PCT 8 – Hot

Daily miles 21
Total miles 149

Today was a really hard day and we are pooped! We got an early start today, waking up around 5:20. We packed our stuff up and headed to the trail just after 6:00.

We had to carry a lot of water today because there would be no water on trail until tomorrow morning. We both carried 6 liters of water. We were weighed down by the water and made slow progress this morning. As it started to warm up, the trail became mostly uphill (for the rest of the day unfortunately). The sun was really intense today and the vegetation provided almost no shade. Over the day, the heat and the weight of our packs just wiped us out.

We are camped about three miles from a cafe where we will eat breakfast tomorrow morning. We are camped near a group of hikers we have been around since the beginning of the trail, and are some of our favorite people out here. We are also camped near two very sweet girls from NH. We are all looking forward to our breakfast at the cafe!

We are sleeping on the ground again, since there is no place to hang our hammocks. We definitely sleep better in our hammocks, but we wanted to camp here to give ourselves a better chance of making the miles we need tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will hike on an alternate route for the PCT as there is a section of the trail coming up that is closed due to fire damage in a previous year. From what we understand the alternate consists of some road walking which we’re not looking forward to since it is supposed to be another scorcher tomorrow.

We are all in our sleeping bags well before 8:00. Definitely our earliest bedtime so far on the trail. We are all so exhausted from the day and are looking forward to a good night’s sleep.