#pctseries

I like stats. Not as much as a baseball fan but they can tell a story and I'll try to use them to summarize some aspects of my first section on the PCT.

It was pretty relaxed in that I wasn’t walking too many miles per day and wasn't waking up early. In my case “If I can hike anyone can” is not false modesty :). I had been lucky with blisters, which is the most common annoyance with thruhiking, but the soles of my feet felt shattered enough to force a couple of injury days. And considering I had just camped alone twice I hadn’t really started hiking solo yet.

By the time I hobbled into Warner Springs to end Section A, I’d finished 110 miles and two weeks on the trail. My previous longest wilderness backpacking trip was 23 miles and three days- I was beaming with pride!

I hadn’t yet been tempted to hitch hike or skip a section, and that was reassuring as far as motivation levels. I was also beginning to feel and smell like a thruhiker and was bummed when I had to stop.

As we approached the 100 mile mark we were also beginning to see friends and fellow thruhikers drop off the hike. Some dropped due to injuries, others to tend to family issues, some because the discomfort of the walk was beginning to get to them, and still others because they were burning through money faster than they expected.

As much as this was my own journey, the moment someone I knew well on trail dropped out, it gave me a sinking feeling. Like being abandoned. And for a brief period it would suck the joy out of my own journey. The best way to get past I learned was just to get back on trail or distract yourself with the logistics of the next section.

For not being a standout hiker the one reason I did stand out on the trail was my daily start time. I’d normally wake up by 8am, then spend 45 minutes staring with disbelief at the mess I had to pack up again. Finally I'd get on the trail between 10:30-11 am. For most hikers when hiking in the desert that was almost the time in the day that they'd stop in the shade in order to escape the oppressive heat of the sun. And yes, they’d start by 6am or so.

Julian is a really popular town among the thruhikers because we’re treated like royalty there. As I checked in at the hotel and walked towards my room a couple sitting on the porch asked me if I was on the PCT. “You know you guys are an inspiration to us all right?”. I was stinking, hobbling but suddenly I forgot all of that & felt like a million dollars :) 

Day 9 started with me barely being able to move around even in the tent. While the next planned city stop was Warner Spring at Mile 110, now in this pain the temptation of a town sounded too good to pass up. From Scissor Crossing at Mile 77, Julian was just a 20 mile hitch away that promised food, a bed, shower and some time off my feet. By the time I got there though I was stoically "prisoner hobbling" having figured a system of reverse cupping my feet to make the pain bearable.

The picture here is of a perfect desert day. Yet, just the previous evening as we were about the enter this ridge running section of the trail we were scared of the howling winds blowing us off the mountain. We decided to play it safe hope the weather improved the next morning. We were starting to learn that the weather changed really quick on trail.

It was also the first day of my second week on trail which felt monumental.

Mile 50 was the first milestone on the PCT. Most of the milestones on the PCT are marked by very welcoming, *generally* 100% organic arrangements like the stone one in the picture here :).

A  mile later though, the adjacent highway was teeming with Border Patrol SUV's. At that point, although we were more than 50 miles from the border on the PCT, we were just about 20 odd miles from there "as the crow flies". "Illegals" are one of the issues you hear about before you start the hike but rarely when on it. One of the officers was on the trail and when he saw us asked this carefully worded yet what seemed to us at the time a pretty ridiculous question: “Guys, have you seen any trouble on the trail? Umm..of the international kind?”. As the only foreigner in that group I smiled and shrugged. We carried on hiking, and in his defense the officer was very polite.