August 5
Miles: 18.1
Mile Markers: 2016.9 – 2035.0
Miles to Canada: 620.8
It was really windy last night and I didn’t sleep very well. Mostly because I kept hearing the wind and thinking it was bears sniffing around my tent or some kind of animals. The wind was definitely playing tricks on me.
It’s been quite chilly this morning and have hiked with my rain jacket on most of the morning just to keep the wind off me. I’m not complaining though. I absolutely love hiking in the cold, but I was just thinking this may be one of the coldest days I’ve had on trail and I can only think of a couple days that I hiked in my rain jacket. One was the day in the desert where it rained and we were some of the only people out hiking, and then up on Baden Powell when it was really windy. But other than that, it’s usually hot and I usually just hike in my shorts and sun hoodie.
The annoying ultralight guy passed me today on the trail. I don’t know how I got in front of him. Maybe he went in to Bend somewhere for a few days, but hopefully he’s now ahead of me for good.
I thought about a number of children’s books that I used to read when I was a kid and how they’ve kind of linked up along various places along the trail. One was called Roxaboxen, and it was about some kids who built a garden in the desert out of rocks, succulents, cacti and walkways lined with rocks in the desert. Walking through the desert so many times reminded me of Roxaboxen, and even though I wasn’t walking to someone’s garden, it still looked like it could have been. In Northern California and even in Oregon, there’s been so many lupins – purple, blue, white, pink and that’s reminded me of one of my favorite books, Miss Rumphias, about a woman who traveled around planting lupines. And now, as I’m eating huckleberries by the handful, I’m reminded of the book Blueberries for Sal, about a little kid picking blueberries in Maine.
So many of the children’s books I read as a child, were about nature and adventure in some capacity. One of my favorite books was called Misha, about a girl who escaped the Holocaust and lived in the forest with wolves. It later turned out that the author had made up the story and it wasn’t really an autobiography at all, but I still love that story. Another book was the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, about a girl who became a sailor on a ship after there was a mutiny. My parents always bought me books about strong and brave girls who didn’t just fit into a little box.
When I told them I was planning on hiking the PCT, they didn’t even really blink an eye. It wasn’t like oh be careful. That’s so dangerous! They were excited for me and thought it was exciting. My mom checks my Garmin mapshare everyday just to see how far I’ve come and sends messages about her own adventures from when she lived in a van with her dog and traveled around, going to Bishop to go cross country skiing, climbing, hiking. My mom was on the first all women’s rafting trip down the Colorado River, she climbed Mount Anapurna in Nepal and moved to Kenya to be a teacher in her twenties. She was the CFO of a family business for many years while I was growing up and then in her ’60s decided to pursue a passion that she had never pursued previously her photography and now she’s featured in all kinds of exhibitions and shows with galleries. She is my inspiration in some ways realizing you can reinvent yourself at any time. You can be many things you can have many lifetimes.
Today, the trail kind of meanders up and down along a ridge for about 8 miles before descending down for another 8 miles. It’s kind of nice. I think I prefer these slight up and downs to really long ascents or really long decents – just more variety is a little easier on the feet.
There are a lot of SOBOs coming past, and they’ve all been pretty unfriendly and kind of rude walking by. As I discussed the trail etiquette yesterday, about how you are supposed to step off to let the person coming uphill by. But even when I’ve stepped off to let them by, they barely give me a chance to step off the trail before they’re trying to push past. And then they don’t say thank you or hi or how’s it going or anything. It has to be a different type of person to hike southbound then North.
I think throughout much of my journey, there’s been this push and pull between wanting to be with people and not wanting to be with anyone, which is fascinating when I think about it objectively, like what is that – this desire to be part of the community, to belong, and also have solitude.
There was a long four plus mile stretch where the trail had a steep drop on one side and basically a wall on the other side. So there was nowhere to take a break or even pee, and I had to pee really badly that entire section. So by the time I got to the very first flat campsite, I decided to take a break and have lunch. I’ve been cooking lunch and dinner and eating bars for breakfast. So I started boiling water, but then dropped my lighter in the water. Oh crap, now it’s not working. I had been leapfrogging a German couple all day. We probably passed each other six or seven times, and when they passed by again, I asked if they knew if I could fix the lighter somehow, and they didn’t know but they offered to give me their spare lighter which was extremely nice of them. So now I had one lighter that didn’t work and a larger lighter that did. I ate my lunch and kept trying to get the water out of the lighter and eventually I got it to work. So when I was done eating, I packed up quickly to try to see if I could catch up to them and give them back their lighter. They said they had a stove with a lighter in it so the lighter that they were carrying was just a spare. But I would feel really bad if their stove stopped working and then they weren’t able to start a fire. I caught up to them at the next water stream. They were just sitting in the shade relaxing so I was able to give back the lighter. It’s funny how generous people become when that means also lightening their packs as well.
I’ve decided to send home my bear can, which I’m still a little torn about but I want to cut the weight. I think it will help my feet to have a pack as light as possible. I purchased an Ursack major, which is supposed to protect against bears and rodents. Although honestly, I still don’t really understand how I would keep rodents out, but we’ll see how it goes. The good thing is at PCT days there’s going to be tons of things for sale, tons of gear, and so I can probably buy some rope for the bear bag and mail my bear can home.
After the long descent today, the trail descended into a forest that feels very much like home. There’s tons of ferns rhododendrons, ivy, all kinds of pine trees, and now there’s blackberries, blueberries and more huckleberries. I keep stopping to pick blackberries along the trail and my fingers are stained red from the juice.
Since yesterday, I’ve been thinking about that phrase the trail provides in a different sense. The forest is just offering up these berries, this food. You can forage and get what you need from the trail. You can get water. You can get these berries for free. It’s fascinating how in a single forest, there’s so many plants and berries and food sources and different nutrients and vitamins if you know what you’re doing and know what to look for.
After I left the Germans at the creek, I started ascending up a hill that was lined with blackberry bushes and what I think are blueberries, although they look quite different from commercial blueberries so I’m not sure if I should eat them, but the blackberries are sweet and small. Funky Flames told me that any berries in North America that look like raspberry or blackberry with those multiple berry bundles are safe to eat. I feel like a bear just moseying along in the forest eating berries as I please.
My plan was to camp at a river that supposedly had some tent sites, but it also is in a burn zone surrounded by dead trees and none of the spots looked very good. Most of them had dead trees AKA widow makers looming right over them, so I didn’t feel comfortable staying at any of the sites so I kept walking. It got really hot. It’s completely exposed with no tree cover and it’s amazing how hot it gets. I had to go up a large ascent to get to the next actual viable campsite which is right before Jefferson National Forest, which you need a completely different permit to enter. So there were no campsites for about 4 miles before this forest. But then you’re not allowed to camp in the 4 miles where this boundary is. Luckily I got to a spot just before the boundary and nobody else was there so that’s where I’m camping tonight. The good news is that I ended up hiking a few extra miles, and so tomorrow my destination of Ollalie resort will only be 13 miles. So I think I can get there around noon and hang out and have a half day off.
So far I’ve kept on par with, if not ahead, of my plan and I feel really good about how much I’ve learned about what my body can do. How much you can hike each day and what I need to feel okay out here.
Thankfully nobody was at the campsite when I got there and I grabbed the only real tent site that was flat. I heard some people come in later in the night and they didn’t realize that there was actually another campsite next to my tent and I didn’t exactly get out of my tent to tell them about it either because it was literally right next to my tent so they had to camp in slanted makeshift spots in the bushes that wouldn’t have been very comfortable. Some of the people had Southern accents which isn’t unusual to hear on the trail. LOL. You snooze you lose, and I lost yesterday, but today I win the campsite lottery.
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