2018 PCT Adventure: Day 27, 20.90 miles

Woke up today at the fire station. I’ve discovered that when it’s nice and cold out in the morning, I like to “sleep in”, aka leave at 7am instead of 5 or 6. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just means to do the 20+ mile days I need to just hike longer and not take as long as a siesta.

The morning was stunning as usual. There were all these pink wildflowers today that I’d never seen! I came around a corner and saw a nice view. As I went to take the picture I realized I had taken this exact picture before, check it out!

2018

2016

Crazy huh? The pic from 2016 has some white flowers near trail that just bloom in a little while since this was 10 days later back in 2016!

By noon, I had done 11 uphill miles and had climbed up to Messenger Flats Campground. There was a great tree with some shade so I took a siesta and aired out my feet.

Thanks for the gummies mom!!

Ahhhhhh

The ants love my sweat..

After a break that was waaaaay too long, (I get comfy and then lazy), I made my way down to the next watersource: the Northfork Ranger Station. This section of the trail was still beautiful, except instead of gong up it was going straight down! I did have to take it nice and slow as there was poison oak all over the trail!

Ahhhh! Poison oak all over!

After safely making it to the ranger station and collecting the water I’d need until Acton, I realized I needed to get moving to try and make my 20 for the day.. I saw there was a campsite 4.2 miles away and at about 3:30 pm, i headed back out.

As I was coming down the tough descent, the tendons in my right ankle began to hurt really bad! I’d say on a scale of 1-10 probably about 6. That doesn’t seem too serious but you don’t want to be hurting with every step, especiallly when you have over 5 million more steps to go!

Needless to say I stopped at the next “campsite” I came across. It was really just a makeshift flat-ish area that I decided was good enough. I do have cell service here and it was nice to check in with Claire. I also looked up some weather and were looking pretty good!