Legs and Borders

It looks like I've spent four nights at the Ravensong's Roost, yikes! The maximum stay Lion has allowed was two days but with an asterix that if someone wants to stay longer then they can ask, and that's what I did. Feel like I've spent my time there quite well, I ate over 3 litres of walnut ice-cream, drunk 4.5 litres of soda but also built a shelf for the rocks people paint after the hike (I also painted one) and helped to clear up several new spots for the campsites as the big bubble of hikers will need way more space in few weeks time. I met a couple of people and not people walking on and off in my bubble - Zohan, Sugar, Starburst, Truman the dog, Forest and Stretch. I cycled 13 miles down to Winthrop in the heat of the day to resupply and fix my google pay, only to give up on the way back and catch a hitchhike with Cheryl who loaded my old rusty bike onto the back of her pick up truck. On the day three I got completely wasted on a hash cake that was supposed to be...

We woke up at 7am at George's house in North Bend, had a breakfast said our goodbyes to Fomo and got a lift back to Snoqualmie Pass, Zohan decided to have a zero day as he got a slight shin split. George dropped us off at Chevron gas station quarter mile from the trail, I had a coffee, everyone bought bits and bobs of resupply they have been missing and we went back on trail. It was ungodly hot today and walking on open ridges wasn't helping at all. I stayed well behind everyone else and didn't make good progress today but it was just enough, on top of the above there was a lot of altitude gaining so I'm happy with where I ended up today. At one point during the day we've been going on the ridge where military F16's were flying over a long valley and right on top of us Top Gun style, it was pretty impressive! You had to spot them beforehand because when you heard their sound the plane was already gone over the hill. I took a video of it, unfortunately the pilot ...

["Who let the Dogs out" song playing] Zohan: Amazing song guys, it was my bar mitzvah song! Lucky: Was it? Zohan: No, not really.. As it is the last day for Fomo on the trail we made it a bit special. I woke up at 3:30am and hiked 12 remaining miles to Snoqualmie Pass to be at the trail head when his friend George will arrive and pick us up and take us to his house in North Bend ten miles away. We arrived just as he was rolling into the parking lot, waited for Tank Top for a while as he was supposed to join us up but he wasn't replying to our messages so we left thinking something must have delayed him and that he will join us later , George took us to his home, we took a shower and put our laundry to wash, then he drove us to Safeway before heading to work. We ate at Taco Time before resupplying and getting an Uber back to his place. After few hours others started to arrive, Chewy, Tank Top and finally Zohan. We watched some random YouTube videos of people hiking PCT thi...

"Follow an ancient Lemurian highway and save few miles of breathing in smoke. Under the diurnal psychoactive compound regimen detailed in Yogi's Guidebook, you may still see phantom teams of waggish bloompas pulling Lemurian caravans fraught with finely wrought instruments of subtle, mysterious design. On still nights Bababooian chants can be heard echoing from Telos, home of the Lemurians, beneath mount Shasta" Ribbitman. Today on one hand was very similar to yesterday on the other it felt so much better, perhaps because I didn't feel like I was pushing myself too hard and the trail was shaded and we'll graded throughout the day. Everyone shoot out early from the campsite and it worked out exactly the same as previous day's, I was ahead for the first ten miles only because I woke up and started walking half an hour early, but by 9am everyone has overtaken me and I was the last person in the group. We kept the good pace and by 2pm we stopped at the last water ...

"Sometimes the pictures can really explain what you seeing" Zohan. Another long, hot day with scarce water sources. The team fell apart a little bit but with potential to reunite tomorrow in town for a special occasion. It was a fairly uneventful day, we walked through the forests green corridor of with occasional opening or ridge showing the view of Mt Shasta. One of the girls in our group called Sugar Mitts did not feel well so she decided to walk back and catch a hitchhike back to town. I was walking quite slowly, especially in the afternoon during the biggest heat, I'm not used to thirty plus mile days I prefer a steady mile pushing, early starts and reasonably early finishes. Tomorrow might be another long day though, it turned out it's Tank Tops birthday and he wants to celebrate it in town, problem being it's around 35 miles away - so everyone agreed to try and get there for the evening, I'll do my best but if it's as hot as it was today I might hav...

"I'm saving all my sleep for another life" TA Brian "The key to fulfilment is to make other people happy without hurting yourself in the process" TA Brian Today felt pretty special in many ways perhaps because of the summer solstice, perhaps of the places I've seen and people I met or the campsite we ended up staying at, it had it's tough moments as well. Firstly myself, Fomo, Rip and Smiley decided to take a detour to the inactive volcano called Cinder Cone few miles away from the trail, we met at the junction leading to it and proceeded with the plan, at the last moment another hiker called Zohan joined the fray as well. Road wasn't the easiest to navigate, fallen, burned trees were covering our path, the ground was very sandy which slowed the approach even further. After about an hour and a half we managed to climb the volcano and boy oh boy was it worth it! The landscape was like from another planet, very bare and dramatic, symmetry was ruling th...