PCT day 107 - mile 2471 to mile 2501

"Humans rarely smile without having some robust reason to do so." Alain de Botton.

Long day of hiking with some great views throughout the day, access to water was reasonable and mosquitoes although present didn't come in a death swarms (until the campsite that is). I've met few new nobo thru hikers the bubbles are intersecting once again.

I've managed to cut the distance to Steheken our next and final stop before the Canadian border to 72 miles, town is so remote that both people I got hitchhike with yesterday although living in the area and loving hiking has never been to. It's only accessible from the trail, by horse or four wheel drive, there's no road leading in or out of it. It should be an interesting stop, my only worry is that there might be not much resupply there, there's no shop as such but the hotel has few food items they sell, I will have to rely heavily on the hiker box. Worse come to worse I'll just live on mash potatoes for three days. I really want to succeed with my 'no resupply boxes' challenge, especially as I failed with my 'no zero days' challenge (I took one zero) - it was a stupid challenge anyway, so I don't regret it.

I set up the tent at a random meadow with nice views, can hear a blue grouse hooting somewhere in the trees (it's a mating call, I never seen the actual bird, only heard it). I woke up at 9pm and there was some animal scraping and plowing the ground nearby, it's not the first time I can hear those sounds at night. It's not particularly scared of my clapping and tent banging sounds, I wonder what it was. There's a lot of climbing to be done tomorrow, hopefully the views will be rewarding.