Day 109, 23.5 miles

Today was such a unique and wild and beautiful day!! It’s not very often that in one day I feel both cold and hot, invincible and tired, social and anti-social, slow and fast; a true rollercoaster both trail-wise and on a personal level! What rang true for most of the day was that there was beauty all around! This makes for another photo-heavy post, which I’m beginning to think you guys don’t mind at all, so I won’t even apologize for it! 

The morning was very cold and foggy. It was very eerie as it was a burn section, but I was glad I wasn’t hitting the exposed terrain at noon on a hot day! I couldn’t decided if it would rain or not, but I kept my jacket off thinking that I’d warm up soon. I came to my first water source and saw Verde. We ended up hiking together for most of the day.

Eerie burnt fog forest

2000 miles!!!! Whaaaa?!? ....Aaaaaaaw YEAH!!!

It felt so good to hit 2,000 miles today! I can’t believe it! In 2016, it was hard enough to wrap my head around walking 100 miles, and this year I’ve already done 20 of those!! It really feels like I’m almost done now, and instead of slowly chipping off a huge block, it actually feels like I’m most of the way there and the rest will be fun! Not one mile later, after crossing a busy and frightening highway, I came across some unexpected trail magic.

Morning box wine!!

Someone had left three boxes of wine on the PCT near the trailhead just off of the highway! There were two other hikers there, McGuiver and Doctor. Verde was just behind me, and soon after him came a hiker named Manza. Then, after a little while came a southbound hiker Naps and her dog Frank! The 5 of us sat together for a good hour drinking box wine on a cold and foggy morning at 8:30am in celebration of walking 2,000 miles!!

Left to right: Manza, Doctor, Verde, McGuiver, and Naps

Frank!! 

Frank was the most endergetic trail dog I’ve seen this far! Other dogs I had seen down in the desert looked so tired and over it, but Frank kept dropping sticks for us to throw and seemed to have endless energy! He and Naps hike ~12 miles from 6am-11pm, take a huge 4 hour nap, hence the trailname, and then hike another ~12 miles between 3pm-8pm. This gives Frank plenty of rest and also lets them hike 20-25 miles a day which is perfect for a thruhike!!

After long enough, I decided to get a move-on! The trail climbed up and up and up, entering the Mount Jefferson Wilderness. After an hour or so, Verde and I finally started to pop out up above the the mist, and soon it started to dissipate. There were many gray clouds in the distance still, and that became a theme for the whole day.

Getting closer!!

Three Fingered Jack shrouded in clouds

So pretty!!

Verde

Three Fingered Jack

As you can see, the open vistas and dramatic rock formations were super pretty and amazing to walk near. They were probably about 5X prettier in person! The sun was coming out but the wind remained cold. Sometimes even with no wind present it was still very cold. It was hard to decide which layers to wear, and I kept changing frequently.

After this there were a lot of uphill climbs, and towards the late afternoon I came across Rockpile Lake. It was a great spot to eat some snacks and cold soak my food. I saw Stallion there as well as a few other hikers.

Rockpile Lake

After that there were more eerie burns, with some crazy views with dark looking clouds rolling in. It was still very pretty, although VERY cold and windy! I put on my wind jacket and gloves and kept trodding on uphill. Another great thing was that there were lots and lots of huckleberries!

So cool!

Lots O hucks!!

Towards the very end of the day I finally started descending and looking for a campsite. At the bottom of some switchbacks I found a nice place near another trail junction to put down. Manza was there (one of the hikers I met at the trail wine), and we talked story a bit before it was time for bed! 

Thanks for reading!!