PCT day 77 – Back on the trail
We got up, had breakfast and got our stuff together. We were so reluctant to hike out. Cool Breeze kept suggesting we hike out tomorrow. Don't tempt me. I am so not into getting back on the trail because it's going to be so hot (the temperature for Belden is 106 - now that's just ridiculous). I just want to stay here. But, I know once I get back on the trail it will be fine. It's just finding the will to get there.
I want to hike but I don't.
I want to get back to trail life. But I don't.
But I want to get to Canada. So I scraped some will together and we were on our way.
Mumma Cool Breeze and Al took us back to the trail head and we hiked out. Luckily, as we didn't start hiking until 10:30am, it wasn't too hot to start with as it was a bit overcast.
First we had a 2500ft climb which was surprisingly ok as it was mostly switchbacks. It was hot on the exposed ridge but the clouds soon gathered and it rained on us for a bit. It was actually a welcome relief. We saw another guy out on a day hike, it was a thru hiker from last year – DC, we walked and chatted with him for a while.
The rest of the day was just small up and downs although it was fairly tough going because my pack was heavy with food. It makes my feet hurt. I can feel the bones being crushed under the pressure.
We looked at the maps (something we should have done before we left) and we saw that two 20 mile days would take us to a paved road to Quincy, not far from the RV park. Hmm. Another night in the RV? We don't make a very good pair because neither of us took any convincing. We phoned Mumma Cool Breeze and she will pick us up at the road tomorrow. We were kicking ourselves at our lack of planning. Instead of hauling 6 days of food with us we could have just been carrying one dinner and some snacks.
There is pretty much no water on this stretch so I had to make do with the 1.5 litres I had in my pack for the whole day. When we had walked 20 miles and reached our camp spot for the night there was a spring 600ft away where we could finally get water. We shared it with the mosquitoes of course! The water came out of a pipe directly from a mountain spring, I didn't filter it for the first time on the trip – fingers crossed!
We had dinner – cool breeze ate a peanut butter, Nutella, honey and almond m&m tortilla - and you think what I eat is disgusting!!
Concrete came by and camped in the same place. He said he saw a bear about a mile back 100ft from the trail. Why haven't I seen a bear yet?!?!
After Cool Breeze pretended to be a ninja in his sleep clothes we watched the sun set. It was pretty spectacular. I'm not ready to be done with this yet.
