Day 3- April 22nd

This morning we rolled out of Hauser Creek Canyon a little before 7:30, and instantly headed up a real big 4.5 mile hill. After some awesome scenery we descended upon Lake Morena Campground. And, (just as I promised yesterday), got down on an awesome breakfast burrito at the store:

Doesn't look like much, but trust me, best burrito around :)

We took advantage of the water fountain and a nice shady area under some trees to rest and recoup. I tried giving my phone a quick charge with the solar charger, but my cord doesn't like the USB port for some reason. 

Speaking of malfunctioning gear: yesterday we discovered that something had punctured the bottom of my backpack, then pierced our tent that was rolled up in the bottom of my pack, making 4 different holes. (Haven't checked the rain fly yet, as the weather has been so beautiful, so there might be a few holes there too). Nothing that a few pieces of duct tape can't fix! 

And last of some bad news: last night we also discovered that a piece on our camp stove was loose. I tried pressing it back together but when we turned it on a little propane leaked down the side (fiery propane). Not wanted to burn the campsite down, we borrowed a fellow hikers stove to make our rice and beans. There's a gear shop in Mount Laguna, 16.5 miles down the trail so I figure we'll buy another there. Luckily we have enough "dry food" to last until then. :)

Even though these things were a bummer, out here on the trail we are quickly letting go of troubles and thinking positively, moving smart and making good decisions, and listening to our bodies when they tell us they need rest or water. One could say we're "going with the flow".

Today was hotter than yesterday, with a very exposed toasty spot leaving Mount Laguna. The lightweight backpacking umbrellas are definitely saving our lives! These, in addition to our long sleeved sun-protecting clothing, allow us to walk all day instead of taking a longer 5 hour break as some others did at Lake Morena. 

It sure feels good to look back over a wide-open expanse, and not be able to see where you woke up in the morning. The feeling this constant forward-moving adventure gives me is quickly becoming my new favorite feeling.

A great view from way up above Lake Morena.

I'm so jealous, Claire saw her first snake of the trail today and I missed it! I definitely knew she encountered it by the way she shrieked, as it slithered less than two feet in front of her across our path. From her description and a little help from the Internet, I believe it was a Striped Racer. I'm still waiting to see a rattlesnake dang it! 

There are so many beautiful things to see out here, including strange and awesome rock formations:

"Grumpy Rock" -(I made that name up)

Wild green beans?:

And perfect little shaded areas, serving as our oasis(es?) during sometimes mile long stretches with no shade:

Claire had the brilliant idea to bring Berlinger foam roller on the trip, (pictured above), and I have been using it soooo much! Today we rolled into a sweet little campground with some picnic tables, and I used it to crack my back and roll out my shins, quads, ankles, thighs, and my neck!

It was about 5:30 when we rolled into our spot for the night. With an extremely hot day and our "matching" blisters getting worse, we decided to call it a day at 10.65 miles.

Tomorrow we will head out towards Mt. Laguna, 16.5 miles away. We may make it all the way or decide to split into two. The good thing is we only have to leave here with 2 liters of water instead of 6, taking almost 9 pounds out of each of our packs! 

Well it's 7:45pm here and the sunset glow is almost gone, which means it's past my bedtime! I love this way of life.

-Thanks for reading!

Day 2- April 21st

Today was hot hot HOT! Day 1 of our 18 miles stretch with no water, and we rolled out 13.1 of those bad boys today! That means only 4.9 tomorrow until we're eating ice cream and breakfast burritos on the porch of Lake Morena's general store! 

Funny story: All of yesterday people were telling us "watch out for rattles", "the rattles are out", "You'll see 10 a day!"  So naturally, all we wanted to do today was see some rattle snakes! Between 1 and 2 miles in, we saw a big group of people in one area, and were informed there was a big rattlesnake up ahead, and that everyone was waiting it out until in moved off path. After we arrived, a man named "Potential 178", (still trying to figure out what his trail name means), gave us the run-down on snakes. Here's a couple highlights:

1. Rattlers feel tremors in the ground from hikers, coil up, and then give you the warning rattle.

2. Rattlers can only strike once they are in the coiled position.

3. Rattlers can only strike the length of their body (no 5 foot snakes flying 15 ft through the air, whew!) 

4. 80% of rattle snake bites don't involve any venom. This is because they need 12-24 hours for the venom to refill. (Most learned rattles will save their venom for prey they intend to eat, not human's they are trying to avoid)

5. Baby rattlers however are the most dangerous because they haven't learned this yet, and when they feel threatened they will most likely use all their venom when striking. (I've also heard that baby rattlesnakes can't use their rattles until they grow bigger, meaning no warning rattle, but this has not been confirmed.)

So after Rattlesnakes 101, we headed down the path hoping to catch our first glimpse of the rattle but it had already moved on! We moved on as well, but didn't see a rattle all day! Better luck tomorrow... (I think Claire might not share my rattle enthusiasm, and could be just fine without seeing any at all :)

So, like I said earlier, today was a scorcher! Claire and I both left started out the morning with 6 liters of water each! Although that added 13.2 lbs of water to each of our packs, we're definitely glad we did! We took many short breaks throughout the day, and took a nice, leisurely pace. 

A lot people try to reach lake Morena (mile 20) on their first day. Many of these hikers over-exert themselves, use more water then they have due to extreme heat and their rapid pace, and then need to rest and recover for a few days, while all us "turtles" pass them by :) 

We saw many many beautiful flowers today, the desert is more gorgeous than either of us had imagined. This area is very hilly with many gigantic boulders strewn about, glittering with different minerals and quartz like stones. 

Although we saw no snakes today, we did see our share of poison oak. Towards the end of our hiking, around 5pm, Claire and I were on the lookout for a good campsite. Our feet were burning and we could feel a couple blisters coming in hot! We didn't see any sites for a few miles. Once we finally came across a small one on the side of the trail, and I had it in my mind that this would be home for the night, we were faced with a lot of this:

Deciding that we'd rather be sore for one day then rashy for a week, we continued on a few more miles to Hauser Creek (but not so much a creek because there's no water here), where we are now camping with 6 or 7 other hikers. (We started on a popular day). Helicopters periodically fly directly over the campsite, but after such a long day in the sun I'm sure we'll sleep sound with no problem! 

Some other pics from today:

Claire taking it all in.

Bees for days!

Tall Yucca plant almost twice my height! 

Thanks for reading! 

Aaaand they're off!!

It would be an understatement to say "today was a long day." Better yet: Today was an awesome, amazing, unreal, surreal, and a beautifully long day.

It started in Portland at 5:00am, where friend and former PCT thru-hiker Connor DeVane graciously took us to the airport in the early AM.

Taking a flight to San Fransico, and then another to San Diego, we then took two buses and one long trolley ride to get to Campo, CA, arriving just after 5pm. 12 hours of traveling, whew!! We met two other thru-hikers on the last bus (Russ and Jared).

After stopping for some camping fuel at the local store, we hiked the mere 1.4 miles down to the Mexican border and Southern Terminus of the PCT where we met another thru-hiker named Isaac and he took this awesome shot of us: 

We then turned around and hiked 2.3 miles north, past Campo, to the trails intersection with highway 94, where my friend good friend Alanna's mother (Susan) picked us up and took us to their awesome house in the town of Boulevard (20 minutes East). 

The sun was setting over the hills and we witnessed the almost-full moon rising over more hills behind us. Complemented with beautiful scenery and awesome Yucca cactus flower, our 4-mile 1st hiking-day ended perfectly.

Yucca flower. 

Sunset over the hills

Back at Alanna's house we caught up and met her 4 day old baby (Lucille Susan). And "Grandma" Susan cooked us an awesome meal of chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, and an awesome salad. 

We are so lucky that they invited us into their home, as well as treated us to our last home-cooked meal for awhile! 

Tomorrow we wake up early and get dropped off on highway 94, carrying 6 liters of water each, starting day one of two of an 18 mile waterless stretch that lies ahead!

Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

Angels Rest to Cascade Locks: A 35 mile, 4 day backpack trip!

With only one month until we leave for the Pacific Crest Trail, what's the best way to prepare for the longest backpacking trip of your life? Go backpacking of course! We needed a way to test out all our new gear that we'll be using for the PCT.

 
Yup all of these items went into these two bags. And this isn't including food or water!!

Since rainy weather in Oregon in March can be so up and down, we decided to just pick a specific time to request off of work for the trip. The week before we were to leave was so rainy we started thinking we might have to escape to the desert for our trip or hike for days in the rain! But low and behold, the weather cleared up the day before we were headed out, and lined us up for a few days in the sun! We decided to do a ~40 mile trip that I planned on Google Maps by stringing together a few trails in the Columbia River Gorge.


Fresh trail faces!

On Thursday we got a ride from my coworker Mitch and his girlfriend Jackie to the Angel's Rest trail head, 25 miles out of Portland. They decided to hike with us up to the viewpoint, and then we'd go our separate ways onward and upward.

Day one was rough to say the least, 11.5 miles with and elevation gain of over 4000 ft! This was the heaviest our packs would be with food and water, weighing in around 30lbs..


 
Not a bad spot to stop for a snack I'd say, and what an awesome view :p


Poison Oak much?


Claire's spirit not dampened by her pack one bit!


Surprisingly I happened to be quite color coordinated..


A cool waterfall called Fairy Falls along the way..

After a very long and exhausting day we pulled into a nice campsite along the upper Oneonta Creek. The first night was kind of our initial test to figure out how best and most efficiently to get everything out and put everything back the next morning!

Because our bodies were so sore, and according to my maps we only had an 8 mile day ahead of us, we slept in on day 2. What we didn't realize until the morning was that there was no obvious or simple crossing of the Oneonta Creek, After we finally got everything packed up, we had to spend an hour scouting the river up and down to find a semi-safe place to ford! With freezing cold feet, and safely on the other side of the river, we realized it was almost noon! Time to hustle!

We took the EXTREMELY un-maintained and storm-damaged Horse Creek trail Straight up and out of the creek and into snow country. We knew there'd be snow on the trail, but weren't quite sure how much.


Trying to find some sun in the colder high elevations. (About 2,900 ft elevation)

We were making slow progress in the snow and the temps started dropping quickly. Checking my maps, it seemed like we were only going up and up for a while. At about 4pm Claire and I had a decision to make, continue on and up for two more hours and chance a snow-camp at 3,500 ft, in a deeper, unknown snow level and TRY to find a level place to not freeze, or backtrack back down a little ways to the snow level (2,800 ft) and call it safe. Needless to say we called it safe, and we were sure glad we did!

Waking up early the next morning, we headed up. And up and UP!! Snow level got deeper and deeper, and many times throughout the morning we thought how miserable and cold we would've been if hiking the same area at night frantically looking for a spot to snow-camp. Because of the extra sleep and energy, it turned out to be pretty fun!


A beautiful view while hiking through the snow where we looked out and could see Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams at the same time! Picture taken at (3,200 ft elevation)

By the time we were near the top of the snow section, the other footprints we had been following had already turned around. It was cool to know that we were the first on the trail since the new snow the week before! We climbed up high, maxing out at 3,700 ft elevation! On the initial descent we experienced some deep, unstable snowfields..


Claire enjoying the fresh pow!

We then came down the Nesmith Point trail, using our Kahtoola microspikes for the snowy descent. Starting once we were out of the snow, we passed 15 or so day hikers that were on the way up, many only hiking to the beginning of the snow level.


Playing with a slow shutter simulation for the iPhone, Looks almost SLR-ish huh?

We really packed in some miles on that third day! 6 1/2 miles for the remainder of the snowy climb and long descent of Nesmith Point, and then 4 1/2 miles once hitting the Gorge Trail #400, put us at about 11 miles total for the day, We ended up walking until just before sunset, and had to stealth camp very near the trail on the only flat spot we could find nearby.


Our major-clearing-requiring stealth camp, about 100 yards from the trail. (Night 3)

We awoke around 7:30, and shortly after that we were given a warning from the sky. A short patter of rain reminding us that our three days of fun in the sun were up. We (very quickly and efficiently) packed up, threw on some rain gear and were on the way!


Claire sporting her awesome 8oz umbrella, that broke about 2.5 miles past this picture :(


Rainy trail day = more views for us!

We finally pulled into Cascade Locks at about 11:30 am. We made it! Popping into the Ale House for a celebratory beer, we met Julie Caldwell, an awesome trail angel and one of the main coordinators for PCT related things in Cascade Locks. She heard we were planning on hiking the trail so she showed us a sneak peak of the hiker box for this summer and the trail registry from last year!


The Cascade Locks 2015 registry and 2016 Hiker box already in the making!

We haven't even started the trail yet, but have already felt the love today from many people who appreciate thru-hiking and what the trail is all about. We are already extremely grateful for the Trail Angels, (People who feed and house and resupply thru-hikers, always unpaid and most times out-of-pocket), and we look forward to meeting more awesome people on the trail!

While waiting for our ride back to Portland, (thanks a million TJ!), we decided to go to Thunder Island Brewery. The place that Claire and I went for a post-hike bite and a beer on the first day we met back in September 2014!


We found the old sketch-book at Thunder Island Brewery that we drew in on the first day we met, dating 9-27-14 on the left, and the entry on the right dating 5-18-15 from this last May with our friend Tyler while doing Dog Mountain.


We had to add something in the middle for today, to commemorate our practice dry-run (more like wet-run) Hopefully this will still be here when we roll through in August 2016!


The ending of this mini adventure also holds the beginning of our next adventure, two states and over 2,100 miles south! The Pacific Crest Trail now literally lies ahead for us, See you soon PCT!

Thank you all for your love and support this far. Bookmark this page and stay tuned for actual PCT adventures coming up in just one month! (I promise my posts won't be this long or detailed, as I'll be faaaaaaar to lazy every night and won't have the luxury of a computer to blog!) Anyways, thanks for reading!