Tuesday Day 83

June 26th, 2018

Mile 1249-1270 Karen mile 1071

Wouldn’t you know it?!? We were the last ones to leave camp today. And that was at 7am! So alllll the overachievers rolled into Middle Fork after we did and left before we did. Case and point, these people mean business. All business, every mile. The “kids” who setup next to Nathan and me told us they’d hiked 34 miles. That was their goal though for every day, to finish before August 19, when they had to return to school. They had every campsite planned for their 3 1/2 month PCT journey. That’s a bit much for myself. Just saying, and that’s a conversation for a whole ‘nother day.

It was an uphill kinda day. In 10 miles, we would climb at least 3,000ft up. (Never mind that I’ll have to go down that much tomorrow).  And the heat would creep up on us before we knew it. It was a tough uphill slog, but we slowly made it.  The beauty of the day being we had plenty of water sources so we didn’t have to carry too much extra weight.  Early on I had asked Nathan how far he had intended to hike today.  His response was always “16 miles” so when we were close to 16, he finally said; Your company is motivating me to push on.  I think I’ll do the full 20 with you today.  I told him at the pace we were going–we were taking a lot of breaks–It would be 7 by the time we reached the campsite I planned on.  He agreed and we continued about the day to mile 1270.

I kept seeing a lot of the slugs out there so I figured they needed an appearance in the blog.

Of all the random things we sometimes see on the PCT this was a welcomed gesture.  I of course didn’t want to carry a book as I haven’t read a thing in my library (on my phone) as I’m always too tired.  But still, I appreciate the effort of the person who put this out there in the middle of nowhere.

This was the 2nd marking I’ve seen on this section.  I’ll have to look for the other one, but the historical information is pretty cool.

I should mention that we made it to Bucks Summit just around 530pm.  It was 17 miles from where we camped this morning.  And it was 3 more miles to slightly uphill to where we are camped now.  The “kids” that I spoke of earlier had signed the logbook at 1pm.  Yup, that means from 5am-1pm they’d hiked 17 miles.  Again, thats a super fast pace.  More power to them.

It was after 7 when I turned a corner and saw my shadow.  Pretty unusual for me as I found that I like to be at camp not much later that 5.  That gives me time to set up, eat, and allow the body to relax.  By the time we made it to mile 1270, there was already other people set up there.  Then I felt like we had to be quiet as to not bother them as they went to sleep early.

All in all, another good day.  A long day, I will say that.  Nathan and I cooked dinner near his tent as to not disturb the now 3 other people that are here.  He will stay behind tomorrow morning and hike to 3 Lakes –  which is just off the PCT – and then head into Belden on Thursday to meet his friends for the EDM festival there this weekend. Its 10 miles for me tomorrow. Mostly downhill.