Legs and Borders

"After days of slogging through wet soft snow, endless river crossings and swapping wet socks for crunchy dry ones. Kennedy Meadows was a welcome oasis" Cargoman. What an end to this section it was! Everyone walking today got absolutely minced by wind, rain and unpredictable melting snow. It was raining the entire night and day, which made the river crossings in the morning even more challenging, then the trail was steadily going up for couple of miles until it reached Sonora Pass. From then on it turned into the game of 'find the trail' as it was constantly disappearing under the snow or small shifting rocks covering the approach and making the climb troublesome. Once on top the wind and rain hit hard nearly blowing my socks off - and it pretty much stayed like this until the end as the trail was very exposed from here on. Temperatures in this part of Sierra Nevada are not getting very low at night, so the snow never firms up and there's still a lot of it, so hal...

"I killed few rattle snakes before, skinned and cooked them with white wine and onion. They taste just like clam" Travis aka PepTalk. Very wet day, it was either walking on slushy snow or through rivers and streams. Snow melt is now in full effect and big portions of the trail are either running or stagnant water puddles. It was actually first day when I completely gave up on keeping my feet dry and were walking straight through all the water ahead of me. Guy with whom I camped last night set out really early, it must have been quarter past five, I heard him leaving and never saw him again today, he mentioned a couple of times how much he misses his wife and since he has just few hundred miles left to go (he is not hiking the entirety of PCT) that must keep him motivated. He's 66, what a Guy! I lost a couple of miles by walking on the wrong trail, before I checked it on my GPS I was already mile away, haha. The only other person I've met for the entire day was Travis ...

"When I was six I saw this guy standing in the forrest and I thought he was lost so I said: Hey are you ok? And he said: Yeah, you never seen a guy taking a piss in the woods?" Guy (That was his name.. and the trail name. He said this story as he was walking next to me while I was taking a piss beside the trail). Today was a very typical day of hiking, not much disturbance in the force has occured. It started with walking 15 miles to the first and only water source along the path, next one is 8 miles from where I stopped for the camp tonight so it should be easy enough walk in the morning. I met Sea Gypsy again, but it looks like he might have stayed in the camp few miles behind, every other face today was new. I talked for a while with the man called Guy, he lives in Tahoe which is up on the trail in Washington so he is planning to walk back to his house by August. I'm camping alongside an older lady called Big Owl who said that she hikes to make all her work colleagues ...