April 5
I woke up at Lake Morena and it was the second day my tent had ice in it! It was pretty cold but I got my stuff ready even quicker than the previous day. I should have charged my phone the night before but I didn’t, so in the morning I tried to charge it in the bathroom for awhile. I volunteered to take Sheila and Ree’s battery banks with me and then I got going.
I hiked most of the day alone, leaving “PCT” messages written in the sand where the trail got confusing. I stopped to dry out my tent and get water at Boulder Oaks campground, ran into “Food Truck” and her husband “Water Boy”, Eden from Australia who used to live in Seattle, and Sheila.
I saw Ree and her friend, and Kyle later at kitchen Creek. I decided to hike down to get some water and went for a swim. By swim, I mean I started slipping on the river plants and then decided to just jump in. Someone (another Masshole!) wanted to name me “dive right in” as a trail name but that’s way too long.
I hiked about 13 miles and stopped at Fred Canyon. There are a bunch of people here but I stopped because there aren’t a ton of places to camp. The guy who snores and wanted to camp right next to me at Lake Morena set up his tent right next to mine even though there’s plenty of room. Nooooooo. Hopefully I will be too tired to care. I met some cool new people at the campsite and we played cards. Roxy, a former PCT hiker from Arizona, a few other guys I forgot the names of. Nice to talk to new people. We played cards which was fun.
Today I switched up a few things. I used my hiking umbrella for the first time. Some dayhiker took a picture of me 😂 it was actually nice for awhile, like hiking in the shade, but then I kept getting stuck in the bushes so I put it away. At one point I tilted it and used it like a spinnaker. I also used my lower chest strap for the first time. My backpack has a normal chest strap and then an underboob strap. I think it helped me engage my core more and took pressure off my spine.
Throughout all of my physical therapy, I had to retrain my brain to understand the signals from my body and where my body was in space (AKA “neuromuscular reeducation”). Between the issues with my cervical spine, and having multiple concussions, there was a lot I had to relearn. A lot of my rehab was related to relearning how to breathe properly, how to walk, how to gain rotation in my torso. My spine used to be tethered which constricted my ribs from moving well. All the things I had to relearn are helping me on this hike, especially now that I’m gaining altitude.
I got hungry today. That’s a whole thing I have written about but never published. When I was very sick and before my neck surgery, I had a lot of stomach issues, and never really regained my sense of hunger. But today I became hungry. I ate a granola bar and then the hunger went away. What a concept!
Anyway, I respond very well to having something to remind my body where it is in space, and the underboob strap is helping a lot.
The trail did provide after I made some sacrifices of my own to the hiker box. I wanted one more tent stake for the windward side of my tent and I found a tiny one in a hiker box.
I don’t have anything in me to write anything insightful right now. 13 miles today. Mt Laguna tomorrow, hopefully I catch up to Jenna!
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