PCT 91 – BlowdownPalooza

Daily Miles: 26
Total Miles: 1797

We had a nice and relaxing time at Fish Lake. Gazelle arrived during our zero day, so we are now all back together. We decided to get back to the trail on the evening of our zero and just camp near the road. That way we would be able to get an early start the following morning. We weren’t able to get a hitch to the trail, so we had to walk the two miles. By the time we were setting up camp, it was getting dark. We all just went straight to bed.

The campsite we used was pretty small, so Gazelle and MountainMan just cowboy camped…no tents. They ended up having a bunch of ants crawling on them and in their sleeping bags during the night…certainly not a restful night of sleep.

In the morning, we had 10 miles to hike without a water source. We had planned to each carry an extra liter in our platypus bottles, but before leaving camp, Gazelle dropped her bottle cap in the river and it was gone. So, she ended up using SweetPea’s platypus and Beardoh had to carry the extra water for both of us in his platypus. It is never fun to have to carry so much water.

When we started hiking, we noticed that there had been recent maintenance on the trail. It looked like there had been quite a few downed trees across the trail, but they had been cut to clear the path. Sadly, this maintenance stopped about four miles in from the road, but the downed trees continued. We had to constantly walk around or over the trees that had fallen over the trail. Over the course of the day, there must have been around 200 trees that were on the trail. It was hard on our bodies to go over the trees, and it slowed our pace.

In the afternoon, we had a good climb that afforded us big views. It has been several days since the trail had such high views. It seems like we have just been in forests more lately, instead of walking along ridges with views. We took a nice break and even checked emails, since we all had cell service.

We finally got to camp (and our second water source of the day) at 7:15pm. There were five other hikers camped at the same place, but we only knew one of them. SweetPea’s hip was bothering her quite a bit after dealing with all the downed trees, so we hope that the trail will be nicer tomorrow.