PCT 71 – Midpoint

Daily miles 23
Total miles 1328

Nice night with cool temps for good sleeping.

Today,  we hiked separately.   Beardoh got up at 4:30 and was on the trail a little after 5am so that he could get into the town of Chester to take care of some work errands.  Cocoa was also headed in to Chester,  so the two of them hiked together and met Cocoa’s girlfriend Amy at the road crossing at noon.

Amy drove them into town and they all had tex-mex at a restaurant in town and then headed over to a coffee shop,  where Beardoh went to work on Amy’s laptop for a couple hours to take care of work stuff.   It was super fortuitous that Amy had a computer and offered the use of it,  while Cocoa and her caught up over a long coffee.

After getting some work done,  we headed over to the grocery store to pick up snacks for the rest of the gang that didn’t make it into town.   Amy dropped Beardoh off around 4, and he hung out with other hikers and a trail angel that was doing trail magic at the road crossing. 

SweetPea,  Mountain Man and Gazelle rolled into the camp near the road crossing around 6:30, enjoyed coffee and a soda from the trail angel and then had dinner.

Today was a bit monumental as we passed the midpoint of the trail.   The 1325 mile marker is marked by a concrete marker post right along the trail.   The midpoints of long trails are interesting as they may be mid way in distance but they usually seem further mentally than the half way mark.

The trip seems to go quicker after the halfway point,  partly because of the groove that one has established – which gives familiarity to the journey,  and partly because speed starts to pick up in the latter half of a hike.   We are not really sure if our speed will pick up very much,  so it will be interesting how the remainder of the hike progresses. 

We have noticed that some of the hikers on the trail are already aiming for particular finish dates that have quite aggressive pace requirements . This is not something that we have done with such a large amount of the trail in front of us.   It seems a bit hasty and a little too goal-oriented,  at least for those that don’t actually have some kind of firm commitment lying in wait for them in the fall.  We will continue to take it day by day,  and enjoy our breaks and easy pace (one hiker called us ‘professional breakers’ a couple weeks ago 🙂