PCT day 88 – Old Station
So Cool Breeze found a mouse in the tent last night. He felt it run over his face. He set about finding it and eventually trapped it with a sock and launched it out the tent. He told me after the event which was a good idea because I would have probably freaked out a bit!
Everything was soggy when we woke up and the rain was still dripping from the trees. We set the alarm for 5:30, then 6, then 6:30. When we did finally get up we found the mouse had chewed through our food bags. Stupid for leaving them outside really. Mine had one hole but they went to town on cool breezes and his had 4! I don't think it actually ate any of our food though.
We packed up all our wet stuff and walked the 4 miles to Old Station where we thought JJs Cafe was, but it was 3 miles further on. There was absolutely nothing at Old Station, a tiny store with nothing worth buying! So we carried on and got to the cafe, playing games on the way to pass the time. We had breakfast and there were a few other hikers there. It was nice to feel like I was eating real food, scrambled eggs with feta, spinach, tomato, ham and peppers with potatoes. Yum.
We went outside to dry out our stuff while there was still a little bit of sun and watched the clouds rolling in. We repaired our food bags and I surveyed my terrible selection of food while checking for mouse nibbles. The carrot had been nibbled. That got thrown away.
We saw some more hikers come in and by this time they were serving lunch, so we stayed for lunch. I had a pulled pork burger – so good – and we tried again to make a plan for the rest of the day. Instead we played an infuriating game until it was 3pm and they were closing!
It had turned pretty cold and the clouds were gathering more, so we got our stuff together and hiked out. About half a mile up the trail is Subway Cave which is the last place to get water before the notorious 30 mile hot, dry, waterless stretch that is Hat Creek Rim. (Pretty sure that's not going to be a problem this year!). We were getting water when a family asked us about the trail and they gave us beers!
Big Potato Butte. Ha.
We explored the cave, which was freezing, and then continued up the trail. There was a small climb which we wanted to get out the way, half way up it started raining (nooooo! I'd just got all my stuff dry!). We got to a parking lot and sheltered by the pit toilets. We had made it about 2.5 miles by then. We hung out there for about half an hour until the rain eased and then walked another half a mile to a camp spot.
The plan is to get an early start tomorrow after an 11 mile day...