July 24, 2017
Mile 1142 to Mile 1161.2 (just past the Peter Grubb Hut)
Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike: Day 80

Trail magic day! Woke up a little groggy from getting up at 2:45am to put the rain fly on. I’ve been sleeping in pajama shorts and they are COMFY! The sunrise (and last night’s sunset) were so beautiful, with so many different kinds of clouds and colors and sun rays coming through it all.

Stone is an Angel and Benny and Chill are Magic

We dealt with day hikers’ bad dogs and knee problems as our two primary hurdles today, but managed to make it to the trailhead right as Stone and his ladyfriend Chris got there. Beer! Talenti Gelato! Andes Mints! Corn Dogs! La Croix! It was the best trail magic. Ever. What’s better is we made NEW FRIENDS because of it! Holy cow, how refreshing. We got to talk to Benny and Chill for almost two hours and got lost in the time. It was a miracle, it’s been so long since I’ve talked to someone and gotten lost in the conversation. I think it’s been since Sam and Vice and Boathouse went out of the picture.

Benny and Chill are GREAT!!! So funny and candid. So so candid. We spent three hours with Stone and them before hiking again.

Just over Castle Pass is the Peter Grubb hut, one of the only permanent shelters on the PCT (the AT has a lot) and it was neat, but kind of stale inside. Not the fresh outdoors. Oh, and I’d rather poop in a hole any day, that outhouse was deeee-sguuuusss-ting. The kind where even if you breathe through your mouth the odor is so bad you can taste the excrement. So we hiked on.

First Snow Bath of the Trail

Our campsite was on a big rock, clean compared to the ground, so we sat on it and took snow baths. Sonya introduced me to this practice. Take a handful of snow, better if it’s that kind of scratchy ice-crystal snow, and rub it on your body until it’s black. Then take a new handful of snow. Repeat until you’re clean! We only washed our legs, but it felt so good to look down and have clean, fresh-scrubbed legs. The snow is great at exfoliating! My legs feel so clean and not sticky, it’s wonderful!

Tonight we are going to have Patagonia Salmon and loaded mashed potatoes for dinner. No campfire; we’d like to get some miles done tomorrow if we can since we had such a long rest break today. And, because I am really f-ing eager to get my old pack back.

Sam is Close, and Flippers are Tense

Oh! Two more things—Sam texted me this morning and said “you’re not that far behind.”

He didn’t say where he was, but he must have gotten some intel from someone who knows both of us.

Second thing, we’ve started seeing hikers who flipped to skip the Sierra and have hiked south from Washington. We just saw Wolfbird and Sherpa get out at Donner Pass to head south into the Sierra. Weird thing about seeing people who flipped, there’s this cloud of tension that forms in the air. I can only imagine it’s the expectation of judgement, that folks who went straight through the Sierra might think less of those who skipped it. Think of them not as thru-hikers. There’s certainly a lot of judgement this year about whether someone who skipped can be considered a thru-hiker, and people boasting about their continuous footsteps. Personally, I’m proud of us for going through the Sierra, but who cares if anyone else did it? They’re still out here, hiking, enjoying the wilderness. But it creates this weird cloud of tension, of many things unsaid, many things wondered between the two groups of people. Reading into everything that’s said. People who skipped feeling the need to justify their decision. To talk about how fun it was to hike through Washington with snow. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like it.