July 30
Miles: 1.9
Mile Markers: Elk Lake Resort (Off Trail) – 1955.5
Miles to Canada: 700.8
I woke up, packed up my tent and bag, and waited around on the deck of Elk Lake counting the minutes until 11am so that I could order a pizza. I hung out with Charlotte, Dirk and DJ Squirrel for awhile before DJ Squirrel headed back to trail.
One of the things I always appreciate about Europeans is that in a group of 4 people, where 3 speak the same language, they still defaulted to speaking to each other about where they lived in Germany, in English, to not exclude me, even though I had nothing to contribute to the conversation.
The pizza was pretty large, and I didn’t even take a picture of it because as soon as it arrived, I just started chowing down. I ate half the pizza but gave away the rest of it to other hikers since I didn’t think I could finish it. I don’t think I ever got full blown hiker hunger and I’m not really liking enough miles per day for that. They also had Tillamook ice cream which is a local Oregon ice cream that’s really good, so I had some cookie dough in a waffle cone, same as yesterday.
I probably could have headed back to the trail sooner, but I was too full of pizza and ice cream to really move all that much so I had to wait for my food to digest.
There was another hiker, a super ultra light person and when I had talked about the fire, he just kind of shrugged his shoulders and said I don’t really care. He said he didn’t really care about the tsunami either when other people started talking about the tsunami warnings. It wasn’t a big deal. There was another girl sitting with us chatting who had an infection on her back, and even though she was hiking with an ER doctor, who told her she really needed to get the infection looked at and have the wound excised at a hospital, she kind of laughed about it and said she didn’t want to get off trail. Kind of shrugged her shoulders about the whole thing. The ultralight guy and this woman started trying to one up each other about how little they cared about various things, while the doctor sat there and rolled his eyes at the whole display.
There is this culture on the trail, of people just pushing themselves to exhaustion, pushing past injuries to the point that it’s dangerous, pretending not to care about possible dangers. I don’t think it’s heroic. I don’t think it’s brave though. It puts yourself and others at risk if you can’t take care of yourself out on the trail. But of course there’s a balance, because you will experience pain out here. You will experience hardships, and you do have to keep pushing through them to get to the other side sometimes. But there’s a very delicate line between being a fool, and having grit.
Charlotte is 24, in between her undergrad and master’s program which is why she had the time to hike with her father. She made a comment that you still have to live in your body after the trail, which I thought was pretty wise for a 24-year-old.
When I asked if she had Instagram so we could stay in touch, she said that she did but she had deleted Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, all of her social media messaging apps on her phone before entering this country because she was worried about being let in and having her phone searched. I heard that from a number of other international hikers as well. I added her and she said she would follow me back when she got home.
Charlotte and Dirk were planning on hiking one of the Sisters Mountains and then heading to Big Lake Youth Camp on Sunday, so I will probably see them again. I’ll likely get there on Saturday, which is the one day of the week where they don’t serve any food, and I figured that would be a good place to take a zero – like an actual proper zero. My first zero since getting back on the trail, since I’ve only taken nearos so far.
All of the comments about Big Lake Youth Camp are extremely positive and talk about how welcoming and wonderful the camp is to hikers. I also really want to do laundry and take a shower since I skipped doing laundry at both Shelter cove and Elk Lake.
I have a package waiting at Big Lake Youth Camp, and then this morning, I also ordered some ankle braces to be sent there as well. I think running out of tape as much as I have, has been extremely inconvenient, and I’m finding that my ankle is needing more and more support to not hurt, so I’m starting to think maybe I need the tape and the ankle brace at least for my left ankle.
I sat on the porch to try to charge my battery bank which took forever. It was depleted to 5% charged, and for whatever reason it took almost all day to recharge. A few other hikers came in. One was named Brace, because he wore a ton of braces when he hiked the Appalachian Trail. I had actually briefly met him in the Sierra just after Kennedy Meadows and saw him a few times.
I said goodbye to Charlotte and Dirk around 4pm and started hiking back to the trail. I decided to hike just after the junction back on the PCT, and it was starting to rain by the time I got up there so I decided to set up my tent at one of the first decent spots that I found. It was just off the trail, but I figured most people wouldn’t be coming up there that time of day. No one else passed by, so I was alone on the trail.
I was too full of pizza and ice cream to eat anything so I just got in my bed. After dark, I started hearing this strange noise, which sounded like something licking. It sounds like when my dog is licking her leg, or licking her butt. It sounded really loud though and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the distance. I didn’t know what it was, but it was extremely rhythmic – like the noise was on a metronome. I clapped my hands really loudly and the noise stopped at least for a little bit. I did it a few times and the noise would always stop and then start up again.
I wasn’t scared though. It didn’t sound like something I should be afraid of, and the clapping was more like, hey I’m trying to sleep. Please be quiet.
I think back to the first night I camped ALONE on the trail and how I kept waking up with every noise, thinking everything was a mountain lion. Now, I’m just telling them to keep it down.
If you are enjoying this blog you can subscribe here to get email updates! If you are really enjoying the blog, please buy me a coffee and help me on my PCT journey! ☀️
