty nice, and the random old european guy who was really enthusiastic about the fighter jets flying over us yesterday - that was a cool interaction.

i’m just so slow this week! i think in addition to being sick, i suddenly became lazy too. i say that without judgement. but idk i have spent a lot of time just laying around and i’ve ended a lot of evenings saying 🤷‍♂️ good enough 🤷‍♂️ instead of actually getting where i wanted to. and i wish i could say i was spending all the extra time marveling at the view, but i’ve spent most of it sleeping.

day 52:

11:30am: i have decided to not add the second extra day to my itinerary for whitney. frankly if i really wanted to do it, i should have pushed through to get to the base yesterday - early yesterday because im pretty sure the snow is actually better for walking in the morning. my priorities are 1) to have a good time and 2) to hike the PCT.

beautiful clear day so far. i give it 3 hours max before that changes.

forester pass - the highest point on the PCT, 13,200ft, will be my new whitney. it’s a traverse people recommend doing early for snow conditions. therefore that is tomorrow morning.

6:30pm: i have made camp after going 15.1 miles today. i think it’s the first day on this stretch that i made it where i wanted to. there were 5 significant rivers to be crossed today. the first two had logs to balance across on. the next three all had to be forded through. the first gentle and ankle/deep. the second faster and knee deep.

the third, at tyndall creek, consisted of raging rapids and i ended up hiking along it upstream until it split into 3 tributaries. the first could nearly be stepped over and just got my toes wet, the second - the main branch - was still wide and fast: i found a spot to cross where most of the width was only ankle deep and slow moving, but right before getting to the other side it deepened to just above my knees, faster. the final tributary actually branched again into a million tributaries of its own - essentially becoming a marshy hillside fed continuously by snow melt.

right across the river was where i wanted to camp, and by hiking upstream to find my place to cross i ended up further along than the campsite. so i found the trail and started walking along it, all the time scanning the landscape (marshscape) for a place to camp. eventually i found a dry spot next to a small boulder and said what i so often find myself saying “that’ll do.”

my spot is at 11,150ft. forester pass is 4.4 miles ahead and 2,000 feet up. the descent is just as steep: down 3,500 feet over 7 miles. the snow is better earlier in the day we now know, but a recent comment says that if you’re climbing by 8am the snow will be good on both sides. another comment from the same day says that after reaching the top at 11:30am, the descent was “hellacious.”

the weather stayed pleasant all day. it got chilly and sprinkled a little in the afternoon, but nothing more. except that now i’m hearing some thunder in the distance, but probably it will remain there.

i think about all of the things i will be continually grateful for when this journey is over - grocery stores and restaurants accessible to me every day, hot water, chairs, pillows. this stretch has felt especially long since kennedy meadows was just camping outside - with basically 2 restaurants, and 2 gear stores. this will have been my longest stretch without a shower or laundry or a bed - 15 nights in total by my count. bishop will feel like a bustling city with it’s population of 4,000, not counting the hikers.

i saw probably a dozen marmots today. one in particular seemed as curious about me as i was about him. we stood there a little while, but when i realized there was nothing for us to do but stare at each other i lost interest first.

day 53:

the ascent and descent from forester pass were a lot of fun. i finally got to break out my snow gear. spikes help a lot with traction. it makes me think i would’ve enjoyed whitney. it was beautiful as well.

after my break on the way down back at 11,200ft it started to rain, harder than it had at any other point this stretch. after it turned to hail, i had to ford a raging creek knee deep. eventually it stopped raining but it was an insanely cold afternoon.

day 54:

7.5 miles off PCT to trailhead. got a ride with a hiker down to independence then killed a few hours to get the bus to bishop.

day 55:

0 in bishop. we started with bakery -> grocery store. someone offered us a ride back to the hotel from the grocery store. then went to brewery for late lunch. then back to hotel. then sushi for dinner. then bowling and mcdonald’s. i won at bowling with a score of 100. hardcore narrowly beat the person we ate dinner with who scored 48 the night before.

i was the one who pushed bowling. they were so kind to indulge me.

day 56:

we got a ride from bishop to independence and then from independence to the trailhead in a van with 8 other hikers who were coming from the hostel in bishop. the van had a toilet that smelled and the ride was nauseating. i was standing the whole way.

i feel badass chilling at 12,000ft at the top of glen pass. two amazing viewsheds in either direction. the descent is gonna be tricky though.

the descent ended up being some of the most intense snow hiking i’ve done. we all broke out the spikes and ice axe. it was steep! the craziest part is how if you slip, you’re supposed to stop yourself from sliding off the side of the mountain with your axe - that’s the procedure, and it’s just a fact of life. but in the end we didn’t end up falling that much, and when we did it was just on trail. overall i thought it was pretty fun, and i felt accomplished despite it being a short day.

day 57:

eating gummy worms for lunch. yum.

hardcore and antman left camp around 6am. i slept in, and i thought i’d catch them at some point during the day. i didn’t. i made it 18 miles today (and passed 800 finally). after i stopped for the night i got a message that they were just 0.4 ahead.

beautiful weather today (a little hot). ascent to pinchot pass took me forever. i didn’t see anyone at all between 10am and 7:30pm when i got to a large campsite and stopped. so at least i wasn’t getting passed. i liked the view from glen pass better. this time i was just relieved to be at the top. the descent was easy. barely snow covered. and as i get more used to the snow, i don’t really register it as much - it’s just another thing to walk on. same with the river crossings. yesterday i realized that this is my life now - i walk through raging knee deep creeks and rivers several times a day. my feet get wet and then they dry out.

clear blue skies mean cowboy camping tonight. i think it’ll just be my 3rd night cowboyed since leaving kennedy meadows.

5.5 miles to mather pass tomorrow. generally it’s good to hit them early.

day 58:

made it to the top of mather a bit before 11.

first 1.5 miles i bushwhacked alongside the south kern river looking for a better place to cross, eventually making it far enough upstream that it exploded into 8 smaller tributaries. trail was right on the other side. once i finally made it back to trail i passed 10 people on my way up to the pass. yes, i counted. not only that but i left them in the dust.

8pm: i threw a tantrum over mosquitos while i was trying to set up my tent. it’s for the best i’m camping alone tonight. and i would be cowboyed if i didn’t need my tent’s bug net. super grumpy still. i couldn’t even stop for the last 2 miles without getting swarmed and they would bite my shoulders even while i was walking.

my sleeping bag and mat are still with my pack. i’m cowering in the tent and will wait until the mosquitos are less active to go get them.

day 59:

i woke up on the wrong side of bed today. my octopus’s legs are gone. i’m pretty sure they were there last night so i figure they were torn off by a curious animal. now it looks like i am carrying around a severed head.

i also couldn’t find one of my socks. i figure that must be in my sleeping bag or tent somewhere. but i wanted to wear that pair today and now i can’t.

that said i love sleeping in. it has nothing to do with the amount of sleep. it’s about knowing that your obligations and burdens in life are light enough that you can push them off in the morning. it’s proving to myself that i’m unburdened. it feels delicious, decadent.

i was thinking about how clean my sun hoodie felt today. sure, i’ve been wearing it for 5 days straight, but at this point that still counts as freshly laundered.

1pm: top of muir pass. feeling better. only been 8 miles today but the hike has been incredible enough that i can forget about distance.

4:30pm: i have made it just under 14 miles so far. i feel like i’ve been working so hard. it’s a decent distance, but i’m craving a 2 hour break when i really should take a half hour at most. it feels like such a waste to demand so much of myself. i’m out here to enjoy it. i should get to take breaks.

7:30pm: i chose my campsite because it was light on mosquitos. at least it was at first when i got there. by the time i was finishing up setting up they were swarming me like crazy. it was easier to set up today than yesterday because the ground wasn’t so rocky today and it was way easier to stake down.

i stopped having gone 19 miles for the day. not super impressive. i mean honestly i am impressed with myself because today was just so much snow and so much rocky terrain. so many river crossings. 30 miles to the VVR ferry which i want to be on at 9:45am the day after tomorrow. means it needs to be a long day tomorrow. only runs twice/day.

but today was amazing. the difference from the islands of rock in an ocean of snow at 12,000ft at the top of muir pass today, to the super green almost tropical feeling forest due to the heat and humidity and mosquitos at 9,400ft is one of the most dramatic transitions i have experienced in nature. it was all the better because of the massively long viewsheds today. you could see for miles in each direction where you were coming from and where you were going.

the number of mosquitos being kept out by my bug net right now is disgusting, and one massive ant is trapped inside - big enough that i feel bad killing it. big enough that it feels ensouled, but i worry that it will eventually find me, determine I’m responsible for its confinement and bite me.

i had extra food getting into bishop because my illness killed my appetite and i had packed cautiously. for heading to VVR i think i just about nailed it.

every day this week:

-start 8,000-10,000 feet

-hike up to 12,000ft

-hike back down to 8,000-10,000

-repeat

day 60:

it’s 1:40pm i’ve been 10.8 miles. possible late night. still great weather, knock on wood.

sierra terrain makes is hard to plan. e.g. in the desert i would be like, i can make it another 13-14 miles today no problem. here i have no idea. depends on how hard the pass and terrain is. could be anywhere from 7-13 i have left in me.

5pm: top of selden pass. only 11,000ft unlike every other pass this week which were all 12,000ft. 16 miles total today.

as much as i have been enjoying obliviousness about current events, in desperation for new forms of entertainment i discovered that you can get supreme court oral arguments by podcast feed. i bring this up because i swear they were referencing some precedent called selden in the trump v. casa arguments. also, they really are pretty entertaining. at least the trump v. casa arguments sounded like an aaron sorkin script. oklahoma statewide charter school board v. drummond feels a bit dopier.

10:15pm: i’m stopping. 25.3 miles for the day and 5.3 miles to do to the ferry tomorrow. they are all downhill or flat. a couple miles are pretty steep.

cowboyed tonight because i out-hiked the mosquitos. at least it will make it easier to pack up tomorrow.

day 61:

i started walking a little before 6:30am. it was torture. my shoes were frozen, but my feet weren’t actually cold once i put them on.

anyway it was overly cautious because i got to the ferry dock an hour early. or maybe an hour early. even here the sign says it leaves at 9:45am. then below that it says they leave around 9am. anyway, i was here at 8:45. now it’s 9:25 and it hasn’t shown yet. i polished off my food waiting: 3 oatmeal packets and a few spoonfuls of peanut butter.

antman and hardcore showed up after 9:30, and the ferry was right on time at 9:45. i was worried hardcore and antman would want to take this afternoon’s ferry back out, when i would prefer tomorrow morning. they in fact proposed taking tomorrow afternoon’s ferry. it’s to time the next pass better. idk if i care. maybe i just get an early start then take it slow.

vvr has finished breakfast and doesn’t start lunch until noon. as in they are currently serving no food. we have to wait for hot food. but it’s okay. we set up tents. life is good.

for wifi they charge $10 for 2 hours or $20 for 24 hours. i feel ridiculous but i think i might buy it. i thought we’d have service somewhere on trail, but i haven’t.

making us wait 2 hours before we can order hot food is cruel.

the menu said chicken “tendies” so i ordered chicken tendies and when the cashier repeated it back she said “tenders” and i felt ridiculous.

day 62 (again some descriptions of illness):

this morning was a bit of a rush to order breakfast eat breakfast pack up buy the other food i need to get to mammoth use the bathroom line up for the ferry.

but the food here all fueled me well. i’ve never been more excited for the food i’ve packed out: pizza left over from dinner and a breakfast burrito i ordered to pack out this morning in addition to the french toast breakfast i ate.

i had the burrito for lunch at the top of silver pass, 6.5 miles in, 11,000 feet.

made it to mile 897. that’s 18.6 for the day: 5,500ft ascent, 3,100ft descent. it leaves 11 miles to mammoth tomorrow - would’ve been nice to knock out a bit more today.

i often think about how easy my life will be when i’m done with the sierras and don’t have to do all the elevation and snow and river crossings, and i can ditch 4 pounds of gear.

i’m not quite sure i knew what i was signing up for. i knew that the sierras were high elevation and could have turbulent weather. i’d heard of the river crossings. i knew i needed the snow gear because i knew there would be snow. but i had no idea what it would feel like all together.

after i laid down, my body decided it didn’t want the food i fed it today. i tried to fight the nausea, hoping it would pass, but it won within an hour, like it always does. i blame the day old pizza. antman and hardcore passed just as i finished burying my vomit. my little spot doesn’t really have space so they are going 0.2 further up to the next marked site.

day 63:

got to mammoth lakes trailhead a bit before noon. free trolley into town. first stop the pita pit. drinking mr. pibb xtra. mind blowing.

on the trail into town in a day hiker asked where i was coming in from. i said mexico.

day 64:

lazy morning, laundry, mexican food for lunch, groceries.

i learned i was accepted to UT austin’s MS in data science program.

this zero in particular we bought a feast full of food for the room in addition to eating massive meals out. we bought cake and milk and pickles and grapes and mandarins and peaches and pastries.

one thing i didn’t really mention any of the days was glissading which is our fancy name for sliding down the mountain on your butt. fun way to get down from the passes. some of them are pretty steep and as the ice melts, rocks can start to be exposed in the tracks. you can use your ice axe to brake. i have some ice burn on the back of my calves still from glissading down from mather but it stopped hurting long ago - now it just looks scaly.

i feel like we had a milestone almost every day. day 2 out of tehachapi we crossed 600. day 3 we crossed 1,000km which was marked - i haven’t mentioned the surprising number of europeans on trail. day 4 we crossed 650mi which means less than 2,000 to go. day 5 we crossed 25% finished at 662.5. day 6 we will cross from kern to tulare county. day 7 we will cross 700mi.

it’s been a pretty week with a lot of variety. day 2 was pine forest, day 3 was dramatic mojave and had an amazing sunset: day 5 out from walker pass was really dramatic mountains, pre-sierra i guess.

right ankle is the worst part of my body. days 1-2 it was fine. days 3-4 it started to hurt a lot more. day 5 it felt terrible at the start of the day, but felt completely better once i got like 6 miles in. usually the beginning of the day is the worst.

mileages this week were: 21, 22, 23, 20.5, 21.5, 27.5, 2.5 (into kennedy meadows).

days 3 and 4 i siesta’d. and getting up and having like 12 miles to go is just crazy, like you’ve gotta be kidding me. day 4 when i saw i had like 8.5 miles left for the evening it was exactly the same feeling as being on a long drive at night and seeing you’ve still got a long way to go. the familiarity was comforting.

we had trail magic day 4 at walker pass - a whole spread of potato chips and sweet snacks, some fruit. it was fantastic, and i felt great on day 5. even with this and having packed out almost 28,000 calories i still had no extra food getting into kennedy’s meadows.

hot new trail recipe:

-large burrito size tortilla

-few spoonfuls of peanut butter

-as many sunflower seeds as will stick to the peanut butter

-1-2 handfuls of chocolate chips

-sprinkle of dehydrated apple chips. (probably would be good with banana, but like i said they were out in tehachapi)

i saw a couple deer and a fox this week. a couple rabbits/hares, which have been pretty common, and the usual smattering of lizards and snakes. the lizards have still been getting bigger. at this point they will be 4 feet long by the time we get to canada. i also forgot to mention that i saw a skunk the day before hikertown. i don’t think i have seen one in the wild before. it had a funny walk - at first it looked like a plastic bag trapped under a branch.

hiked with jaden (now hardcore) and jeromi (now antman) all week. though not during the days so much because i take a lot more breaks and roll up to camp way later. kind of like having roommates - just that we move 20 miles every day.

crazy that it has only been 6.5 weeks. that’s a pretty long time but it feels like forever.

day 46 (from kennedy meadows):

our plan for the first part of the sierras is to carry 7 days of food then hitch out from kearsarge pass to bishop, CA. that will be 87 miles on the PCT, 17 miles round trip to summit mt. whitney, and 7.5 miles off trail to get to a trailhead we can hitch from, for a grand total of 111 miles - mercifully shorter than the 140 mile stretch from tehachapi to kennedy meadows. down from 20/day average to 16/day.

the large majority of the stretch is above 10,000 feet. the grade doesn’t look any worse than the last stretch we did, but we will be dealing with snow.

i got a couple gear upgrades: a bottle cage that clips to my shoulder strap so i can have water without a packs off break, not that i really minded the break excuse, and a rubbery/siliconey dirty water bag to replace the plastic bags that came with my filter. one of those already has a leak and they’re also just inconvenient to collect and filter with.

ice axe and micro spikes for the sierras.

replacement battery bank.

thinking about replacing the shoes and going back to altras too. the new balances were cheap and are already showing signs of wear, and i did find myself missing the feel of the altras.

kennedy meadows has 2 clusters of activity: 1) the general store, and 2 foot outfitters set up in a couple trailers outside, 2) grumpy bear’s bar and triple crown outfitters. both the general store and grumpy’s have free camping for hikers. there are probably at least 100 people set up behind the general store. lots of people take time here

day 28:

so here’s the final verdict on the wrightwood closure. basically i replaced 27 miles of trail with 18-20 miles of road walk. i got back on trail at the first opportunity past the closure, but technically, i could have done 9 miles more before the closure, then taken a forest service road down further along on the same road that i walked in on. to me, this was a little bit of cheating.

what most people who are termed purists care about is a continuous foot path from the mexican border to the canadian border, and i’m good on that front so far. this permits detours e.g. to summit jacinto, which isn’t technically on trail, or to summit baden-powell, which i did today, which technically bypasses about 1/4 mile of trail. however, to me, roadwalk detours to bypass trail or make an easier journey, feel like cheating.

on the other hand a lot of people don’t care at all. i met a bunch of people in wrightwood who had gotten a ride straight from cajon pass, which eliminates about 6 miles of trail and 9 miles of road walk compared to what i did. and instead of the 9 mile road walk out of town, they got dropped either at big pines, leaving only 4 miles of road, or directly at vincent gap, right where the closure ended.

anyway, i left at 5:30am because it was supposed to be pretty hot. right after the road walk the trail immediately rises 2,800 feet in 4 miles to summit baden-powell at 9,400ft. only patches of snow on the way up. hundreds of ravens up there. i took a nap at the top, and then did about 5 more miles when i stopped for a break and ended up not getting up.

really it never felt that hot, i think because i got to the peak pretty early.

day 29:

people who hike the AT complain about PUDs (pointless up-and-downs). I feel like we haven’t had many on the PCT up to this point, but today we crossed highway 2, ascended 1,200ft in 1.7 miles, then descended 1,150ft over the next 1.5 miles to cross back to the other side of highway 2.

regularly we’ve gone 30-50 miles without crossing a paved road, but today we must have crossed highway 2 a half dozen times.

there was a 4 mile section of trail that was closed to protect an endangered frog species. it comes with a 5 mile detour, which was half road walk along highway 2.

great weather today. i narrowly beat day 5’s record with 21.8 miles for the day if you count the full 5 miles for the detour. passed mile 400 today.

day 30:

the food bag is getting light. you certainly couldn’t accuse me of overpacking out of wrightwood. lots of oatmeal and sunflower seeds tomorrow. at mile 17.3 tomorrow i can go a little off trail and buy some snacks at an RV park.

apparently there’s a cave to camp in at 448, so i think that’s the goal for tomorrow. that’s 21 from tonight at 427, and leaves just 6.5 miles to agua dulce on thursday.

i broke the record again today, more significantly, with 23. i feel pretty good. good weather again. passed mile 420.

day 31:

today was pretty deserty. camped at 5,500ft last night and 2,900ft tonight.

the RV park had a pretty good selection. prices weren’t marked, and they turned out to be pretty extortionate, but i was in the perfect position to be extorted, so that’s just good business.

i ate a small frozen pizza, heated up in their microwave, a pint of ben and jerry’s (chocolate fudge brownie), and a pint of whole milk. to go, i got a bag of takis, and a small packet of 6 oreos. add that to what i had left from wrightwood: 2 oatmeal packets, half a handful of sunflower seeds, and a few nerd clusters, and now i’ll comfortably make it to agua dulce tomorrow, which is just 6.5 miles from where i’m camped.

the cave is smaller than i expected, but it’s got a nice view, and i have it to myself. comments suggest there’s a large rat named Barry who lives here, and lets hikers crash for donations of food crumbs.

people talk about the “bubble” which is whatever area has the densest collection of thru hikers. i thought it was a myth up through big bear. i had moved at various paces and it all seemed about equal, but i think it’s real and i found myself in it after wrightwood. on sunday (day 28) there were so many people. yesterday i didn’t see too many while i was hiking, but then i passed a bunch of people camped a few miles before where i was stopped, and probably 8-10 people total spent the night where i stopped.

i haven’t been social at all this week. partly i think i feel like i already have friends, so why should i have to make more. partly, the higher miles i’m doing to catch up leaves less time and energy for socializing (and writing).

mourning doves today - one of the few i can identify without the app, including one right outside the cave, singing to the setting sun.

my ibuprofen and acetaminophen consumption is up this week with these consecutive 20s. there are still 3 full days just as long to get to hikertown. since wrightwood has all still been higher than average ascent/descent too. big bear to wrightwood was probably the easiest stretch so far.

i started going north again today after rounding the corner at mile 436.

i can tell i’m getting close to LA because you can’t see very many stars at night. the full moon doesn’t help either.

there are 3 restaurants in agua dulce, all with extremely good reviews. can i eat at all of them? how will i ever choose? cowboy tavern for breakfast, terra dulce for lunch, maria bonita for second lunch, and then pack out dinner from the grocery store deli?

day 32:

got up a bit earlier and got into agua dulce at 10. first stop cowboy tavern for breakfast. nice day to sit outside in the shade at the restaurant, but it’s a bit hot for hiking. might justify spending a long day in town and hiking out late. still want to do 15 more today though.

2 days eggs, 2 bacon, 2 pancakes. showcasing restraint by ordering small. i have to save room for my lunches. old westerns playing on the TVs inside.

i may have to scout out a loitering location to hang out at between meals.

at least when i’m doing 20/day i still have some flexibility around when i do them and when i take breaks. and with it warmed up it will be more pleasant in the evening, where a few days there were actually pretty cold by 7pm. tonight will probably be nice later.

i ended up loitering at the maria bonita mexican restaurant where they upgraded my burrito to a combo with rice and beans because there was a mix up in the kitchen that made it take a long time. i wasn’t actually that hungry so i spent a couple hours slowly eating it and waiting out the heat. i managed to do about 10 more for the day after heading out. the stretch into and out of town was all a few miles of roadwalk, but with the bonus that the trail officially goes straight down the main road.

day 33:

i wasn’t sure what i had in me at the start of the day. i made it 21.8 miles and i’m camping in a cave again. this time it’s really more like an abandoned mine shaft. it’s not too big. the entrance is only a couple feet tall. i had to slide in on my back and drag my pack behind me. then there’s a shaft maybe 50 feet long, 5 feet wide, up to about 7 feet tall. then it splits into a Y shape, maybe another 30 feet in each direction.

anyway i made it far enough to keep the dream of getting to hiker town early on sunday alive. i’m 31.5 miles out. the site i was eyeing for tomorrow is 24.8 miles away. i really oughta be able to do that, but my longest day is still 23 and my feet are very tired now.

i have hiked 6 days out of wrightwood and done 123 trail miles. feels like more. i miss leisure. i miss my long afternoon breaks. i miss having gone 14 miles and thinking i can stop whenever i feel like it.

day 34:

wow that cave sleep was i think the best sleep i’ve had on trail. right as i was about to make breakfast, i heard a couple hikers talking outside of the cave. someone shouted “hello?” and i called back “hey.” they said “is that nathan?” it was sam. she came in for a tour with her new hiking companion - alyssa has run off ahead because she’s meeting her boyfriend further up.

when i walked outside i found a wet and windy world. good night to be in a cave. but the hiking was pretty rough. the wind died down in the early afternoon though and by 6:30 the sun was poking out of the clouds. it may have been for the best, because the weather made it so much less pleasant to take breaks, i think i made better time, and was able to make it 24.8 to the campsite i wanted, setting a new record.

day 35:

i hiked 7 into hikertown in the morning. we left with a large group to hike the aqueduct at 8pm. Jaden, Jeremi and I made it 15 miles and stopped sometime after 2. There was a ton of wind and tumble weeds would blow into us. The aqueduct road has a bunch of mysterious concrete boxes in the middle of it. the road would change from sand to pavement at random. we could so the silhouette of joshua trees along the road, and the stars were great. we saw the moon rise around 1:30am.

we had joked about hiking straight through to tehachapi - about 50 miles total (well i was joking at least). a couple people, linguini and fire, actually did it and went from 8pm to getting into town at like 2pm the next day. but when we stopped for a snack break at mile 7.5, we realized we were not making it to tehachapi.

new trail name caveman for taking both opportunities i had to camp in caves.

day 36:

we got up today at 7:30 but i don’t think we started hiking for a bit. we siesta’d at a creek about 9 miles in from a bit before noon until just after 3. we kept pushing to 21 and got to camp a bit before 9. this leaves just 12.5 miles to tehachapi, city of dreams, tomorrow. i am lobbying for a double 0.

we are sleeping beneath wind turbines and it is - not coincidentally - very windy.

i got my first real blister today. maybe i can get a new pair of shoes in tehachapi - city of dreams. i probably put well over a couple hundred miles on the shoes in tucson plus the 554 miles on trail so far puts them pretty much at the end of their life.

day 37:

first stop in tehachapi was chinese buffet. i ate at least 3 full plates of food, a half dozen sweet buns, 3-4 cups of ice cream. hardly did anything the rest of the day. staying at the best western with jaden and jeromi. saw chaos, harrison, and most wanted at the hotel, first time since the day after idyllwild. soaked in the hotel hot tub for a bit.

hotel coin laundry is terrible. i think my green hoodie is more dirty now than it was before washing.

day 38:

0 in tehachapi. hotel has a good breakfast. i went for a massage, first ever. it was pretty good. feet feel good. think it helped my shoulders and neck. but not sure i’d go for another.

got new shoes at big 5 sporting goods - new balance trail runners - will give me a chance to decide if i want to stick with altras. i’m a natural hoarder so i’m a little sad to be getting rid of the altras that got me here. usually i’d also keep wearing shoes until they’re way more falling apart, but i don’t think i have that luxury hiking 20 miles/day.

had pho for lunch. it was pretty good. there was a place i liked in tucson but they never gave enough cilantro.

walmart resupply is the best. big selection, and cheap. they were out of banana chips though. got pants and a new pair of flip flops since i lost my last pair. the new ones are way lighter so it’s a huge upgrade. refreshed the KT tape, got some more acetaminophen, trying out a cheap ankle brace, got a pair of pants, tons of electrolytes. 7 day food carry to kennedy meadows makes for a heavy bag.

leaving early tomorrow. getting picked up at 7am.

we’ve been watching the jaw fire which was only a couple miles from trail but is blowing in the other direction, and is now 60% contained. cal fire firefighters are staying at the hotel tonight.

we did a collective epsom salt foot soak in our hotel room tub.

day 39:

i woke up, showered, and i’m posting this from breakfast. if our ride wasn’t late i probably wouldn’t be getting this out at all. still the problem with the pictures is making me sad.

day 14 cont’d (second 0 in Idyllwild):

i took a bath. great decision. lying in bed now and listening to music. aaaaahhhh.

the town is alive again this afternoon.

went to atomic cow again, and got double burger, fries, and 2 (small) death by chocolate shakes. no shame going up to order the second.

day 15:

chris gave us a ride back up to the trailhead.  our entire group except me actually opted for a different trailhead that would cut out some elevation, and add variety from repeating the side trail we used to get into town. chris dropped me alone at the trailhead we got in at - i want a continuous footpath between canada and mexico at least.

the first few miles went well and were less snowy than i expected - this took me up to 9,000 ft so i started to think about doing the peak, but in the 0.5 miles before the junction that went up there, it started to get more slippery. so i decided not to. i caught up with the group just before we got to the shady side of the mountain. here there was a lot of snow. i fell like 100 times, slightly bent one of my trekking poles, got a blood blister on my left hand near my wrist, took 1 hr to go a mile.

there was one switchback where you could slide down on your butt and i was pretty uncertain but i was laughing like a kid at the bottom, very fun.

everyone who left that day camped at a massive campground at 190 which put us just past the snow.

day 16:

i love being out here so much. i love this. i just love this.

chilling of the shadow of this boulder looking at san jacinto. the world is so big, and so beautiful. i’m seeing it one footstep at a time. i would do this forever.

yesterday was a rough day but i mean pct rough which means i still loved it. i actually like this better than town. that’s why im here.

it’s amazing to me how few people do this. why wouldn’t you want to do this?

have i ever had such a relaxing and restful and joyful break? i don’t think so.

i spent the night with alyssa, sam, and 2 europeans: muffin and hendrick, at a hostel just past i-10. 4 of us stayed in the garage.

mom and a kid lived there. i arrived first and she offered me an ice cold gatorade drink made from a powder mix. it was perfect. no one else got that offered when they showed up. maybe i looked especially wilted.

when everyone was there we had chipotle doordashed in from cabazon. she also had frozen pizzas for us to make. took the opportunity for laundry and shower even though we were just in town.

hostel had eclectic decor: crucifix, metal goat head with a disco ball hanging from its mouth, roman statue with pink, heart-shaped sunglasses. but it was a really clean and put together place.

day 17:

i love it here. i took a break and finished my chipotle for lunch and nap 11-1 about 0.5 mile before the whitewater river and then stopped again at the river to dip my feet.

i downloaded merlin bird ID app at suggestion of birder Deb. identifies the birds based on sound. but there are a lot of mockingbirds today, and it will identify what they’re imitating. impressive range. one near my campsite did over a dozen different calls in 6 minutes. you know what he doesn’t do though? chickadee. there were a ton on the mountain, but none since then. i wonder if he’s never heard them. or maybe he just doesn’t like their song.

camped at 226. will target 14 miles tomorrow, which happens to be 5,100 feet ascent. will camp near water source which comes before a 16 miles carry to the next source.

camping solo tonight, first time since night 5. i like it.

will certainly get to big bear on saturday. hopefully pretty early.

at 6:30 like a dozen hispanic men passed my campsite with regular day backpacks, wearing high vis heading south. days later when i caught up with jaden and jeromi they said that they were a trail crew collecting plant samples. i saw them tomorrow morning hiking back in too.

just walked out to mission creek right outside my campsite. beautiful twilight. i can’t believe i live out here.

ok i thought i was solo camping. 2 ladies pulled up to a spot near me at like 5:00. they talked for hours and then immediately started snoring. i had to go walk and stand by the creek so i could hear the sounds of nature. this when i live outside.

frogs and crickets and the creek itself. airplanes overhead practically count.

i was thinking there are two evolutionary advantages to leg hair that i have noticed more since i got on trail: 1. sun protection. i never burn on my legs, even without sunscreen. it’s gotta be like 50% reduction in UV exposure. 2. bug protection. mosquitos can’t get in. ants get tangled up. i never get bit on my legs. 3. maybe insulation also. idk i’ve faired pretty well with just shorts when pretty much everyone else has a pair of pants.

i feel like i should just take all 11-3 off tomorrow. i don’t wanna hike at all in the sun and i can still make the miles i want in reasonable time. that means snacks for breakfast and then cook something at lunch.

orion is pretty much part below the horizon when stars come out. in big bend national park last october he came out late in the middle of the night. this might be the first year where i’ve noticed the passage of time in the movement of the stars.

moon is a waxing crescent tonight. you know what that means? full moon in about a week and a half. it also means that moon will be in the night sky longer each day from now until then.

first few days when the moon rose it would always wake me up. a nearly full moon is so bright. it’s practically the sun.

day 18:

some of the old grey-haired men out here seem like forest spirits.

the trail was pretty much all washed out from mile 226 to 234. it was slow going. the advice is to just follow the creek. i did almost all of this section before 10:30 and then i lay in the shade until 2:45. i slept for 1.5-2 hours, ate ramen and tuna and oatmeal and snacks, massaged the feet, stretched, dug a cat hole. the whole self care shebang. didn’t get to camp at mile 240 until 6:30.

i wonder if the 14 miles i did today includes the mile i did vertically? camped at 3100 ft yesterday. camped at 7900 tonight.

i hope oatmeal never stops tasting so good. i had it again for dinner and cheese and ramen and a salmon packet and snacks.

on shorter trips i mainly do no cook, but i find myself boiling a lot of water and burning a lot of gas these days.

caught up with matt, courtney, alyssa, and sam. jaden and jeromi still ahead, maybe 10 miles or more, chaos, harrison, most wanted, martin, and rawdog are behind, maybe 10 miles.

i think i can tell water boils quicker/at a lower temperature up here? are you supposed to be able to notice by 8000 ft?

200 miles feels like a big milestone for me. also being past idyllwild, the first real town stop probably helps as well. but i feel like i’m doing it for real now, and successfully.

i checked and had service like 0.5 miles out from camp, so i assumed i would have it here too, but i don’t.

day 19:

some days are hot by 9am. i still pretend it isn’t hot until 10:30. but today was genuinely not hot until 11am, and the rest of the day wasn’t too bad.

i wanted to make good miles so i’d only have a short hike into big bear tomorrow so with the favorable weather i skipped the long afternoon break and did a bunch of shorter breaks. a couple half hour breaks were the longest. not too much elevation today either.  we bounced between 8,000 and 9,000 peaking at 8,750, and then descending at the very end of the day so i’m camped at 6,900.

i’m stopping at 258.5 at the last water source before town at 5:15pm. that makes 18.6 miles today. not too spectacular, but it leaves just 7.7 miles tomorrow to highway 18 where I can hitchhike to town. i haven’t hitchhiked before, i’m almost ashamed to say, for someone who claims to value new and interesting experiences, but i figure it’s a good time to learn.

i could’ve gone further today but my feet are tired and i’m close enough. it feel like i have a bruise on my right heel. that’s the new flavor of soreness.

today was pretty well maintained compared to yesterday too and i was making good time. tomorrow is also pretty flat, so i’m hoping to make it to the road by 10ish tomorrow. i might have to start a little earlier for that though.

it’s not supposed to rain tonight but i think the cloud right above me might have different ideas…. i didn’t like the look of it so i set up my tent and its sprinkling a bit now. always disappointing to be in a tent. no wind so it should hold up better.

day 20:

have you ever had 200 people march through your bedroom at 6AM? For me it makes for a grumpy start to the day… even if they’re on a make-a-wish fundraiser charity hike.

i was gonna sleep until close to 7ish but apparently not. it’s actually unbelievable that there could possibly be so many people here. i would cry but i think i can only laugh.

i was cowboy camped like 6 feet from the trail, laying on top of my collapsed tent. i collapsed it on purpose this time because it stopped raining.

while im in a bad mood i have another rant. i keep telling people im not restocking tuna packets. they look at me and say, “but how are you going to get protein?” do you know how little nutrition or anything is in a tuna packet? the tuna packets are basically empty. i can replace the protein in a tuna packet with like 3 cashews or a bite of cheese.

day 20 in town:

i just ate a plain avocado at 11 PM. i went kind of avocado crazy at the grocery store earlier. i’m gonna have to pack some out. not the most efficient food, but still twice as efficient as a damn tuna packet.

i’m adding a screenshot of my resupply. that’s supposed to be for 5 days of everything except sweet and about 7 days of candy. i can restock everything else at cajon pass where we cross I-15 and have access to a McDonalds. There’s a McDonalds challenge which is to eat nothing else between Cajon Pass and Wrightwood, 26 trail miles. i spent $80 here, including some stuff i was going to eat in town. i think i wanted variety so i was reaching for more expensive stuff. my 6 day resupply out of idyllwild was $60.

i feel messier than the other people here. my tent collapses. alyssa and sam witnessed my tent collapse on night 4, and we just realized it tonight because we didn’t see each other again until idyllwild, like day 13.

i have to stay in town later tomorrow because i forgot to get gas today before the store closed. not that i’m opposed to getting a couple more big town meals in me since i’m not zeroing.

other people pack meals. i just count calories and eat whatever i have whenever i’m hungry. this means that other people arrive in town with “one extra dinner” and i arrive with an extra half pound of cheese.

other people know where they’re going to camp 3 days from now. i’ll go and stop when i’m tired.

i don’t mind this at all. i love how casual my life is.

today there was trail magic at highway 18. sandwiches and snacks and cold drinks. specific to pct hikers, separate from the charity event. i went to hitch into town, i put my thumb up, but a lady behind me in the parking lot was dropping a bunch of PCT hikers off; she said, “are you heading into town?” so i didn’t really hitchhike yet. i don’t have a plan for a ride tomorrow. the lady who brought me in gave me her number in case i need one out. but i partly believe that a ride will just manifest itself as soon as i walk outside.

i’m staying at jaden and jeromi’s airbnb tonight. they got in on friday and 0’d today. Rey stayed here yesterday and left earlier today. jeromi and jaden came in on a different road so they’re still actually 10 miles ahead of me. and they’re booking it at this point. if i want to catch up or even keep up i will have to lock in. the 4 hour breaks will have to be curtailed. but i don’t know if i want to lock in yet.

i hadn’t seen jaden and jeromi since idyllwild. i basically kept pace with sam and alyssa this week, but they are 0ing tomorrow. i haven’t seen the chaos, harrison, most wanted crew since the day after we left idyllwild.

i passed 10% (265 miles) today, and 250 yesterday. the 10% kind of blows my mind. like i don’t want to think about this being something that has an end, but at least 10% means the end is pretty far out.

on the topic of locking in, i’m almost definitely leaving tomorrow in spite of sub-optimal weather. my expectation is that it’s sprinkling/misting most of the day, maybe just snowing a little, and going to be pretty chilly. at this point i can deal with that though. it will make the long breaks less alluring too.

also, in a way, more town time feels like more of a sacrifice than less town time. maybe i’ll change my mind once I’m in the weather. but again, i’m doing this to be out there.

i ate a burger for lunch and then 4 of us went to indian for dinner. we ate ben and jerry’s after. there’s a good hiker discount. they open at 10AM tomorrow, and they’re close to the gas-store, so i’m definitely going again.

it’s been a long day. i can’t believe i did 7.5 miles plus all the town stuff.

day 21:

monica picked me up while i was waiting for the free bus that goes around big bear. she dropped me off at a cool lunch spot where i got a poke bowl. i walked to get another serving of ice cream at ben and jerries. she’s gonna pick me back up to take me to the trailhead. it’ll be a bit of a late start but i’m fine with that. just getting out of here at all is a W. it’s rained a bit on and off today but there are gaps in the clouds. i’m not too worried about weather.

monica dropped me off at hwy 18 trailhead. First 5 miles were totally clear. Then a little sprinkling, then sleet and lightning, then so much snow. It had to have been an inch, even though weather app was saying 0.15” and highest forecast I saw was a quarter inch. Forecasts were suggesting it might not last that long so i tried to wait it out for a bit, but as it got later and was still snowing, I bailed out back to Big Bear at Van Duessen Road after 9 trail miles. Stayed at motel 6 because it was the closest.

day 22:

I’m at a diner near the hotel, killing time because it looks on the radar like weather clears up after 1pm.

i waited out the rain and made it back to the trail a bit after 1. i made pretty good time and stopped at mile 13.4 before 6pm (mile 288 total). i was going to do 15 today but found a nice place to camp that i didn’t want to pass up. it’s looking more like mojave. i’m camped at 6400 ft which seems to be the transition zone between the evergreen forest on dirt and the desert on sand.

i was going to cowboy but i set up the tent because by 8 there was already a ton of condensation on my sleeping bag and on closer inspection the clouds looked pretty threatening. we’re not supposed to have rain tonight though.

i hear owls. the merlin app gave a hit for long eared owl and great horned owl. i saw one the night after warner springs, and i’ve seen a lot of owl pellets on the ground. i also realized that the noise quails make sounds like “quail.” there was also a squirrel who chirped at me today. there are these other rodents - they move like chipmunks but they’re almost too small so maybe they’re something else - owl food either way.

it was a pretty nice day of hiking. 19.5 miles tomorrow to get to hot springs. 1,200 feet up and 4,100 feet down.

so i didn’t 0 in big bear. i may as well have for how little i’ve done in the past 3 days. then again, i’m also shocked i managed to hike 17 miles this weekend considering how much town time it felt like i had.

after hwy 18 into big bear we were officially done going north. the trail goes due west for the next 130 miles.

day 23:

i got a late start today and started hiking a bit past 8:30am. i stopped for lunch at deep creek a little after noon. i had one of the knorr’s rice sides. there were ducks in the water. there are also a ton of friendly bees, and one lizard who’s been staring at me for 15 minutes. i think he ate one of the bees.

it’s been a super nice day. not hot. and all the water sources on my map are flowing, plus a lot of little rivulets that aren’t marked. all day has felt like it’s in the transition zone between forest and desert.

9.4 miles left to the hot springs.

took a longer lunch than i meant to and got to the hot springs around 6. went in for close to an hour. it is amazing. amazing. 104 degrees, a man with a watch that’s also a thermometer told me. a couple pools that fit a half dozen people each comfortably. right on the river too. one guy talked about jumping back and forth between hot and cold. tiny water falls upstream, and impressive canyon walls. it is a tuesday.

i feel more refreshed than i thought was possible. and squirrels didn’t chew through my bag while i was gone. there are many reports of that happening here specifically.

i passed mile 300 today. i barely registered it.

i hate to say it but 19 miles still feels like a lot. up to now i’ve still been thinking of 15 as the baseline for a good regular day, but i think it’s time to move that to 17. tomorrow is not a regular day though. because i’m starting at hot springs. so i’ll probably stay here a good while and do less tomorrow.

day 24:

i woke up at 2:30am and took a long stargazing dip in the hot springs having them all to myself. it was as amazing as it sounds.

i woke up again this morning around 9:30. i ate and packed and took another dip before heading out a bit after 1.

today was hot. the first few miles were nice scenery but the next 10 sucked, and nowhere had any shade or cover. walking west into the afternoon sun sucks.

i stopped for dinner close to mile 15 for the day around 7 when it was still hot. when i got up the sun had set and i decided to keep walking since it was finally getting bearable out. i did just over 3 more miles and stopped at mile 18 when i found a suitable campsite.

in those few miles i passed a dam maintenance facility and then joined hwy 178 for a half mile where i passed a warehouse and a substation. i love walking around that type of stuff, especially at night - the silent infrastructure, devoid of life, but ready for action, or performing its duties independently. then we climbed a big hill and there was a lake on the other side, and i might have gone even farther if i didn’t think this would be such a pretty section to do during the day.

tomorrow will be hotter and i’m 16 miles from the sanctuary of mcdonald’s at cajon pass, so i guess that means i should get up early.

the miles went so much slower today than every other day since big bear. i think it was because of the heat.

apparently i’m now just 6-7 miles from the northern edge of san bernadino, on the far side of the mountains still.

day 25:

the fact that it’s only gonna get hotter and promise of mcdonald’s makes for some mean motivation. i left camp just after 6 and made it to mcdonald’s right before noon.

we have to leave trail around wrightwood because of a fire closure. several options on what to do, but there’s a good road walk option along highway 2, which is still closed to cars.

i might have to go find a parking spot to take a nap in.

the cajon pass inn, seemingly formerly a best western, here is reasonably priced and tempting, but i would want to walk more after a nap when it kinda cools down. wrightwood seems not an affordable place to stay, but based on how things have gone so far it’s possible an airbnb opportunity will manifest itself or someone will call out to me from their porch and offer a room as i walk through town.

actually from leaving the hot springs yesterday to arriving at mcdonald’s today, i did 34.3 miles in under 24 hours. separately i think today may have been my first 10-by-10 (10 miles by 10AM). Day 2 would’ve been close but I think I narrowly missed it because of my Lake Morena stop.

i was actually inspired by someone who i met at the hot springs who was planning on hiking 25 miles to mcdonald’s by 1pm. otherwise i might have taken my time and saved this for tomorrow. he passed me about 3 miles out from McDonald’s, and made it before noon.

i hung out at mcdonald’s for a couple hours then i took a nap under a tree across the street from chevron next to a pile of trash for a couple hours, then i went back to mcdonald’s for a couple more hours. all to avoid the heat. i had a bit of a charging problem too. my usb to wall adapter stopped working, probably from getting super wet in the weather on sunday. so i bought a new one at the chevron. it’s lighter but only has 1 port.

i left mcdonald’s a bit after 6:30, did close to 6 miles leisurely, and made camp a bit after 9. total for the day is 21.2 miles making it the second longest day, with day 5 still holding the record.

as we climbed away from I-15 i could see the lights of san bernadino down the corridor. i’m feeling curious about what it’s like there.

there are a lot of toads here also. i hadn’t seen more than a couple before this. they have the worst survival instincts of anything I’ve encountered on trail so far. i was worried i’d step on them.

i think the road walk into wrightwood tomorrow is only like 7-8 miles. i’ll probably stay the night. i have some emails to send, and i need to post this. tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter somehow, but i don’t have to worry so much with it being a short day.

day 26:

the roadwalk into wrightwood sucked. i think 14 miles on trail woulda sucked more though.

i’m gonna 0 tomorrow. i am not ready to leave tomorrow morning in the heat. i might steal out like a thief in the night in the wee hours of sunday morning though. becuase it’s still gonna be hot then.

i got the world’s best raspberry yogurt at the farmers market today. like i’m gonna have some shipped wherever i go after this if they sell it by the gallon. i got some good peaches too.

i met up with steve and jeromi for dinner. apparently many people are planning to hike the LA aqueduct together a week from now, the night of sunday the 17th, so that sets an ambitious goal for me. it starts at mile 523. it’s tradition to hike it at night because it’s flat, boring, and incredibly hot.

day 27:

got a massive burrito from the grocery store deli in town and resupplied. i only had to pick up about 2 days since i totally overpacked heading out of big bear.

i will be shooting to get to agua dulce in about 4 days, maybe early in the morning of the 5th day (aka thursday), pick up a few days of food there, and then arriving into hiker town, right before the LA aqueduct, late on saturday or early sunday.

it’s supposed to cool down after tomorrow, and if i set out early tomorrow it might not be so bad because we go to pretty high elevation, and will summit mt. baden-powell at about 9300 ft.

day 7 cont’d:

didn’t go far past warner springs stopped at 115 with gump and taylor which means one heavy day and paradise valley cafe tuesday or two light days and get there wednesday.

people on the trail who passed our campsite said 5 days to idyllwild. could be 4.

day 8:

stopped at mike’s place. scott was there, not mike. interesting character. big hiker. says he’s always in the sierras. he had thick sunglasses on so i never saw his eyes. having a pizza night. based on donations. said he broke even last night. i didn’t stay for it. didn’t pass many people on trail today, can’t imagine he’ll have too much turnout.

left with chaos, most wanted, and harrison. camping at 131.5 with them, baby legs, and laura.

will cross from san diego county to riverside country tomorrow. first county change since starting.

little bear hostel at 145.2 tomorrow. good distance for my relaxed pace.

gas canister is down to fumes. doubt i can even make oatmeal in the morning.

day 9:

pushed in the morning and made it to the hostel by 1:30pm. my joy for the sun and clear skies has expired. brutally hot. ran into floyd on the trail, guy from desert part of washington, talking about how it was such a nice day. then ran into deb, an older lady about as big as her backpack. i think she would agree with me that it was brutally hot.  occasional breeze up the mountains was the saving grace.

hostel had self serve hot dogs, chips, drinks with posted prices by venmo or cash box. met jen, courtney, and matt there. waited for chaos, harrison, most wanted, and baby legs to get there.

walked with harrison and chaos 2.5 miles from the hostel on dirt roads to sunshine market to get cigarettes and beer. the guy had just closed it when we got there. said they close 6:30pm even though google says 7pm. he had mercy on us and took our money. said he wouldn’t do it for locals since they’re always coming in when he’s trying to close. he said he’s been running the store for 16 years. got a ride from a guy in one of the trailers nearby, Don, back to the hostel. paid him with a beer and all the cash we had between us, $11.

whole time i just kept saying “this is a tuesday.”

nice night at the hostel. didn’t really expect this from the trail.

day 10:

i’m so smelly. we all are. everyone says the only smell themselves. true for me at least. when day hikers come by it smells like they’re all wearing perfume. we ran into a lot before warner springs.

i’m also covered in dirt. i tried to wash some off my face in the hostel sink this morning and maybe improved the situation slightly

ate a double burger at PVC. 1/2lb patties so 1lb total. i figured if i didn’t finish it i would take it with me, but it disappeared as soon as they set it down in front of me. ordered a club sandwich to go. i had to loosen my hip belt after.

lots of people ordered two meals. jaden ate a whole breakfast and then a whole lunch. others packed some out.

my burger fueled the day’s hiking pretty well. made short work of another 8 trail miles and most of the day’s elevation. starting from 4200ft, up to 6300ft. camping at mile 160. i thought i might grab a more secluded solo spot tonight, but i’m surprising myself at how much i’m enjoying the company, so i’m at a big site. I was the first one here, but people are rolling in. Jeremy, Jaden, Steve, got here shortly after me and chaos, harrison, and most wanted rolled in later.

at least it might not be so hot way up here. pretty chilly at 4:30pm right now.

only good water tomorrow is a mile off trail, and like 500 feet down which sucks but can’t be helped.

friday and saturday night i’m splitting an airbnb with chaos, harrison, most wanted, jaden, and anyone else we can convince to join us. it sleeps 8 and right now that makes 5. it’s still just $130 for two nights when split 5 ways. it’s supposed to be super cold, so it’s good nights to spend off trail, especially at this elevation.

our peak on this stretch will be 9100ft, right after the junction to idyllwild. then we make our way back down to 1200ft by mile 210.

day 11:

57 degrees supposedly. feels like 61 supposedly. 12:30pm and i’m sheltering from the sun again. 11 miles so far today if you count the off trail miles to get water. i ran into jaden when she was on her way up. she called it “good” water, which is true: flowing, clear, doesn’t smell, but i thought it was a little funny when i got there and saw it was just a trickle. on my way up i told everyone it was good water. if i had carried 6 liters from PVC i could’ve made it to idyllwild without the detour, but i didn’t have the foresight.

i guess i’ll probably push 7 more today to the mile 175 sites. that lets me rest here until 2:30 and still make it in pretty early. but that still leaves another 2,200 ft gross ascent on the 3,000 ft I’ve done so far (including the water stop off trail).

from the north rim of the grand canyon to the colorado river is 6,300 ft. the cottonwood campsite i stayed at there in 2021 is half way in distance, but is 1500 ft down to the river and 4800 ft up to the rim. so today will have had more elevation than hiking out of the grand canyon from my campsite there (5200 total ascent).

in exchange, we get the most grand and amazing views we’ve had so far, but with the elevation it gets harder to capture their majesty on camera.

there’s some beautiful blue birds i’ve been seeing for days. they’re so shy i haven’t been able to get a picture even. california jay is a thing so maybe that’s it. not as big as the mexican jays i saw in big bend. we’ve seen hummingbirds too.

even the lizards are so shy i can barely get a picture. i’ve seen hundreds. they are getting bigger.

everyone is on a pretty similar schedule. 10 hours of sleep. bedtime 8-9 and wake 6-7. i usually sleep a little past 7. sunrise is around 6:30 and wakes me up before i roll over and nap a little more.

did the second half of the remaining 7 miles at an average pace below 2 mi/hr and got to the campsite quarter after 6. I consider that late. Very windy up here. Trail had a lot of blow downs (blown down trees). I think it’s due to a wildfire and then erosion because a lot of them were burnt. My hands and legs are covered in charcoal from climbing over, under, and around. Lots of thorns on trail too. My legs are scratched up. First 4 miles were okay, but the last 3, last 2 especially were very hard.

but i guess tomorrow should be pretty breezy. i think it’s 6.4 miles to a trailhead that people hitch from.

we heard that harrison, chaos, and most wanted are camping 4.5 miles back tonight. can’t blame them. leaves a longer and tough walk into town tomorrow for them though.

the other 4 of our group of 7 from yesterday are here. i will probably try to catch a ride with some of them tomorrow. very windy at our campsite, not too cold. there’s a little snow around but has been none on trail. clear skies. i see a town off in the northeast. big and bright. i think it’s palm springs. after looking into it, palm springs is 10 miles away and 6,000 feet down. despite being close, there’s no way to get there from here. you’d have to go all the way up to i-10 at mile 210 and then head back.

day 12:

some patches of snow on trail hiking to the junction. i got a ride with jaden and jeremi into town and we got there a bit before 11.

first real town day. i’m overstimulated. wow toilets everywhere. like i’m gonna have like infinite opportunities to use a toilet. and unlimited showers and laundry at the airbnb is crazy.

i ate a triple burger for lunch and a chicken burrito for dinner.

we went to one of the local places that had karaoke tonight. jason sudeikis was there. i don’t know his movies very well and i didn’t recognize him. even after they pulled up a picture on google i still didn’t, but it was definitely him. i think he sang a justin bieber song. we had a good time but i was super tired. some people kept the party going at the only other place that was open, but i went to turn in. we joke that 8:30pm is hiker midnight and we were already up well past it.

day 13:

talking about whether we want to do san jacinto peak tomorrow. jaden and jeremi are going to do it. forecast i’m looking at shows 24 degrees on the peak tomorrow with snow tonight. so i’m thinking i’m not doing it. it actually only cuts out 1,000 feet of ascent to not do the peak. but the weather shouldn’t be quite as bad and the trail shouldn’t be as snow-covered.

i had a chile verde burrito for breakfast, a double burger and strawberry-oreo milkshake for lunch, and pizza for dinner.

town was rainy all afternoon and hailed a little.

proposed trail name for me is parmesan. because i’m grate. i do love a pun but kind of want to wait for something that has more behind it. i like the sound of it though.

scrolling any social media feels noxious. so all i do is look at the waypoints on the trail ahead, water sources, campsites. i look at the elevation profile.

day 14:

the people i’m staying with extended the airbnb another day because of the weather. i was going to leave this morning, but i walked outside and there was snow on the ground, total cloud cover, and it was cold out. on the PCT it was supposed to be a high of 33. so i changed my mind again and decided to double 0. it started snowing again around 9:30, not for long, but it confirmed the decision.

lots of people 0 in Julian which I skipped completely so i figure i had one banked anyway.

i might try and make big bear, the next town, in 5 days instead of 6 if i feel good for it, and idk if i want to 0 there. might just do one night. not too happy at the pace this leaves me at, but enjoying myself is more important.

airbnb shook out to $40/night. no shortage of people looking for a place to stay.

MOTIVATION

some people who i’ve spoken to about doing the trail seem to assume that it must be a spiritual journey of self-discovery. that’s not how i think about it. i’m doing the trail because i think it’s gonna be blast, because i know how great i feel when i spend the whole day outside, how fulfilled and complete i feel in nature. some people seem unsatisfied with this explanation.

last October when i was traveling through the UK i noticed “I feel like my primary mission in life is to wander around the world and bear witness to its beauty.” this spring after arriving in Tucson, I wrote, “i feel like my primary calling is to spend as much time outside as possible.” so the PCT lets me do both at once.

on my warm-up hike to Rincon Peak, i kept giggling to myself “i just love hiking.”

so this is to say that i’m not going to discover myself, but because i know myself.

i think my current goal is well captured in the desire to wander around the world and bear witness to its beauty. i don’t exclusively mean natural beauty; although, that may be my favorite type.

if you had asked me in my last 2 years of college I would’ve said that nothing else matters if you have a few good friends and a broader “community.” in 2021 or 2020 I would say something about trying new things or having new experiences which doesn’t feel too far from where I am now. Before that I would’ve said something about making the world a better place.

the entire PCT will be totally new to me. The only places in California I’ve been are Joshua Tree and Death Valley. The PCT runs far west of these. I’ve never been to Oregon or Washington.

for a long time i had yosemite as a mystical dream destination after reading about it in 3rd grade, but I’ve never been. now it’s just 900ish miles down the trail.

also, to be frank, it will be nice to get away from life’s typical routines and obligations. part of the appeal is getting to focus on my base needs every day: sleep, eat, drink, rest, walk.

GETTING TO THE TRAIL

Friday after work I had champagne with my Tucson lover to say goodbye, and to celebrate my last day of work and new beginnings.

Saturday I got an oil change, bought food and last minute gear items for the trail, packed up most of my stuff from my Tucson airbnb.

I didn’t get much sleep because I had to finish packing in the morning before heading up to my cousin Shawn and Alan’s place in Phoenix by noon.

I did a pack shakedown with Alan and made some final adjustments. I paid and filed for an extension for my NC taxes (where I’m claiming part-year residency). I submitted my timesheets. I called many but not all of the people who I owed phone calls. Taking care of all the last minute to-dos, I didn’t quite get enough sleep this night either.

Then Monday morning Alan and I left a little before 7. The last part of the drive on I-8 was absolutely beautiful and made me so excited to get on the trail, but I didn’t get any pictures.

Alan and I saw border patrol near the trailhead. Thankfully we don’t have any tattoos in tribute to dead or disabled family members and thus were not accused of being in a venezuelan gang.

Finishing everything to get to the trail was difficult enough as-is, but would’ve been 1,000x more difficult without the help of Shawn and Alan and I can’t thank them enough.

HIKING

day 1

I set off from the trailhead around 12:30 I think. What surprised me most was how colorful it was. And it’s so lush compared to Tucson i’m shocked we’re calling this the desert section, but the soil is sandy and the sun is hot.

I made good time and hit mile 12 around 6 pm where i stopped to take a break and soon decided I wasn’t getting back up. I was asleep before the sun went down.

photos within the days are non-chronological. i can’t control the order posting from my phone.

day 2

I woke up the morning of day 2 at 5, made oatmeal by moonlight, packed up, and hit the road by 6. I saw the sun rise within the first few miles.

I made it to Lake Morena at mile 20 a little after 9, where i diverted a short trip off trail to a convenience store that serves diner fare. I ordered a cheeseburger.

Just after noon I crossed the Cottonwood Creek at mile 25.5 and declared a siesta, having already done 13.5 for the day. It’s only 70 degrees, but as i said, the sun is intense and resting for the most intense hours of the day felt like the move. i was only 50 feet off trail but i watched at least 6 people pass and none of them noticed me.

Right after my siesta I ran into a USFS volunteer distributing lots of info. She said there’s a family of bobcats we might see and a mountain lion who we wouldn’t see (wouldn’t live to see maybe?).

She also said that birds of prey will sometimes drop animals they caught if they’re not dead, so if i’m lucky, wounded squirrels, rabbits, or snakes might rain down on me from the sky.

Siesta was the right call because the next section was totally exposed and uphill and unbearable enough in the 3pm sun (the monkey’s paw curls). Thought I would make it further given how much I got done in the morning, but I decided to camp at a spot I saw at mile 32.5. Finishing off 20.5 for the day, stopped a bit after 6 and in bed right at sunset.

day 3

I’m having a lot of condensation accumulating on my sleeping bag at night. At one point I woke up and I was in a cloud. In the morning it was clear but I saw a cloud creeping up toward me from the valley. When I woke up there was frost on the outside of my sleeping bag, on my backpack, and my trekking poles. My clothes from the day before were stiff. Thankfully my water and water filter didn’t freeze. Good reminder to keep the water filter with me in my sleeping bag. I got up around 6:30 I think and left camp around quarter past 7. I would not mind if this were my coldest morning, but I’m not holding my breath. Doesn’t seem fair that it gets so cold at night when it feels so hot during the day.

I made it to the turnoff for Mt. Laguna at mile 42.5 a bit before noon. I stopped at The Outpost for the best burrito of my life, where the locals are sharing their stories from the earthquake in nearby Julian on Monday. From my siesta yesterday up to town was almost all uphill from 3100ft to 6000ft.

The few miles before Mt Laguna were through a beautiful evergreen forest that smelled so fresh.

As soon as I left town it got windy and cloudy and looked like it was going to rain. I tried my hardest to out-hike the rain but it was futile. i gave up around mile 51. i set up camp and indeed rain it did. my tent is a cheap 1-person trekking pole tent, and in order to save weight, it doesn’t have much structural support. the second time strong gusts of winds blew my tent stakes out and it to collapsed on me, i thought, “what is a collapsed tent but a tarp sandwich, and isn’t that exactly what i need?” at 6:30am when the sun was coming up i got out to set it back up so i could climb back in and sleep some more.

i will probably be replacing the tent. its not been a priority because i will sleep under the stars whenever weather permits.

day 4

i didn’t write anything on day 4. i made oatmeal for breakfast and took my time packing up my wet camp.

it was super windy all day. 25mph with gusts up to 40. you just get tired of it having now shelter from it. i only did 12 miles. didn’t see the sun at all. i camped near some people and i wanted to talk to them but i just laid in my tent instead. it rained a bit at night again.

day 5

the morning didn’t feel too cold and wasn’t too windy but it was still cloudy. after 4.5 miles the sun came out for a bit and i passed a camping spot that looked into the valley. i stopped for an early lunch, and to dry out some stuff. clouds came back in under an hour. i was ready for a long break in the sun after all the clouds and wind. i

didn’t get as much as i wanted, but glad i stopped while i had the chance.

wind picked up again later in the day. but didn’t feel as cold. skies were grey a lot but getting clearer. what i hiked through today was a lot more like real desert. made it easier to be grateful that it wasn’t bright and sunny and hot.

i’m looking ahead at other hikers’ comments about warner springs. no joke they’re all gushing about the gas station. apparently good, cheap hot dogs and an outdoor seating area. a couple days ago that would’ve sounded pathetic to me. but now i’m so exited for it. might be the only meal there. i see a couple closed businesses in town.

there was a water cache under an overpass near a road crossing at mile 77. there was a box of oranges there too. a few hikers came up after me and one lady shouted for joy when she saw the oranges. i didn’t shout for joy until i tasted the orange. that’s when i realized how good it was.

it’s amazing how such a simple thing can be so meaningful. those oranges lifted my spirits for the rest of the day.

also in warner springs there is a community center with a ton of self-services for hikers. bucket laundry. supplies. power. wifi: so that’s probably where i’ll finally end up posting this. they are only open on weekends, but by a stroke of luck i should be set to get there early sunday afternoon. 30 miles out still.

day 6

sunshine and clear skies have returned. hot during the afternoon but i’ll gladly bear it.

set a new personal record with 21.7 miles today. camped at 101. feet are dog tired. positioned to get into warner springs early tomorrow. ran into gump and taylor early today who i hadn’t seen since mount laguna 3 days ago. ate lunch with them and a couple other people at water cache at mile 91.

day 7

beautiful hike through a valley with wildflowers to get into warner springs. and beautiful beautiful things in warner springs. community center has showers, electricity, bucket laundry, resupply shop.

feeling clean and refreshed. bought lunch and a bit of resupply to get through to idyllwild.

I’ll be using this substack to send out updates about my upcoming PCT hike. Originally I liked the idea of sending everyone who expressed interest personalized updates, but I realized I don’t want to spend that much time writing updates. As self-absorbed as it feels, I know there are some people who will gladly read as much as I’m willing to write, so I’m not going to worry about brevity. This post is about a hike I did last weekend April 5th-6th as prep for starting the trail on April 14th.

Hike

This weekend I hiked Rincon Peak Trail overnight as a final test of equipment and a warm-up for what's to come. I got a late start on Saturday - waking up to a new guest at the Airbnb I'm staying at stinking up the whole house by burning something plastic on the stove.

The trailhead was 1.5 hours away and I made an REI stop along the way where I picked up an REI 650 down puffer and a pair of Smartwool socks.

I got to the trail a bit after 6pm. Realizing I was going to be late, I reserved the cheerfully named Happy Valley campground, just ~4.5 miles from the trailhead. AllTrails has the whole trail to the peak and back recorded as a 14.7 mile round-trip. Signs on the ground and the map I carried with me would lead me to believe it's closer to 16.4. My phone recorded 18.5 miles walked during the trip.

My pack was a bit lighter than it will be on the trail. I was really only carrying 1 days worth of food. I didn't have my cooking equipment, not quite all the clothes I plan on taking, and there were incidental things that I didn't bring with me like rain gear and sun screen. On the other hand, the trail had 4,500 feet of elevation gain (according to AllTrails (I suspect this is underestimated too)). This is almost double the amount of elevation I'll cover over the same distance on average for the first 600 miles of the trail.

I returned to the car at 6:45pm on Sunday. Altogether, I had been hoping to do a longer trip this weekend, but with the late start on Saturday, I'm glad I made it out at all. If we call this 16.4 miles of hiking over 2 days, that's not quite where I'm hoping to be, but if we call it 16.4 miles in just slightly over 24-hours, that feels a lot more hopeful.

Anyway, the trip reinforced for me that this was the right decision. I was feeling pretty grateful that this experience and these types of vistas will be abundant in my life rather than scarce. I was feeling very capable.

Gear Details/Thoughts

Shoes

The thing I most wanted to test this trip was my shoes. A few years ago, I walked into a shoestore in St. George, Utah, and when I took off my old pair the lady screamed and warned me that I might not have terrible foot problems when I got older if I started wearing insoles immediately - and she recommended I buy them from walmart instead of their store, so it wasn't an attempt to upsell me. I wore insoles for about 6 months after that exchange. So needless to say, my feet are one of the things I'm most concerned about on this trip.

That being said, I've never had much trouble with them. I got through 70 miles in Big Bend with falling-apart sneakers in October. In February, I did a 28 mile-loop around Tanque Verde Ridge in Tucson overnight in even-more-falling-apart shoes, and I got a few blisters, but otherwise my feet felt fine.

For the upcoming thru hike I've gotten a pair of the highly recommended Altra Lone Peak 9s. These trailrunners have the stiffness and tread of a hiking boot on the bottom, but otherwise resemble a sneaker. They are 0-drop meaning the heel is at the same elevation as the toe, and they have a wide toe-box, allowing the big toe to splay out into a more natural position. Finally, they have no padding/cushioning.

I've walked a couple hundred miles in them so far, and the jury is still out. My biggest complaint is that at first I would get pretty serious pain in my arch for about the first mile of any hike I was on, especially on inclined or loose terrain. I figured the fact that it would get better after the first mile was a good sign. And I either have adapted to them better or broken them in because this has improved dramatically in the past couple weeks. I still had a bit of discomfort starting this trail on Saturday, but much less than I originally would have. My feet were tired by the end of Sunday, but recovered quickly after I finished the trail.

Trekking Poles

This was also my first hike with replacement trekking poles since I lost my last ones in Big Bend. They're actually a huge help, especially on the descents where I can now move very quickly - with the weight of my pack I feel like I could out-charge a bear galloping my way down the peaks.

Clothes

As far as clothes on this hike I just brought cotton t-shirt, new down puffer, polyester shorts & underwear, and the merino wool socks. I intended also to bring a light hoodie for sun protection and a warm base-layer, but took these out while I was reorganizing my bag at the trailhead and left them in the car. Aside from that I was basically just planning on bringing an extra shirt, pair of shorts, underwear, and socks. On one long break the first night I was getting slightly uncomfortable - it was probably in the mid 40s. While hiking I was extremely warm - I still had to take off the puffer. Short breaks were no problem, and my sleeping bag is extremely warm. The base layer I was planning on taking probably adds about 10 degrees of comfort conservatively. Originally I was planning on getting a puffer with a hood - they didn't have any that I liked at the store - so I may return the one I got and think about getting something else, otherwise I'll probably pack a beanie.

The biggest reason having warmer stuff is important is because I CANNOT motivate myself to leave a warm sleeping bag to get out into the cold in the morning. I will hibernate until it's comfortable outside. So having warm clothing is probably important for my motivation. Even with the original setup I was planning - I’ll be warm enough on breaks down to 35 degrees, but getting out of my warm sleeping bag when it's 35? Probably not.

I was skeptical about the wool socks even though they are unanimously recommended. I thought they might feel pretty suffocating, and I was thinking about taking a cotton pair as back-up. They weren't too bad, and they were noticably warmer. Usually my toes are the coldest part of my body. But this time it was my fingers. And I'm thinking about taking gloves, but I don't like wearing gloves very much so I'm undecided.

Weather next week shows lows in the low 40s and highs in the high 60s. Should be beautiful desert hiking and not too different from this weekend’s hike.

Food

(By my own estimation) food is 1.5 lbs/day if dense, well-packed and just under 2 lbs/day otherwise. Here are my notes about resupply options in the first 700 miles of trail:

-Mile 40: Mount Laguna (small stop)

-Mile 110: Warner Springs (small stop)

-Mile 180: Idyllwild (few miles off trail)

-Mile 210: I-10 Crossing back to Palm Springs.

-Mile 270: Big Bear City

-Mile 300: Cedar Glen (small, far off, emergency option)

-Mile 360: Wrightwood

-Mile 450: Agua Dulce (directly on-trail)

-Mile 480: Green Valley (not far off)

-Mile 520: Hiker Town

-Mile 560: Tehachapi or Mojave (both a ways off and not too big)

-Mile 650: Ridgecrest (pretty far)

-Mile 700: Kennedy Meadows (right on trail, beginning of the Sierra)

I'll start with enough food to reach Warner Springs with some extra, and plan to pick up food to make it to Idyllwild at either Mount Laguna or Warner Springs. I'll plan on this taking about 8 days to get to Warner Springs, slightly under a 15 mile pace starting out. For most of the trail, I shouldn't need to carry more than a week at a time. My second cousin in-law Alan has very generously offered to help with resupplies up until Fresno. I think I should be able to manage on my own up through Hiker Town, but getting a lift somewhere between there and Kennedy Meadows seems like it will be much appreciated, and one more in the first half of the Sierras after Kennedy Meadows could be tempting too.

Water

No running water along the trail I did last weekend, so I packed everything I needed. I took 6 liters and had plenty to spare. Someone had also left extra water at my campsite with a note that it was for public use, but I didn’t need it.

I’m planning on taking 6 liters (12 pounds) to start out for the desert section, 4 1-liter bottles and 2 1-liter bags. Looking at the first 60 miles water sources are pretty consistent with at most 10 miles between good sources. There’s a longer stretch from mile 60 to 90 which could require a diversion off-trail to an RV park to restock if some of the earlier sources are dry. With highs in the 60s I don’t think I will deplete my supply too quickly.

Information

I’m using the FarOut app for information about water sources, towns, resupply options, etc. There are many waypoints with detailed descriptions. Other hikers can leave comments on them, e.g. to describe how well a water source is flowing. People offering shuttles to town will leave their contact information and price.