PCT day 31 – Tired
One month to date on the trail and I woke up on the side of the LA aqueduct! It was my first night cowboy camping and it was fine, but I was so tired I wouldn't have known if anything had crawled on me anyway. There was a beautiful sunrise but I was only capable of opening half an eye to look. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours until it started getting hot which forced us out of our sleeping bags.
We ended up hiking out at around 9:30am. We walked on a paved road for a bit and through the wind farm for what seemed like an eternity. It was so hard to walk after yesterday. The middle of the night leg throbbing was happening in the morning instead, so it was a slow train day to start with.
We walked about 10 miles before we got a break, I was getting stressed as everyone we passed this morning was sat down - apart from us, we just kept moving. We finally got to the water source after about 10 miles and saw Jesse and Goatsy there, they were struggle bussing it today too. We decided to have a nap and we set up on a red ant superhighway. They were so annoying. I got max 10 minutes sleep and then had an ant crawling on me so that was the end of the nap. Growler had no problems at all. She is a pro.
The rest of the day was hotcold. Hot when the wind wasn't blowing but cold when it was. We descended one mountain only to have to go up another one and we could see all the switchbacks. I didn't count them on the way up but there must have been at least 24 thousand. I was feeling good this afternoon and the climb actually went pretty quickly. I told myself I wouldn't stop for a break until cool breeze caught me, but he left half an hour after me and didn't catch me until right near the top so I did the 2000ft without stopping.
We rested for a while and ate a snack only to find a water cache .2 of a mile further and Jesse and Goatsy were there. We met the man who maintained the cache and his lovely dog sunshine.
We managed a further half a mile to a camp spot in the trees, the only trees on the mountain that didn't burn. It was a nice spot because it was out of the cold cold wind. We set up camp and made dinner - rice side with string cheese and bacon bits.
Zu Zu came along and camped with us – she did 32 miles today and looked very spritely, not like we did after our long day. She has been averaging 100 miles every 3 days. Well that pissed on our fire!!
Tomorrow we get to town and I get to have my first shower in seven days (I am really stinky).