Miles: 400 to 426.9 Mileage: 26.9 Day: 21 It all started off so well. We got up and started hiking before 7 a.m. The night had been dry, so the tent and sleeping bags were in fine shape. My feet felt great. And then the winds started. The terrain was varied, without big climbs to […]
Miles: 374.8 to 400 Mileage: 25.2; plus an extra 1.1 from the road walk Day: 20 Hiking Mt. Baden-Powell was the first order of the day. It was 40 switchbacks to the top. Most were gentle; some were fiercely steep. At the first drifts of snow, Richard and I paused briefly to throw snowballs at […]
Miles: 351.8 to 374.8 Mileage: 23 Day: 19 The view was gone by the morning. Our sleeping bags were wet again and so was the tent. Fog was everywhere. Cold and wet to start the day. The weird part of it was, the higher we climbed the drier it got. We had ten miles of […]
Miles: 325.5 to 351.8 Mileage: 26.3 Day: 18 The sun hit us early on the lake shore. We woke to find dew on everything. Even though we woke up around 6 a.m., we didn’t start hiking until after 7 because we let our sleeping bags dry in the sun for a bit. Our first […]
Miles: 298.7 to 325.5 Mileage: 26.8 Day: 17 Okay. So, not all of the PCT is in the designated “wilderness,” but whether we wander through National Forest, state land, Bureau of Land Management or whatever, it’s still easy to tell if it’s Monday through Friday or the weekend. During the week, it’s rare to see […]
Miles: 275.1 to 298.7 Mileage: 23.6; plus, 2.8 miles from the bottom of Van Dusen Canyon Road to the PCT Day: 16 After we peeled ourselves away from the cotton and comfort of our hotel (which took a couple of hours), we headed up Van Dusen Canyon Road and back to the trail. The grade […]
Miles: none Mileage: 0 Day: 15 To celebrate our first two weeks on the trail, we gave ourselves a day away from it. We slept in, ate a huge breakfast, lounged in a hot tub and did chores. Hiker chores include: laundry, body hair removal, wash pot and spoons, rinse gaitors, buy replacement gear (like […]
Miles: 256.6 to 275.1 Mileage: 18.5 Day: 14 The early morning air was cold. I spent the first part of the night tossing and turning because my aching feet kept me awake. I took some ibuprofen, my first medication on the trail, and was able to sleep. We packed up slowly because we stopped to […]
Miles: 231.1 to 256.6 Mileage: 25.5 Day: 13 This morning was the first time on the trail that I felt beaten before lunch. The first few miles followed Mission Creek upstream. It was a seemingly endless slight uphill grade on loose baseball-sized gravel or sand. These are my two least favorite hiking surfaces. By the […]
Miles: 210.8 to 231.2 Mileage: 20.4 Day: 12 Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the miles, but the hikers slept very quietly overnight at Ziggy and The Bear’s. I woke up a couple of times to shift positions and the rustle of my sleeping bag was all I could hear. Even with Interstate […]